Deer hunt full of surprises (pics)

fisherguy · December 10, 2005

Well the season is nearing its end so today three of us went out in search of meat. We have been very picky about not shooting young bucks, but today we were going to drop the first two deer we could. We had tags for 2 bucks and 2 does still. Now I guess I will start with my day. It was -10 and snowing, with 3 inches of fresh snow from overnight. On the way to my stand there were fresh tracks everywhere so things looked good. About 8 am I saw movement about 75 yards in front of me in very thick brush. Eventually i made out an antler and got ready for a potential shot. In 20 minutes this deer gave me not even a look at it's body, and rare glimpses of its head. Finally at 70 yards he raised his head to eat moss off a tree branch while facing right at me. I could see he was about a 120 inch 8 point. I have passed a number of bigger bucks this fall, but at this point he was meat. I took a good rest and got the crosshairs on his throat patch. After debate i decided to hold off for abetter shot since he was headed right for an opening....bad idea. I thought it was impossible to get across that opening without giving me a shot...he proved me wrong and fed off. So i sat kicking myself for not taking the throat shot that i am sure i could have made. It was a small target, but i had a rest, and i would either kill him or miss clean. An hour later two does came out(sort of) and i watched them feed for almost two hours without even a head shot...they were 125-50 yards the whole time. Finally they fed off and I was cold so i went towards the cabin to eat lunch. 70 yards from the cabin i cut fresh tracks of a deer. I looked up and there 40 yards away stood a yearling doe. Now this was a gift...with one problem...the backstop for my shot was the blue of the cabin wall! So i waited for her to walk away from it, but she bolted and i had no safe shot. 40 yards and i couldn't even raise my gun safely.

I thought i had a frustrating day...until my dad came in. He walked once he got cold and jumped three deer but had a tree between him and the deer so he could not see them to shoot. Later on he swung near my stand and walked up on two does(same ones i saw). They bolted and he threw the gun up and shot quickly. Due to the haste the gun was not seated and he got a nasty scope cut on the bridge of his nose. Through the pain he noticed the deer stop at 60 yards and raised his gun...what a gift shot. One problem...his gun was jammed. By the tine he discovered he had missed a nickel in his pocket, which had ended up in the clip the deer were gone.(note. he pissed clean on the first shot.) Now this sounds like quite a day...but it gets better. lol

The third member of our party had a big doe come out at 40 yards. Has he raised his gun she busted him and took off. He got off one fast shot as she hit the trees. Confident he missed, in 15 minutes he walked over to the trail where the deer stood...and 10 feet in there was the deer dead. That was surprise #1...#2 came as he rolled it over to gut it. His doe had testicles! A look at the head showed it was a buck who had already shed his antlers. The deer was skinny, and had two 4 inch bald patches on its side, so it was likely only a couple months from starving and freezing. It appears to have been a 2.5 or 3.5 year old deer. The funniest part is that two weeks ago he shot what he thought was a 140 class 10 point...that turned out to be a nice 5 by 1 lol. All the one side had was a main beam, so after decuctions it scores about 51 inches net...rather than 140 lol. We have a big buck trophy, and an ugly buck trophy each year...we thought he had ugly buck tied up, but he topped himself.

So after such an interesting day i am giving it one more try tomorrow.

Here is the Antlerless buck.

Here is the good way to drag a deer lol We actually had to drag the deer off the trail to get the snowmoblile in and turned around.

HitRmisS · December 10, 2005