| Thanksgiving Deer Hunt 2002 | |
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Monday morning dawned clear and cold... the consensus among the camp thermometers put the temperature around twenty degrees, and the trucks and ground were covered with frost. I rode Ken's ATV around to a dim road on the ridge opposite where I'd hunted on Saturday afternoon, parked it and walked down the road along the ridge. After a few minutes I felt the call of nature and stepped off to the side to relieve myself. That chilly business dealt with, I walked on.
I had decided that if I were a deer I would have been down in a bottom to stay out of the cold wind, but as the sun came up I'd want to be on an east-facing slope to soak up the sun's rays--at the same time avoiding the light wind, which was blowing from the west. So I'd resolved to plunk down on a shady slope with the icy breeze in my teeth and watch for deer on the opposite side of the valley.
I'd just left the road and started to pick my way down the hillside, when a scan of the opposite slope turned up a familiar triangle, somewhere between 120 and 130 yards away... my brain processed this information and informed me that the triangle in question was formed by the ears and snout of a deer! I raised the rifle and put the scope on the critter, and spotted antlers! Cool, man.
By this time, I was shaking too much to do anything about it without a rest, so when the buck turned his head away I stepped over to a small pine tree which I could hide behind, but most of all which I could use as a rest for my rifle. I needed to see at least four points on one side for him to be legal, and I had no problem finding three out of four, but his ears kept me from seeing if he had any brow tines. Finally, he turned his head to face me and I saw a brow tine on the same side as the other three I'd seen, and I knew it would be legal to take him. I steadied the crosshairs on him and sent a handloaded 180-grain Hornady pointed soft point his way, and down he went, mostly out of sight.
I could see his head and part of his neck as he struggled for a moment, but I couldn't get a clear shot to finish him. I decided I needed to get into a better position to finish him if necessary, so I looked away for a moment to pick up my empty cartridge case. When I looked back, there went a deer walking away from where he'd just been down! Holy smokes! I quickly propped the rifle back up and scoped the standing deer, and was pleased to see that it was a doe I hadn't seen before, and not my buck, which had quit moving once and for all. I briefly considered shooting the doe as well, but I already had one deer down and needed to deal with that before I moved on to other things.
I hung some bright orange for a landmark in the pine tree I'd used as a rest, and hot-footed it back to the four-wheeler, because I needed to get to the other side of the creek and riding around was faster than walking across. When I got to the top of the slope (which is actually the main road through the property) I parked the ATV--my buck was near the bottom, and it was mighty steep.
I took rifle in hand and headed down to find my deer. Not long thereafter, I was admiring a beautiful six-point buck, which had been a seven-point at some time previous... both tines on the right side were broken off the right main beam, and the left brow tine had been busted short, but was still long enough. My shot had broken his back, dead-center through his spine, and he had died moments later.
I filled out the paperwork on my hunting license, and commenced to dress out the deer using my late Uncle Kelly's old folding Case knife, which has a lot of sentimental value for me, and I was glad I'd brought it along to do that job. Then I started the nasty drag up the steep slope. Richard and I had decided that we'd turn on our two-way radios if either of us heard the other guy shoot, but apparently he was still on his four-wheeler riding to his stand when I fired the shot a few minutes after 7:00, and he hadn't heard it. So he wasn't answering my radio calls, and I wasn't about to leave my deer--although I knew it would be fine--to go and find help.
I'd gotten the buck a little more than halfway up the slope when I heard something, looked up and saw Dad driving by on the main road I was heading towards. Vainly I waved my arms and hollered, as he drove slowly by, placidly gazing straight ahead. Oh well!
I got the buck loaded up and headed to camp, where I hung it up and rousted Ken out of his warm bed so he could come help me admire my deer. We took some photos and each praised the skill and good luck of the other, we being the only two deerslayers in camp so far on this trip. Life can be so sweet at times... ah, me. It was definitely a much happier morning than the one I'd had the year before, when a Winchester Model 70 had hosed me badly. My Savage 110 had treated me just fine!
Me and my buck...
That afternoon I spent in camp, cleaning up the buck's skullplate and removing and cleaning up a jawbone so I could age him. I determined that this buck was probably three and a half years old, and I estimate his live weight to be around 140 pounds. Not a bad size, but he should have had a better rack at that stage of his life, even if he was only two and a half. For the sake of the trophy chasers around here, he's better off removed from the gene pool, as he most certainly now is. Ken headed home around noon, and neither Dad nor Richard saw anything that afternoon.
