My first Deer...

[kc]

My dad was'nt with me much as a kid, the time we spent together was never forgoten. When I was 10 My Brother's fatherinlaw was my hunting buddy, he was over 75 years old and he had some great friends one of the guys gave me that old Springfield I have, old Ray he trained the solders in the first ww and in Korea, He was a awsome shot he(we) would set up V8 cans with water and he would kill them all at 100 *yards, I was in the blind with him, I was 10 and a big doe came in and he handed me his rifle and said doit! One shot from the old Springfield with LYMAN48c peep sights and the doe jumped up like it was gona run and dropped, I had the pleasure of gutting and cutting up the Deer.Now mind you, I was 10 years old, and harvested my first Deer..I know I was to young and it was not legal but Ray put his tag on her. We were eating like kings that two weeks. One evening Sophy Franks wife called me and asked if I could come over. sure something was goin on" I drove over with the BSA 441 come in Keith, Franks in the front room..He was crying, Ray died. The family picked him up and he was back to Virginia that evening, we never had the chance to say by. I still miss him. but Frank had the Springfield across the arm rests of his lazy-boy Ray wonted you to have this, He told me that he is slipping, and cant control his body, he went out for a walk a 3.00AM and a neighbor saw him lost in there back yard. all confused
Altsimers hit him fast, he went into a nursing home because he would walk out of the house all hour of the night. Every time I went hunting I would think of my first Deer and the honor of gutting it, the trophy? I got the heart at dinner that night with fried potatoes, I do remember that night. I still had to wipe all the rifles down..that was MY job. I love Deer hunting but I have been busted up pritty bad over the years 53. is this what hitting 50 is like,in the last 30 years I have been operated on at least 30 times from broken bones colapsed lung, and so much time in the Hospital I have lost Deer season for the last 12 years. but the farmers around me have been real good to me, they fill there permits and give me the Deer and I take care of there Woodchucks..One farmer had a lazy-boy put up stairs in his barn for me. But I will never forget as long as I live..... My first Deer.

 

[RT2506]

My father had started me out small game hunting by the time I could walk. When I was 8 years old he gave me his double barrel Crescent Firearms 20 gage shotgun and went and bought himself a new Fox double 20 gage. By the time I was 10 years old I got a single shot Sears model one 22 rifle for Christmas. At age 10 I was allowed to hunt across the road from my house on my Grand Fathers land by my self. At 13 years old I got the bug to go deer hunting. At that time Deer were very hard to come by in East TN. My father had never deer hunted and still has not at age 84. My neighbor that was also my Sunday School teacher told me that he would take me deer hunting if I would get me a deer rifle. The next summer I started mowing every yard I could get someone to pay me to mow. I averaged around $1.50 a yard and most of them would take me all day to mow with a push mower because they were not only big yards but in East TN the land runs in only two directions, straight up or straight down. That summer I saved $45.00 and found some rifles at a local store like a K-mart. All I knew at the time was they were army rifles and they were bolt action and came in 30-06. They should get the deer killing done. It was a 1903A3 Springfield made my Remington and it was a new rifle. It cost $40.00 and I got two boxes of soft point ammo for the other $5.00 I had. I figured out how to bore sight the rifle by laying it on a foot stool at one end of the hall way in the house and after removing the bolt looking down the bore and lining up the bore on the key hole in the front door of the house and then aligning the sights to that spot. Not too bad for a 13 year old kid. The first time I shot that rifle it was at a target at 75 yards from the prone with a sling like my dad taught me the way they taught him in the army and I cut the center out of the bull. Man did that rifle kick like a mule. I had a cousin that was in the National Guard and he would bring me a 250 round box of ammo every month when he went to guard drill. I learned how to really shoot that old rifle. My neighbor started taking me deer hunting with him. I hunted with him through out high school and we never saw a deer. The first year I was in collage in WV I traded off the Springfield for a Marlin 30-30 ( dumb move). I knew deer season was coming in at home in TN and I took off for home on Sunday morning and got home that evening. I went over to my neighbors house and asked if he was going hunting the next day. He said that the season had been in for a week and he had hunted all week and did not think he would go Monday because it was going to be real cold. I told him I only had one day to hunt and I wanted him to go. So he agreed to take me. I needed his jeep to get to where we were to hunt. We went that morning and I sat out on a ridge all morning and saw not even any sign of where a deer had been. I decided to go to the top of the mountain at noon. I had the jeep because I dropped off my neighbor on the way to where I was going that morning. I went to the top of the mountain and went out on a saddle and sat on a big bolder overlooking a hollow. I had not been there 10 minutes when to my right I saw a deer coming around the side of the hill. I watched it through the trees and could not see any antlers. I thought it was a doe, but I was thrilled because it was the first deer I had ever seen while hunting. The deer moved till it was about 50 yards below me and stopped. It turned it's head and all of a sudden I saw the sun flash off of something. It was antlers. I eased the rifle up to my shoulder and when I cocked the hammer the deer heard it but it must of thought the sound came from the other direction because it snapped it's head away from me. I lined up the open sights on the deer right behind it's front shoulder and started the squeeze on the trigger. At almost the moment I could feel the hammer drop the deer took a step and the gun when boom. The deer turned a barrel role flip and landed back on it's feet and stood up on it's hind legs and jumped down the hill side and was out of sight in a flash. The first thought that came to my mind was, "You could not have missed that deer". I climbed off the rock and walked to where the deer had been standing. I found some hair but no blood. I could see where the deer had jumped in the leaves so I started tracking it. I walked all the way to the bottom of the hollow about 150 yards straight down. All of a sudden I saw the deer laying on the ground below me and my legs started to get week and it felt like my knees were passing each other side to side. I just sat down and looked at that deer until I got myself together. I walked on down to it and counted the antlers. It had 5 points. I looked back and on both sides of that deer for about 10 yards the ground was almost solid red with blood. When the deer took that step just as the rifle was going off it made the 170 gr. Remington HP bullet hit the deer in the back of the lungs and took out it's liver. I field dressed the deer as best as I could with a knife that my dad had made me from an old file with stacked leather grip. I started to look for my drag rope and could not find it. Later I found it on my bed at home where it fell out of my hunting coat. I grabbed the deer by the antlers and started to drag it up the hill. I would pull it 2 feet and it would slide back one. This was not working. I covered it up with leaves and walked up the mountain got in the jeep went down the other side of the mountain and got my neighbor and it took us both an hour to drag that deer back up that hill. I never will forget that it weighed 164 pounds field dressed. It was the third largest deer killed in our area that year. We took that deer to a store close to my house that had a big walk-in cooler and hung it up. I went to the house took a shower and drove 4 1/2 hours back to school that night. I started deer hunting when I was 13 years old and I was now 18 years old before I saw my first deer in the woods and it was a buck and I killed it. I have killed over 200 more deer to date but that one will be the most special.

 

[Pa Grizz]

My mom took me the first time .As soon as It got light I saw a deer in the field next to us .I was not aloud to hunt that field I waited what seemed like an hour until it came over to us.It looked wide about 60 to 70 yards away When the gun went off I thought the deer would fall.It did not.It start running right at us.Neither one of us ever thought this would happen.We did not know to run or what .The buck dropped about 15 yards in front of us.It was a 18 inch four point that dressed 165 I had gutted a lot of squirrels so I thought a deer would be easy.It would have been if I had thought to sharpen my knife.It takes about two hours to do a deer with a knife that would not cut paper.Mom said lets go home and do the knife but I was so afraid to leave my first deer I just keep hacking with it