Vince Smith, owner of Lonesome Wind Custom Bows
Wow it was hot last weekend in Nebraska. Victory Outdoors fall deer hunting got underway last weekend, with three staff members and one friend of Victory Outdoors. Zac Geith, Collin Mann, and Curtis Goettsch where kindly invited to join Vince Smith, owner of Lonesome Wind Custom Bows, to hunt with him on public land in Northeast Nebraska. Vince long ago took up the challenge that is traditional archery. Not only does Vince shoot a traditional bow he makes them. Even traveling to South Africa to hunt many game animals with his hand made traditional bow.
We and I arrived Thursday night, Friday morning we got to work hanging our Twisted Timber Treestand sets. Hunting public land we had to do a little work to find place we thought we could be successful and yet not interfere with other hunters. As luck would have it we didn’t run into many other hunters this time of the year. Of course that might have been due to the temperatures in the mid-90s but I can attest that we weren’t the only hunters crazy enough to be hunting in this heat. Our motives where simple we want a shot at a possible buck in velvet. Collin Mann got to camp Friday night and Vince had just the sport for him in the morning.
The biggest challenge we faced was scent control, when it is this hot out it is a much harder task. We would play the wind when picking our stand sets but even with that one of our Twisted Timber Treestand sets was next to impossible to play the wind effectively. This set was in a very high deer traffic area and we did see the most deer out of that stand. The issue was the wind it would swirl so bad that no matter which way the wind blew deer where able to sense something wasn’t quite right.
We were spraying down with our Hunters Specialty’s Scent-A-Way at a religious level, still with the swirling winds that stand set just wasn’t work as we had hoped. The deer would make it to 35 yards and stop, and never quite give us the shot we needed. Now I’d point out we hunted our other stand set and had deer coming from up wind and down wind, which would come into range just fine. The difference was the wind at that stand wasn’t swirling, but rather was steady in our face the whole time. The deer that showed up from downwind where coming out of a valley and ever was left of our sent was blowing over them by the time they got to our set up.
That hunt brings us to our only opportunity at the buck still in velvet. Zac was the shooter and I was running the camera. Just before drake we had two very small fawns (still had spots) come right under our stand from up wind. Obviously small spotted fawns where not our target and we watched them for some time as light began to fade. As they fed back into the timber, hung up his bow, and turned to me and asked what we had left for camera light, as I was in the middle of telling him “about 5 minutes”, let out a, “shhhh right here… right here…” At just 10 yards a nice ten point buck had snuck in from behind us. This would end up being the best buck we saw all weekend, and he had come from downwind and testament to our stand location and Hunters Specialty’s Scent-A-Way products.
I got the camera on the buck, all I could see was the bucks head and neck. We needed him to take two more steps and camera light was fading very fast. By the time the buck stepped out, camera light was gone and I had nothing but a black screen. I inform Zac of our lighting and told him it was up to him if he wanted to take the back off camera. Zac elected to pass hoping for another opportunity. That opportunity didn’t come on this trip but Zac explained that the buck was in fact a nice 10 point but if he was going to take a buck just for the sake of taking him in velvet that it wasn’t right to do that off film. Now you have to understand Zac has been filming his hunts for well over ten years. He does this for his own pleasure not just for use for the Victory Outdoors Show. In fact only in the past three years has he taken on the challenge of producing show quality video. Before then he simply filmed for the sheer enjoyment of sharing his hunts with his friends and family.
Our hunt would come to an end without any of the four of us filling a tag but we had a great time and got to meet some great people. A special thanks to Vince Smith for the invite and we hope to maybe make a return trip when the weather cools down. To all of you out there hunting, hunt safe and good luck. Check back here on Victory Outdoors for our most up to date Semi-Live Videos and informative blog posts.
