I'd been hunting at a friend's place for four days, and while I'd been seeing some critters, I hadn't seen any that were legal. A buddy had shot a nice eight-point the morning of the day I arrived, grossing 117 B&C points, and we'd been seeing and hearing signs of rutting activity. In fact, I hadn't even seen a doe... every whitetail I saw and identified was a small buck. I figured something would have to change, sooner or later.
Precipitation Anticipation
Following a rainy night, I decided to go to Jim's stand. It's an elevated box stand - with a roof - overlooking a field bordered by thick woods. I arose to the warmest morning since I'd been there, with a temperature of 59 degrees at 5:30. The rain was coming and going, and had come again by the time I climbed into my truck for the two-mile drive from camp.
The closer I got to the stand, the harder the rain fell. After a short soggy hike, I was sitting in the stand getting situated at 6:30, well before shooting light.
Foggy Scope
I found that the Sightron S1 3x-9x scope on my Savage Sierra 308 rifle had fogged up, for no clear reason. I'd been keeping the rifle in my truck at night to avoid that very thing, but it didn't work on that day. Consequently, I spent a fair amount of time that morning periodically wiping the scope lenses so I could see through it.
The rain fell constantly. Sometimes lighter, sometimes harder - but always falling. Then the wind made an appearance shortly after 8:00, making things pretty miserable. But one must remember that the soggiest day of hunting generally beats working in the best weather.
I saw crows, I heard turkeys, I stared holes in the rain, I wiped my scope. Basically, I waited.
Then, shortly after 9:00, things changed.
Action!
Over my left shoulder, I spotted movement. I turned my head to see a respectable whitetail buck in the field close by. He was pretty spooky and I think he saw me move, because even as I saw him I was whipping my rifle up and into shooting position, and he began to head away from me, not running but not lingering, either.
"Maaaaa!" said I, and the buck hesitated but did not stop. I repeated myself, and so did he. I believed him to be a good legal buck, but wanted a better look at his antlers. He was determined that I wouldn't get one.
It was a "now or never" type of situation, as he was about to be out of sight. I quickly made the decision to fire, and did so when the crosshairs coincided with his front end. And then he was gone, and I sat panting in the box stand, rain falling all around me, wondering whether I had hit him. The time was 9:18.
Did I Miss?
I knew that my shot had been hurried, but I also know myself pretty well when it comes to shooting, and during the conversation I had with myself in my head, I had to admit that, "I'm a pretty good shot." I knew that this buck was not one of the super-huge class that my friend/host wanted me to shoot, and part of me wanted to take back the shot - but it just doesn't work that way. You fire, or you don't, and there are very few do-overs and absolutely no take-backs in the hunting woods.
My next step was to get out of the stand and head over, through the steady rain, to where the deer had been when I'd fired. The range was about 40 yards, more or less. I found his big hoofprints in the muddy field, but no blood. I tracked him to the edge of the field, where he would have had to push through a layer of brush to get into the woods. Again, I found no blood.
Now What?
I looked, I wondered, and I prayed. In my heart, I knew that I'd been on the deer when I fired, but I had no way of knowing how hard it was hit. So I slipped into the woods, looking ahead and down at the ground and all around as I cautiously eased forward.
Soon enough, I spotted a game trail, and in the trail were some freshly-scuffed leaves, showing that he had passed that way. It wasn't much, but it was enough in those rain-soaked woods to tell me that the scuff had to have been made by my buck.
I eased a little farther down the trail, stopped to look around, and spotted my deer! The buck lay on the ground with his legs tucked up under him, quartering away with his head to the left. His head was raised and the deer was looking almost straight away from me. I later determined that the distance between me and the deer was 17 yards.
