Calvin45
Well-Known Member
Hey all, just figured I'd share my results with you good people. I had my usual whitetail tag, and was drawn for antlerless mule deer as well here. I had a small window of time to hunt in, and filled both tags in the same day, November 23. While a one day hunting season is kind of lame in some regards, I'm so happy to not come away empty handed! Got the job done!
The doe was not too exciting a story. About 200 yards, just staring at me. I shot from freehand…BOOM…struck by lighting, DRT. I had to adjust my rifle's zero at my dads farm once I got this deer hanging at my uncles garage, as it was hitting stupid high…I'm not sure what happened, think the scope got bumped or something. No worries, one tag filled and it's still morning.
Well after lunch I head out again, and decide to go sit in a field I'm all clear to be in. Rather than attempt stealth, I take the high ground and just sit up on a hill with my bipod set up, plainly visible but far enough away that nothing really cares that I'm there. I watch a few does for awhile, just chilling (not actually cold though i am laying belly down on a crusted over foot of snow). Suddenly they get tense! And I haven't done anything but they start to nervously trot away…because a buck is coming towards them, and apparently they're not in the mood
. I can't tell exactly how big he is but don't really care that much, meat in the freezer, certainly bigger than a doe. I got a clear shot…and make a rookie mistake. I almost didn't want to write it here but I believe in telling the whole story and not just the version you'd like to be true. I forgot to follow through. I totally forgot to follow through! I still feel dumb about that, I've tried to drill that into my head a hundred times but he was sauntering their way with a "hey ladies" kind of strut and I was leading him ever so slightly but as I pulled the trigger I stopped leading. I knew immediately what I had done wrong, and honestly assumed I had sent it into the field a couple feet behind him. But this bullet gets there faster than most. 120 grain Barnes tac tx out of my savage 111 .300 win mag long range hunter, doing 4050 feet per second muzzle velocity! (There's a separate thread i made this summer about this truly exceptional load).
I groaned, as duty demands one ALWAYS go and check for blood even if your sure you missed…and this was around 400 yards away. I'm so glad I did the right thing and went. As a writer in a hunting magazine once wrote, "there was a blood trail Ray Charles could have followed". And a few pieces of bone just laying in the snow. I tracked that blood trail down, and finally found him a quarter mile later, not at all having gone in a straight line. I finished him with a shot in the neck as he started to get up again upon my approach. Upon examination it was immediately obvious what happened. I had shot the animal's back leg off. Literally, it was hanging there by a string it seemed like. Because this dummy didn't follow through when he pulley the trigger! But the important thing is I did go check, I did track him, I did finish the job before much time had passed.
Or so I though. "Finish the job" wasn't accurate…the work had now just begun! The snow was soooo awful this year! Drifted deep in some places, but with that horrible crust that forms so that you break through with every step! Exhausting beyond description, i used to run half marathons and they are ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compared to hauling a dead full grown buck out of a brushy ravine and then over a quarter mile through deep crusted over snow, mostly uphill, by yourself. And I wasn't done yet, but all of a sudden my chest started just hammering in a way I've never experienced, and I could taste blood in my mouth. In retrospect I was severely dehydrated by that point I think. You don't feel thirst the same when it's cold outside and one forgets to drink. I'm pretty dense sometimes as you are no doubt gathering, prone to not knowing when to quit till I've hurt myself, but I knew it was time to swallow my pride and leave it there and go get help getting it the rest of the way. My dad and my brother in law helped me finish the job for real. Very thankful. And humbled in all this ordeal.
I'll attach a picture of the buck and of the exit wound on the doe's rib cage skinned out. But first, a final note of humour. It was November 23 that this happened. My 30th birthday was November 24. All told a pretty memorable and bountiful way to close out being in my twenties. But my cheeky brother in law said, once we had finished everything,
"Calvin, that was a big day. Can you imagine how sore you'd be if you had waited till you were in your thirties to do all that!?!?"
Feeling great.
The doe was not too exciting a story. About 200 yards, just staring at me. I shot from freehand…BOOM…struck by lighting, DRT. I had to adjust my rifle's zero at my dads farm once I got this deer hanging at my uncles garage, as it was hitting stupid high…I'm not sure what happened, think the scope got bumped or something. No worries, one tag filled and it's still morning.
Well after lunch I head out again, and decide to go sit in a field I'm all clear to be in. Rather than attempt stealth, I take the high ground and just sit up on a hill with my bipod set up, plainly visible but far enough away that nothing really cares that I'm there. I watch a few does for awhile, just chilling (not actually cold though i am laying belly down on a crusted over foot of snow). Suddenly they get tense! And I haven't done anything but they start to nervously trot away…because a buck is coming towards them, and apparently they're not in the mood
. I can't tell exactly how big he is but don't really care that much, meat in the freezer, certainly bigger than a doe. I got a clear shot…and make a rookie mistake. I almost didn't want to write it here but I believe in telling the whole story and not just the version you'd like to be true. I forgot to follow through. I totally forgot to follow through! I still feel dumb about that, I've tried to drill that into my head a hundred times but he was sauntering their way with a "hey ladies" kind of strut and I was leading him ever so slightly but as I pulled the trigger I stopped leading. I knew immediately what I had done wrong, and honestly assumed I had sent it into the field a couple feet behind him. But this bullet gets there faster than most. 120 grain Barnes tac tx out of my savage 111 .300 win mag long range hunter, doing 4050 feet per second muzzle velocity! (There's a separate thread i made this summer about this truly exceptional load). I groaned, as duty demands one ALWAYS go and check for blood even if your sure you missed…and this was around 400 yards away. I'm so glad I did the right thing and went. As a writer in a hunting magazine once wrote, "there was a blood trail Ray Charles could have followed". And a few pieces of bone just laying in the snow. I tracked that blood trail down, and finally found him a quarter mile later, not at all having gone in a straight line. I finished him with a shot in the neck as he started to get up again upon my approach. Upon examination it was immediately obvious what happened. I had shot the animal's back leg off. Literally, it was hanging there by a string it seemed like. Because this dummy didn't follow through when he pulley the trigger! But the important thing is I did go check, I did track him, I did finish the job before much time had passed.
Or so I though. "Finish the job" wasn't accurate…the work had now just begun! The snow was soooo awful this year! Drifted deep in some places, but with that horrible crust that forms so that you break through with every step! Exhausting beyond description, i used to run half marathons and they are ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compared to hauling a dead full grown buck out of a brushy ravine and then over a quarter mile through deep crusted over snow, mostly uphill, by yourself. And I wasn't done yet, but all of a sudden my chest started just hammering in a way I've never experienced, and I could taste blood in my mouth. In retrospect I was severely dehydrated by that point I think. You don't feel thirst the same when it's cold outside and one forgets to drink. I'm pretty dense sometimes as you are no doubt gathering, prone to not knowing when to quit till I've hurt myself, but I knew it was time to swallow my pride and leave it there and go get help getting it the rest of the way. My dad and my brother in law helped me finish the job for real. Very thankful. And humbled in all this ordeal.
I'll attach a picture of the buck and of the exit wound on the doe's rib cage skinned out. But first, a final note of humour. It was November 23 that this happened. My 30th birthday was November 24. All told a pretty memorable and bountiful way to close out being in my twenties. But my cheeky brother in law said, once we had finished everything,
"Calvin, that was a big day. Can you imagine how sore you'd be if you had waited till you were in your thirties to do all that!?!?"
Feeling great.
