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Friday, July 18, 2014

Open Thread

Just thought I'd offer up one since I see the views today and nobody wanting to comment. 

What's the status Gladys? What's going on in that brain of yours?

Talk about whatever you want if you want.

I'm not against a little intellect showing up here from time to time.

Now get to it!

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I guess I'll get it started....

My Deer hunters, where are you at?

I knocked this tasty 4 year old Buck down in November last year up in East Texas, close to where I come from on some family land. This is the biggest low fence Buck I've ever killed. I'd been sitting on the blind for two days in drizzling rain right before Thanksgiving with no luck. Obviously, deer do not move normally in the rain, but I wasn't about to let that slip out and ruin my chance to get away from the wife and kids for a little bit either. Thanksgiving morning I was sitting in my hide thinking it was going to be more of the same. All of the sudden, the sun comes out, and the birds start chirping. We are in business baby. Sure enough, as I'm glassing the pond, I see a fat little doe acting all giddy and shit around a pile of corn. I sit and watch her for probably 5 minutes before I realize that she's not alone as I notice a tail flick out towards the edge of my scope. I move to glass what I saw, and sure enough, there's another deer there. All I could see what the ass end. Right about the time I go to scope the doe again, I see this dude raise his head up and look up the hill where I'm sitting. Instantly, the dopamine hit takes over and I'm "in the zone." At this time of the morning, which was about 8:30, it was still 31 degrees. If you have trained for cold weather shooting, you know that your breath control has to be on point when you are shaking from the cold and anticipation. So there I am, locked on this buck, and he decides he's had enough of this doe's bullshit around the corn pile. He shoots down the embankment about 20 feet to the corn and begins to eat. Problem is, at this point there's a huge oak tree in my line of sight and all I can see is his hind quarters. So I sit and watch. It felt like I was in the scope for at least an hour at this point, when in reality, it was about a minute. He turns finally. He started back up the embankment towards the doe and stopped. Big mistake. I let it fly. That 180gr soft point Core-lokt 30.06 tattooed his shit so hard that when it hit, he jumped straight up in the air with his back hitting at least 10 feet. I've never seen anything like it before. When he hit the ground and started to run I could tell that his internals had just taken a serious impact. He bolted about 30 feet and that was all she wrote hoss. I watched him lay over to make sure he was down and glassed back over to the doe. She just froze in panic I'm guessing. I almost pulled a two-fer that morning but I'm glad I didn't. I've done it once before. As I sat there about to squeeze off, I remembered that doe season was over Sunday, 4 days prior to this moment. SOAB! I let her run off like I was supposed to.




 Entry hole

Exit hole

 

 See this guy? He's the old Buck of the group.
 
The buck I killed is apparently one sired by this old guy. The markings on my buck are very similar around the nose and eyes for him to not to be his son. I range his age to be about 5.5 - 6 years.  He's one of those nocturnal assholes. I never once got glass on him during daylight hours, only the game cam got to witness his bad-assery. I'm pretty sure he knows how to navigate safely being as big and old as he is. This year, it's on old man.

I've never had one get away. If I let it fly, you can bet it's on the money. His ass is going down this fall.

1 comment:

Critter said...

i've hunted in Lower Alabama for several years over a dirt road where the deer liked to cross. tough to do. one gets a very short window to see, sex and decide to shoot/don't shoot. however, i had gotten some pretty good young bucks over the years and a couple of nice does but never anything with real antlers. i knew there was a big fella that bedded on the south side of the road but he would never show himself during daylight. he would start grunting like a fog horn every morning about eight and would go for fifteen to fourty-five minutes. he never responded to calls and never came around the scent sticks i put out on the road until after dark (no corn allowed in AL).

so, here i was, on the last morning of the last day of the season freezing my arse off at nine in the morning. i've been out since daylight and have seen nothing except squirrels and little birds and figure it's time to call it a year and was just lifting the above-mentioned arse off of the tree stand seat when...an antler stuck out of the brush on the left side of the road about eighty yards away. it was pale and slightly malformed (most of the deer hereabouts have lopsided antlers) and it hesitated for a second before being joined by the other one. this antler was huge, four points and knobbed at the base like a mace. these were followed by a huge, scarred roman nose and thick bull neck. the buck then took a step out of the scrub and took a moment to sniff the doe-in-estrus scent i had hung up by the road. just for a moment. it was enough.

i got in the scope and sent a 150 grain Hornady sst right behind the left shoulder. fully expecting him to run i jacked another round into the chamber, but he just sighed and rolled over right where he stood. he weighed one ninety, seven points and the old heads at the camp looked at his teeth and pronounced him seven years old. the antlers are about two inches wide at the bases and the left side is a little wonky, but he was a magnificent beast and i mounted those antlers myself and they reside above my man-chair in the family room, testament to a worthy adversary.