LINCOLN COUNTY, W.Va. — When Donny Baisden got a chance to purchase a piece of hunting property earlier this year, he jumped at the opportunity. Baisden already has a camp in Lincoln County and learned the man who owned the property not far from his camp was looking to sell a considerable piece of land. When he checked it out, Baisden was satisfied he’d fulfilled a lifelong dream of owning his own hunting property.
“It was exactly what I wanted and we went through the process and once I paid for it, I put up a couple of cameras,” he explained.
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Although Baisden had walked most of the property with the landowner to evaluate it, he hadn’t truly scouted the land. When he got his first pictures, he was floored. He captured a picture of a massive buck passing through. Baisden added more cameras to see if he could narrow down his lair and his pattern. The former landowner was unaware, and Baisden was keeping his newfound discovery close to the vest.
“He hadn’t walked on the property in years. In fact, it was so grown up it was hard to walk on the property at all,” he explained.
He put up cameras in three areas and found the buck on all three, but he needed to narrow down where he believed this mature and cagy creature was spending most of his time.
“I found 15 to 20 white oaks and deer sign everywhere, so I thought he’s probably in here. I put up a camera and sure enough he showed up. That’s where I said if I was going to harvest him, I was probably going to do it down here. He stared frequenting at night, but then I noticed every time it would rain, he’d show up in the daylight,” Baisden explained.
Baisden had another problem, Lincoln County is a rifle county and chances are pretty good when rifle season opened, somebody would tag him.
“I said I’m going to hunt him as much as I can before rifle season. Then I saw where the forecast called for rain and I said I’ve got to be in there,” he explained.
Baisden was in his stand in the pouring rain, but was starting to second guess his strategy. He checked cameras in two other places, but because of the weather wasn’t getting any signal. So he made a daring move that later he decided was a tactical error. He got out of his stand to walk up the hill to get enough signal to determine if the buck had been at one of the other two locations. It turned out he had not, now Donny had another problem.
“There was four does there and I couldn’t get back into my stand, so I just sat down in the weeds on the ground,” he said.
Donny waited out the last doe, and around 6:00 p.m. rose to climb back into his stand, but his leg had fallen asleep from sitting in one position for so long. He leaned against an oak tree to try and work feeling back into his leg to make the climb when the unthinkable happened.
“I hadn’t stood there but maybe two or three minutes and I looked out and here he came walking toward me,” he explained. “He looked like an elk and I had nothing in between us. I was leaning to that tree and had my bow in front of me trying to stay hidden.”
The buck just kept coming and never had a clue Donny was around. He walked right to the spot where Donny needed him for a shot. He came to full draw, released the arrow and watched it sail under the deer’s belly.
“I missed him. The buck jumped probably 15 yards, but because it’s raining he didn’t know what had happened, so he started coming back. If it had been quiet I would have never got him. He put his head down and there’s an opening where his vitals are and I knew I could put an arrow in there,” said Donny.
He released the second arrow and shot under the buck for a second time.
“Now I knew something was wrong with my bow,” he said.
The buck was starting to catch on that he was in a precarious spot and started to nervously walk up the hill.
“I said I’ve got to compensate, I drew back again and put my site pin on top of his back because I knew I was shooting six to eight inches low. So when I released the third arrow, I heard it thump him. I was relieved,” laughed Donny.
He said buddies told him he should have omitted the two missed shots from his story, but they happened. However, Baisden’s story wasn’t over yet. He headed back to his side-by-side in hopes there would be a light because daylight was fading and he didn’t have one with him. Fortunately he found one in the glove box of this machine because a return trip to camp and back would have taken over an hour. Light rainfall could potentially wash away all evidence if he waited for very long. Turns out it wasn’t a concern at all.
“There was so much blood in a four-by-four area, I said there’s no way he was going far. He went up the hill about 10 yards and stopped, then went up another 15 yards to a road and walked about 25 yards out that road and expired. From the time I found where I shot him to the time I found him was about two minutes,” he said.
Baisden was feeling fortunate, not only to have managed to kill the buck amid a series of bad decisions and worse luck, but buying that piece of property was also not a bad investment. Oh, and to complete the story, the rest for his arrow, often called the “whisker biscuit” was loose on his bow.