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Old December 9, 2005, 07:25 PM   #2
the possum
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 6, 2004
Location: Southern Illinois
Posts: 555
(had to break this up into two posts since it was so long)

Second season was this past weekend, and I had to work the first day. (Thursday) Friday morning I sat for a couple hours without seeing a thing except squirrels, and I was back that evening with about the same results. I did have a possum that decided to come too close just as I was climbing down though. He didn’t make it, I’m afraid. He succumbed to an acute and particularly virulent case of bowie-knife-through-the-skull-syndrome.

I don’t even remember what happened Saturday morning. I guess nothing eventful. Did a bit of walking mid day, and my uncle slipped on a mud embankment, and slid about 20 feet, head first, on his back. He sowed up the truck seat with mud… I sat in the same stand that evening though, and a small buck came out behind me, at maybe 25 or 30 yards. Actually, he had a decent sized body even though he only had a basket 6 point rack. I figured I may as well cull him, but he was moving around too much for me to really settle in with a pistol shot, so I just used the shotgun instead. The slug went right where I put the crosshairs, and the buck took off through the brush at the shot. I caught a flash of brown through the two power scope, but never had a second chance. I waited a while and got down to start tracking him, and followed the blood trail as the light faded. After the first hundred yards, I was beginning to get concerned. Had I pulled the shot somehow? After another 30 yards of tracking, I wondered if a twig had sent the slug off course. But then I found him, laying about 150 yards from the spot where he was hit. I didn’t hit the heart as I’d prefer; misjudged the angle a bit, but still took out the lungs and arteries above the heart.

The next day, since no one had been seeing much, several of us got together to walk through some woods to see if anything came out. Since I already had my meat, (actually, I still have a muzzle loader tag) my dad, uncle, and cousin all waited near the old pasture, while I walked through “The Thicket”. (a well deserved name.) I was going slow and fairly quiet to give me a chance at a shot; there’s certainly no guarantee any deer would run towards the other guys. A couple does came out right away, but nobody fired. Next we went down into some of our bottoms along the river, where a major tributary joins it. This branch of the creek forms a great big loop on our property before meeting the river, so dad & my cousin waited on the west end of the loop, while my uncle and I walked in from the east. The creek is big enough that the deer would really rather not cross it, but of course they still have 40 acres of deep timber between they could escape through. We flushed up a doe or two early in the walk, and as we were in the home stretch there was a shot ahead of us. I wondered whether it was my dad or cousin. Dad had let umpteen deer walk right under his stand, waiting for a nice buck. But my cousin planned to shoot whatever presented itself. A moment later there was a second shot. That worried me a bit. We saw some more does head west around the bend, and then saw blaze orange ahead. My dad motioned that a buck had run near my position somewhere, and when I looked in the direction he was pointing, I saw a brown lump. I looked at it through the scope to see if it needed another round, but it was not moving. I thought he said it was a buck…. All I see is a bunch of tree limbs…. He head must be hidden behind that big tree…. Turns out those tree limbs were horns! I was a nice 9 point; not a huge spread, but lots of mass, and good sized body. One shot went straight through both shoulders, taking out the lungs and grazing the heart, while the other was a bit low in the sternum. The deer had run within about 70 yards of dad, when it stopped for just a second in a clearing, and he shot. He shot again as it ran, and he said it dropped over just after the second shot. This lead him to believe it was the second shot that went through the shoulders, but I figure he was more likely to make the better shot while it was standing still, and just took a bit to succumb.

After all the congratulations and excited talking, came the question. “Well, how we gonna get him outta here?” We had trudged over a half mile through muddy fields and timber just to get down there. There were some field roads and trails that got closer on the neighbor’s property though. Dad and my cousin went up to ask the neighbor to borrow his 4-wheeler, while I set about gutting it in case we had to drag it that far. Turns out the neighbor was duck hunting just a short distance away, and he came down with his pickup & took us all back up to the old farm place. It was a frightening ride though- three of us rode on the back with the deer, and I was completely airborne more than once, and narrowly ducked a few hanging limbs too. That guy is a real character.

I was really happy to see my dad get a deer. He has gone 3 years without, since he’s content to let the does & little bucks walk by. Just seeing that spark of excitement in his eyes… man. Hope it’s this good when I take my kids hunting some day.
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