BighornRam
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2012
- Messages
- 44
Umm, this IS The Long Range Hunting and Shooting Website.Why is it so important that you all have to express the yardage of the kill. You went out
to bag your game. You bagged a beautiful animal to be proud of, why care about yardage
it was taken at. Yardage appears more important than the animal taken. My 2 cents worth.
Nice , the velvet makes them look good !AK Caribou with my son. 40 yds with my bow. His 25 yds with bow. 4 bulls, 5 days. Mine 396 6/8, his 351. Great DYI trip and a long time dream we completed.
Dang, is your rifle barrel still warm!2021 was a good year
yup that sums it up nicelyUmm, this IS The Long Range Hunting and Shooting Website.
It's also nice to give other people the info so they can consider the capabilities of various loads, bullets, rifles, optics etc.
Wow, as it turns out, 77 must not be old at all! Great story and congrats.View attachment 332600
On Thursday, October 28, 2021, I slept in until 6AM. With no hurry I got the IvyX and applied it liberally all over. About 6:40 I was on the freeway headed to my favorite hunting spot. After some casserole breakfast at the Chevron station near my hunting area I arrived at the parking spot by 7:30.
As soon as I was up the steep place leaving the freeway I loaded the Weatherby Mark V Ultralight six lug 8mm Coyle. The barrel is a Pac-Nor 6.5mm 24" bored out. Before I even got to the fence at the bottom of The Main Gorge I saw a deer up to the left. It was less than 100 yards away near the bottom of the draw. I threw up the rifle and could see it was a legal fork buck through the Bushnell Elite 6500 4 ½-30X50 set on 4 1/2X. Alas, there was no shot. Between us, the hunter and the quarry, was a huge poison oak bush. It is at least ten to twelve feet wide and maybe six or seven feet high. Realizing the deer was already looking at me I figured I'd make a move on it despite not working with a doe on an earlier hunt. I moved up to the right to get above the bush. The deer didn't move. I again put the scope on it to see if I could pull off an offhand shot. I excitedly thought, "This is doable! My old man quivers are under control this morning!" As usual the reticle started slightly left of the target. Why? I don't know. As the reticle hit the left shoulder on the quartering to me buck, the rifle seemed to fire of its own volition. In the scope I saw the buck drop and disappear by sliding into the draw. Muzzle brakes are great! The Hammer Hunter 8mm 198 grain bullet starting at 3,054 feet per second from the seven pound rifle did its job. I checked my watch: 7:40AM. I thanked the Lord for the deer and the success. Then I checked the distance to where I thought it was when I fired: seventy-one yards. My hands were really shaking a lot as I put the Sig Kilo 200 rangefinder away! That distance used to be a chip shot. Now that I'm old it is quite an accomplishment. Seventy-seven is old, isn't it?
When I saw the buck up close I was surprised at the odd antlers. I didn't notice that in the scope. I measured the buck back to belly: 14". The butcher told me it was a typical size and very normal blacktail buck: sixty-seven pounds. I couldn't find the entrance wound. During skinning I was pleased to see the entrance was where I aimed. The entrance was low where the front of the left shoulder joins the chest. The exit wound was about the middle of the right shoulder. Forty-five minutes later I was dragging the gutted deer to the pickup. Again I thanked the Lord for the deer and my opportunity to work out at the gym. I was able to easily keep it under control on the steep bank so it did not slide into the drainage ditch coming out of The Main Gorge. Several years ago I installed a small winch in the back of the pickup to drag deer up a plywood sheet I kept for that purpose. Since working out in the gym the plywood and winch are gone. Now I pick them up and put them into it.