On Monday, Sept. 11, 2006, 15-year-old Tyler Blodgett and his dad David, of Mendham, New Jersey, headed to their stands in Morris County after Tyler's opening football game. It was late in the afternoon but they hoped to see the "big 11" that they'd been hunting for several years. At 15, Tyler had already harvested 11 deer with his bow, five of which where better-than-average bucks for New Jersey.
With the wind out of the northwest the father and son team knew which stand they'd hunt even before they got into the car after the game. After videotaping the 11-point buck the day before (no Sunday hunting) and after successfully harvesting a doe and earning his buck tag on Saturday the 9th, (through New Jersey's "Earn-a-Buck" program), Tyler was excited to say the least. David planned to videotape his son's hunt some 20 yards downwind of Tyler's tree stand from a makeshift blind in a thick tangle of briers and cane.
No more than 15 minutes after entering the stand, three small bucks came by within range. But Tyler held true to the words he'd spoken earlier: "It'll be the big 11 or nothing." Almost as soon as the three small bucks fed off two much larger P&Y-class bucks came in to feed on the acorns — a 20-inch 9-pointer and a heavy-beamed 8-pointer. They, too, fed off, passing by Tyler's stand not more than 15 yards away. By now sunset was rapidly approaching with maybe 20 minutes of shooting light remaining and 10 minutes at most for the video camera.
Suddenly as David was peeking over the viewfinder he spotted the big 11 following a doe down the trail that led directly under Tyler's stand. The buck marched in as if on a string. Then he stopped no more than 3 steps for the bottom of the tree that Tyler was in. The buck just stood there frozen and alert. It seemed that all his senses had kicked in, yet he had no clue that two hunters had invaded his home turf.
With the buck standing directly underneath him, Tyler had no shot opportunity. he drew back his Mathews Outback bow on three different occasions and then had to let it down each time. On the third let-down the arrow came off the rest and Tyler nervously wrestled to get it back on. The buck finally started walking away at an angle. As David captured the action on video, he could see Tyler's white-fletched, Muzzy-tipped, Carbon Express arrow disappear right through the buck's vitals at 17-yards. The buck took five steps and fell over as if he'd had a heart attack and passed out.
David let out an excited "You got him! You got him!" and ran toward Tyler's tree, tripping over everything that was on the ground between them.
Tyler looked down at his father, and with eyes that seemed to be twice their normal size, he said "We did it, Dad, we did it!"
Needless to say, at that point David's eyes welled up so badly that he I could no longer see his son in the tree. "Only a father could understand," he said proudly.
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