The story begins for when I first saw this buck. The wife started hunting this year with me and we have been out several times. Couple of weeks ago we went for an evening hunt, saw some does and a spiker, but in the last half hour comes out this big bodied deer about 700 yards away. Through the binos we can see his massive dark brown rack. He’s huge, easily the biggest deer I have ever seen. But, it’s open field so no chance to get closer without spooking him and his does. We just watch and enjoy simply seeing him. These big boys don’t make appearances often so I’m just thankful for even seeing him.
We head out again on Monday (I love Hunting on Thanksgiving, shot my first deer then) and we are seeing does like crazy. We had 9 hanging out in our field comfortably, but no boys in the crowd. So we wait.
Well, as we approach sundown a big buck pops out from the same place we saw the other one. He has 5 does with him. I didn’t think he would move like the other one, but his does start heading our way. He decides to follow. We are watching him come in, my heart is racing and I can’t calm down to save my life. This has never happens to me before hunting. At 350 yards he goes into a dip and we can’t see him. But his does come out about 250 yards from us... rifle ready to go, he shows up. That’s when it hits us, this is THAT big one from the other week. Heart goes nuts again. The does are calm, and so is he. I steady myself with the rifle. I’m getting my heart under control. He looks directly at us. Im ready now and I take the shot.
When the rifle settles down from the recoil he isn’t laying there. Did I miss? I ask the wife did she see me hit him, she isn’t totally sure because the shot made her lose track of him. In the sea of Whitetails waving (15 all running) she saw one moving slower than the others but wasn’t totally sure if it was him or not. She thinks I hit it; but I reply “well if he ran that far, it’s a poor shot and I wounded a deer that we will likely not find” to be honest, there were quite a few f bombs in that sentence. She lost track of that deer when it turned from the others behind a hay bale.
We go investigate the area where I shot him, it’s now getting pretty dark and we can’t see very well at all. I’m fuming. I practice all summer at that distance for this exact reason. This field we are hunting is wide open so it’s a lot of long shots. I’m ****ed.
The landowner uses this field for hay so he is okay with us driving on it, I don’t like driving on land ever but this circumstance requires it so we go get the truck and use the head lights and start to look around where I shot him. I have never had a Deer run more than 30 yards after a fatal shot, and typically I drop them. Wifey says we should go back to where he was standing at the time of the shot and look for blood, there were some patches of snow on the ground so maybe we will find evidence. We search, and I don’t find any blood. But then she calls out “we got blood!” And I run over. On a cookie sized piece of snow there is blood. Note: according to her, my attitude improves significantly at this point.
So now we hop in and drive up to where the deer were running and she lost track of that one. There is a dip in the land here and as we crest the top my lights shine on what appears to be a missed cut of hay... wait, nope, it’s my deer!
What a special hunt. It was even better because after the shot, I lost my composure but she held hers because when she replayed the events back in her head, she knew I hit him good. I couldn’t believe that this bruiser ran for 300 yards with his lungs gone. I didn’t think it was even possible to do. But, on every hunt we learn something and I’m forever grateful that my partner in life and on this hunt kept it together when I didn’t.
I hope you guys enjoyed the story, I’m looking forward to going out next weekend with her to go get her deer.
Note: I know I would have kept looking for this guy; I have spent hours searching for deer when I’m confident the shooter missed. But you never know, and you show respect by doing your due diligence and searching until you are 100% certain of a miss. But I got myself so riled up over not dropping him that I lost my composure and was too busy being a moron to get myself together in a timely fashion. I’d love to tell the story as if I had my S*** together, but I think the real story makes for a better story.
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Successful Whitetail Deer Hunt
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