Muzzleloader double
Search for doe finishes with 2 bucks
Andrew Conley of Rogers allotted himself one week for deer hunting, and he made the most of it.
Hoping only to get a doe for the freezer, Conley concentrated his deer hunting efforts on muzzleloader season, which ran Oct. 21-29. Instead, he filled his two-buck limit on the season’s closing weekend.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever ‘bucked out,’ ” Conley said. “Last year I did the same thing, but I had to go through [modern] gun season.”
Conley and his father-inlaw Craig White of Rogers hunted at family property in Hempstead County near McCaskill. White has been an coach at Elmwood Junior High School in Rogers since the early 1990s. Conley has been hunting with his father Brad Conley, a Little Rock native living in Rogers, since he was a child.
“I grew up doing that with my dad,” Conley said. “I grew up hunting in east-central Missouri on our family farm. My wife Shelby and I duck hunt at Wheatley every weekend during the season, and I deer hunt at McCaskill. If I’m not at McCaskill, I’m at Wheatley. I’ve traveled every weekend since bow season.”
Conley wanted to get deer hunting out of the way so he could concentrate on duck hunting later this month, but warm weather during muzzleloader season tested his resolve.
“I don’t like hunting when it’s that warm, but when the trail cameras started going off showing bucks in daylight, I had to be there,” Conley said.
Bucks were showing prerut activity, Conley said. They were moving during daylight and staying close to does.
“Bucks had started to bump does,” Conley said. “They weren’t really, really chasing them, but they were sniffing them and just showing a lot of interest.”
The temperature was about 80 degrees in Hempstead County when Conley arrived on Friday, Oct. 20. His goal was to shoot a doe, but a young buck changed his plans.
“I got in the stand late Friday,” Conley said. “I was going to try to shoot a doe and put some meat in the freezer. A buck came out 30 minutes before dark. He came out of an acorn flat and got 20 yards from the stand. He was fixin’ to be downwind of me, so I needed to make it happen quick.”
After making the shot, Conley went back to the cabin to get a Therma-Cell and more bug spray.
“Mosquitoes were killing me,” Conley said.
Although Conley said he knew the buck didn’t go far, he still took advantage of the opportunity to get in some work for Annie, his blood-trailing Dachshund.
“She didn’t take long to find him,” Conley said. “I put her on his trail. She weaves around, sniffs out that blood pretty quick. She had it in five minutes. The buck only went about 80 or a hundred yards. We were super-excited. We got him on ice as soon as we could.”
Conley described that buck as a “cull,” a 2.5-year old that did not exhibit potential for exceptional antler growth.
The exceptional buck arrived the next day. An approaching storm was projected to arrive at about 8:30 a.m.
“We woke up at 5 a.m., and turned on the Weather Channel and saw all the rain coming,” Conley said. “We were drinking coffee trying make a game plan.”
Conley and White got on their stands at 7:05 a.m. Conley put a primer in his old Thompson/Center Triumph and gazed across an overgrown, brushy meadow on the side of a low ridge.
“I made a couple of soft grunts,” Conley said. “I looked to my right, and here comes a doe walking in from the other side of the meadow. Behind her I could see a body tucked into some saplings. He pops out. I see his [antler] spread, and there’s no doubt that’s a shooter.”
The buck was quartering toward Conley. The shot was easy, but the aftermath was unnerving.
“It was so humid and rainy, the smoke just sat in air,” Conley said. “It didn’t go anywhere.
I didn’t know if I shot the deer. Shoot, I could have missed that deer. Sometimes with a muzzleloader you never know.”
Despite the commotion, the doe returned and resume feeding, Conley said.
At 7:35 a.m., Conley began looking for blood before the rain started.
“I’m zig-zagging in kneetall grass and there’s no blood anywhere,” Conley said. “I walked about 50 yards in the saplings and looked through my binoculars. I saw a speck of white. A deer belly! I crept towards him and put the glass on him again. There was no movement. He was dead.”
Almost at the same time, White shot a mature 10-point buck.
“What a morning!” Conley said. “We haven’t measured them yet, but Craig’s was 200 pounds. Mine was 195. For Southwest Arkansas, that’s a pretty decent buck. We caped them out, cut them up and put them on ice. By then it was pouring rain. We were laughing and having a good time cleaning deer in the pouring rain. We didn’t care. We spent the rest of the day watching football.”