Last minute ,no, last second , buck

[Jimm]

It truly was the last itty bit of time . I had been watching a mountainside that offered shots to 700 or so for nigh on to two weeks with nothing but some slickheads showing themselves during the daylight hours .

Great scenery , but nothing moving /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif as in nothing moving day after day after day , etc . I mean , I am married to this blind and want some payola !

Last day comes , so , I go to my Sunday morning meeting then when home , dress up to play and head for the hills .At this point in time I have decided to take whatever comes along as I have both buck and doe tags left over.( I know , Bill Bailey, but hey , we have a lot of deer tags here /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif )

Asc I approach the " shooting shack " I see that my good friend Bryce White ( of the bar P bar massacre infamy ) is parked at the place to walk to the " shooting shack " . Great ! I thought , company !. , well as I walked to the shack I encountered Bryce coming to see who had driven up.

His face was not what I normally see , he was frowning and very unhappy looking. Bryce , whats wrong ?

Jim, "it's your fault" he said , "you got me started on this long range shooting " . Puzzled , I asked , what do you mean?, it's my fault ?

Well, he said , that coon shouldn't come out to eat your corn while I was watching cause I have been her er for hours and haven't seen doodly to shoot . So , I am sorry for messing up your spot with a lot of blood .

Bryce made a great shot at 335 on a coon and he was apologizing to me ! I am sorry , I didn't get the pix of his coon hosted before I made this post . But remember this ! Savage 7mm a little trigger work ( as much as allowed ) Nosler bt , 5 moa , dead coon .

I,m sorry Jim , he said , I've probably ruined your chances for a long range shot because of all that blood from that coon .

Bryce , forget about it , I encourage him ,if it's mine I will get it !

Fast forward to dark 30, Bryce , what is that , I don't know he says , turn down the mag , I am practically hollering .

A deer is approaching the feed area and all I can see is the thin white area that lines the legs and belly .

I can't see to make my elev . adjustment, I know what the distance is so , ..................1234, 1234 ,1234, 1234, 4 minutes of angle is what is needed for the distance . So, thats what I do, count the clicks , and dang ! those leupold clicks are positive /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Next day ( too tough to go in the dark , sides , I didn't have to )

 

[zingdingo]

Thats a long ways and a nice buck Jim, congradulations!

Just what was your equipment setup?

Good day,
Carl

 

[Buffalobob]

About 400yds?

When you came home with that haircut I bet your wife didn't recognize you and sicced the dogs on you thinking you were some kind of traveling salesman.

Didn't realize you were in hill country. That first picture looks like the same scenary that I spent a lot of time watching. Looks like snow on the ground. Very peaceful style of hunting.

It is strange, but to me it is easier to get in the woods and kill a deer up close than to actually get one into shooting position at long range.

Congratulations

 

[Jimm]

Thanks for the kind words Carl,

I must admit to being thrilled when I went the next morning to look for what I thought was a doe only to find a nice " management buck " . I call it that because we like to remove bucks that have reached the 2.5 or older range and still are just 6 pointers .

The rifle is a LSR 300 Winnie ( Long shot rifles - Chris Matthews) 28" broughton bbl in 11 twist HV 7 contour, A5 stock Leupold mk4 8.5x25 with the TMR reticle. The load I used on this deer is 190 smks over 73.2 grs of RE 22 , fedgm215 m primers and Lapua brass. This load chronos around 3050.It shoots good( ragged one hole at 100 and .750 at 300 ) but I'm going to move away from it ( the RE22 that is ) for a couple of good reasons. One is that I want to use a more temp stable powder ( like H1000 for example )and two is that I am in line with Hogdons mission statement ( check it out at their website ). Also I used a Swarovski laser range finder to get distance readings and the Exbal program to dial my comeups . That program is amazing , if I do my part and feed it accurate intel I am on! first shot , no kidding /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
Jim Brown

 

[Jimm]

Bob,

You are so right and in more ways than one /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif My wife looked at me and said she wasn't letting no stranger in her bed ,so grow it back if I know what is good for me /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif What can I, say she is a redhead /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
And yes the distance was 337 yds.Not as long a shot as I was looking for but , hey ! it was the last day ( of the first season /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif) and I reckon it will be good for me to work my way up to the longer shots on game.

I couldn't agree with you more about the difficulty in getting that longrange shot . When I hunt out west it is no problem to glass and find game at great distance . Thing is that I have only just begun the LRH thing and i haven't been west since that beginning , so , no chance yet to utilize my newly acquired skills out there yet.
The animal itself is another very important factor in this equation. Whitetails in my state do not like to expose themselves more than necessary. They are not like muleys that will bed on a barren hillside in plain view to all that have the proper optics to find them, antelope ,etc .

What I have done is to create feeding sites in order to draw the game to certain spots that they feel comfortable exposing themselves in the daylight yet I can get a bullet to them ( that steep drop at long range poses its own set of problems as regards limbs and such) This has been somewhat successful as you saw in this thread.

However , moon , weather conspire against you . What I mean is that I spent a great deal of time in this particulr blind, many times all day( over a 2 week period ) only to see 3 does .Yet when I developed the film from the trail camera there were 5 bucks in the pix at different times ( all at night ) and the buck I shot wasn't even one of them ! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif I have a pet theory on this , that is that we continue to shhot the animals that are genetically prone to moving more in the daylight and what does that leave to breed ? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

One more thing is that a slowly moving whitetail , such as one feeding along is hard to spot at distance if trees are abundant as they are here.

Doesn't matter, that is part and parcel of " hunting " /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Better get off now as muzzle loader season opens this weekend and I am plotting on a 300 yd or so shot /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Jim Brown