Rifle season opened a couple weekends back and a buddy of mine invited me up to his place in the Ozarks. He lives in an old farm house that sits on quite a bit of land and is surrounded by some public land. After hearing him talk about all the deer he's been seeing and the fact that he has an 800 yard field behind the house, I was happy to oblige him. Last Friday I got up and left the house at 2:00am and made the several hour drive. That day we spent a while looking over the place and doing some scouting. I have never seen a place that had that much deer sign; trails, rubs, scrape lines all over. The field was kinda hilly and you couldn't sit on one end and see across the entire thing. I noticed that there was an opening that overlooked the field on a distant hill side across a valley. I grabbed my gear and headed up to check it out (rifle included as it was rifle bear season). We found the spot and started ranging objects with the Swaro and building a range card. It was almost 1,000 yards across the valley to the field and then 1880 to the far corner. I took a dozen or so shots on rocks/debris at various distances to get my drops confirmed. I was having a hard time connecting at over 1600 yards so I establish that as my limit if conditions remained. The weather for the weekend was not what you want for deer hunting…warm, windy, and a full moon to boot. Opening day was pretty uneventful, only seeing a couple coyotes and talking to a couple other hunters on the hillside. They thought I was a little over gunned for hunting in the woods. I didn't bother trying to explain to them I was watching the field in the distance, just told them bears are scary. That afternoon I spent some more time behind the rifle, practicing my wind calls and building my confidence. The next morning was much the same weather wise and I didn't have very high hopes. However, seeing all the deer sign I knew they were there so I left the house two hours before dark to make the hike to my spot. A little while after the sun popped out I spotted movement and seen a buck walking out from the left. Through my 8x Zeiss binos I could see rack, confirmed with the spotter and immediately checked his range. When I got down behind my .338 EDGE I had already turned the FFP 6.5-20 MK4 to full power and seen long tines…he's going down! I dialed in the 12.9 mils I had previously confirmed and started to hesitate. The wind had been really kicking across that valley for the past several days and I started to doubt myself. My longest kill to date on an animal was a 1,006 yard crow. So I picked up my range finder and ranged a rock at the base of a tree that appeared to be less then moa and about 100 yards in front of him. I smacked it dead center. I quickly slapped another round in the chamber and got back on the deer who was standing in the same spot and sent it his way. Due to the flight time I could easily get back on target and spot my hits. The 300gr SMK smacked him about .1mil higher then my POA and he dropped dead in his tracks from the high shoulder hit. I chambered another round and watched him for about 10 minutes to make sure he was down for good. Then I got excited, so excited that I just grabbed my gear (losing some shooting sticks in the process) and ran down the slope and across the valley to get him. Even though he was on private land it is surrounded by public and I've had a big deer stolen before, so that was also running through my mind. When I got to him I thought "WOW, that's a big dude!", until I picked his rack up and seen the left side. He must have had an injury because his left side is crooked and quite a bit smaller. He is a good sized mature buck, so no complaints here. The shot was the trophy this time.
These are the only pics I took. Sorry, no hero or cool guy pics...I'm no hero and I'm certainly not cool.
These are the only pics I took. Sorry, no hero or cool guy pics...I'm no hero and I'm certainly not cool.
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Very well done, interesting deer to boot, hard to beat an experience like that. 
