Fast Eddie and Titan

I recently became friends with Fast Eddie at MySpace who is married and has three children. He is an avid deer hunter and films for Lone Wolf's Adrenaline Junkies Television Show. You can also check out his new episodes on The Sportsman Channel. This is the story behind "Titan" that he harvested in his own words.

It started with several years of observing a specific place where deer enter the field from a bedding area that had no available trees to hang a stand. One lone tree finally got big enough to throw a stand in, but it was a bit out of position. So as a result I put in a food plot in the corner to suck the deer through the food plot, toward the field and past the lone tree. As luck would have it was a scrubby pin oak with lots of limbs and lots of back cover, so not being very high and concealment was not an issue. The main factor to success was crop rotation. Think 4-quadrants...upper right one woods, lower left one beans, and the other two corn. I had an outside corner of a large block of bedding area; this outside corner had corn on both sides of it so the point of the cover was the only exposed portion, to a bean field. Knowing that deer would rather funnel out here as opposed to walking through the corn, I put a trail camera on a fence post and right away started getting numerous big buck pictures of deer headed to the bean field...obviously they were going to be bottle necked down because of the corn. I had several really nice shooter bucks, but one in particular, "Titan" was making more routine appearances and showing up in evening daylight hours pretty consistent. Now, flash forward several to opening day, I had several wind variations that would work due to the isolation of this one tree and the proximity of the bedding area. But ideally, anything North is best, which is just what we got. As Dane Thompson and I climbed in with our hunting and camera gear, it was then a waiting game. We saw right off a few does come through and then nothing for a couple hours. Then as we started to see more deer from all around the bean field start to filter in, movement caught my eye and Titan was stepping into the battlefield. I had video taped this buck several times and was quite familiar with him, but still needed confirmation from Dane as my heart was pumping. All the hard work (stands, food plots, scouting, etc.), homework (I had a matched set of his sheds from the previous year) was about to pay off with the release of my arrow. Immediately, disgust crept in...a bad shot had tainted all of my hard work. I immediately claim to have gut shot him. I had practiced all summer long and had been totally confident with my ability. It was cool that night (especially for opening day) so we backed out deciding to return the next morning's daybreak. I slept little, but after looking at the footage, I was a little optimistic with the angle/trajectory of the arrow. I felt that I probably got his liver and maybe one lung. Several of the Lone Wolf's Adrenaline Junkies took up the trail and we did not go 70-yards before we found Titan. We had actually heard him fall the night before when we looked for the arrow. What an awesome buck and I could not be prouder. What I take away from the hunt is, you cannot be too prepared, look at bottle neck, pinch points for early season where you can stay away from deer who are not traveling very far from bed to food, and always don't forget to pick a spot when you shoot...I have killed a lot of nice bucks and have made some great shots...but buck fever still gets me otherwise I would not bother going anymore...so it is important to get your whit and keep focused. Granted you hope to see a buck of this caliber in bow range on opening day and you plan on it...but it seldom happens, so as a result you have the opportunity to build up your response (from a distance...get the rusty nerves settled before they are up close and personal). Anyway, I loved sharing the hunt; I hope some of you saw it on Lone Wolf's Adrenaline Junkies airing on the Sportsman Channel...also look forward to other episodes, where I miss Mr. Macho only to have my Dad get him on film and then Dane misses a deer called Fido, which I finally take on an exciting episode. The Titan hunt will rerun September 1st.

Thanks, God Bless and Good Luck, Fast Eddie

(My sincere congrats to Fast Eddie on a very nice buck harvest and for letting me share his amazing hunting story with you)