I was skunked the last two times I went hunting, and I wanted to try one more time before the season ended.
I was invited to hunt in a new area on a friend’s property. His house is located on about 5 acres in the country. I got to his house well before sunrise, and I had some hot coffee while visiting with my friend and his wife.
A long ditch runs along the side of my friend’s property. The ditch has trees and thick brush along each side. The ditch is about 6 feet deep with a small creek running down the middle of the bottom. My friend has a small square hay barn about 40 yards from the ditch. It has open doorways on two sides. The deer have been moving through that ditch, and hanging out in an area near the hay barn.
After 3 cups of coffee, I loaded my rifle and I left the house when the sun started to rise. I walked very quietly to the hay barn, which was only about 30 yards away from the house. I climbed up into the hay barn. There was a doorway overlooking an area with some thick brush to my right, and another doorway across the barn that overlooked the ditch. I quickly looked out of the doorway to my right first, and I didn't see any deer. Then I started walking across the barn toward the doorway overlooking the ditch. As I approached the doorway, I paused and took a quick look along the edge of the ditch. As I scanned the trees and brush along the edge of the ditch, I noticed a peculiar white spot among the other green and brown colors. I suddenly realized that the white spot was the muzzle and neck of a nice fat doe that was standing along the edge of the ditch staring directly at me!
It was totally unexpected. I’d been in the hay barn a total of about 45 seconds, and I was still about four feet away from a chair that was right next to the doorway.
I couldn’t move; all I could do was stand there motionless. That doe had me busted cold. So I stood there like a statue and stared right back at the doe. I certainly couldn’t raise my rifle. The doe was only 40 yards away, and I knew by the way the doe was staring at me that she would bolt from even the slightest movement. I could see the steam rising from my breath in the cold air as I exhaled and tried to control my breathing. The doe and I were locked in a mutual stare-down.
We played the staring game for what seemed like forever. Finally, the doe looked down at the ground and walked a couple of steps in front of a tree. The moment the doe’s head was obscured by the tree, I raised my rifle, found the tree through the scope, and flicked off the safety. The deer stood behind the tree for a moment, and then walked a couple of steps beyond the tree, standing broadside to my position. I could just see her head and front half of her body; the rest of her was behind the tree. Just as I put the scope reticle right onto the center of the doe’s shoulder, she looked up again in my direction, and another smaller doe walked up behind her from the ditch, and the smaller doe also stopped and looked in my direction. I knew that if I waited much longer, both deer would get nervous enough to run away, so I held half a breath and slowly squeezed the trigger.
The instant the rifle fired, the smaller deer turned and ran like heck. The larger doe that I was aiming at seem to stand there for a half-second, and then she disappeared from my view, and I heard the sound of something crashing in the leaves in the ditch. About ten seconds later, two other deer that were also in the ditch nearby bolted away.
A couple of minutes later, my friend came out to the hay shed. He asked me what had happened, and I told him that I’d taken a shot at a doe, and that the doe had disappeared into thin air the second after the shot. He told me that he and his wife were worried when they heard the shot, because I’d just left the house, and they wanted to make sure that I hadn’t fallen or had some other accident.
We waited in the barn for a little while, and then climbed down from the barn and walked over to the spot where the deer had been standing when I took the shot. I looked over the edge of the ditch, and the doe was laying motionless on the leaves at the bottom of the ditch a couple of feet away from the creek.
She was a good-sized doe. The round went exactly where I’d aimed. The .308 tore through and broke the on-side shoulder, punched through two ribs on the on-side, ripped through both lungs, and exited between two ribs out the doe's other side. The on-side shoulder joint was completely destroyed; that leg would freely move any direction. Here's something I've never seen before: the entrance wound through the ribs on the on-side was the size of a silver dollar, and the exit wound between the two ribs on the off-side was significantly smaller. It looked like the deer fell down in the ditch when it was hit and died on the spot. The Field-dressed weight was about 100 pounds, but it sure felt heavier than that while I was dragging the doe back up the side of the ditch.
The warden was surprised when he examined the doe's jaw. The doe was pretty large, but the jaw and teeth indicated that the the doe was only about 1.5 years old.
You never know when you'll see a deer. I have to admit that this doe completely surprised me. Thank goodness I took that quick look before walking any closer to the doorway. This time, I didn't even have a chance to sit down before I had to take the shot!