On Saturday evening, I get out late in the afternoon after working a full day. I am ready to give up this idea of “holding out for a buck”, as I had all season, and be plenty happy with a nice doe whitetail. I spend an hour crawling a yard a minute across a field to close the gap on some does. I finally give up when the deer move far out of range. I hike down into the pines on the slope below, where I am not satisfied with the potential for a shot as evening comes on. I just am turning back to hike to my vehicle when I see three does cross the landowners’ steep driveway about 200 yards away. The lead deer angles across the slope on a course that will take them just above a patch of hawthorns above me. With a low crouching run, I make the west side of this patch of hawthorn. I drop to my knees and get my muzzleloader to my shoulder. A deer steps out forty yards above me, but it is not a doe. It is a buck, and clearly a legal one. He looks down at me, and I move the rifle to cover his chest. He sees slight movement, and steps down towards me. He is facing me head on, but I feel confident in my shot (about 40 yards). I squeeze the trigger of the Knight Bighorn .50 cal, and he runs haltingly towards a draw filled with pines just 50 yards west. I find lung blood where he stood, and trail him fifty yards to where he had fallen under the pines and hawthorns. The bullet had hit just an inch right of my point of aim, for which I am grateful. I have him field dressed when I hear my hunting buddy calling to find me. We get the 180-pound buck onto a pack-board, which we then wrestle onto my shoulders for the 200 yards to my car. It was a great hunting season- more mornings and evenings afield than I ever have spent (since I was looking for a buck this year), more deer seen, more great experiences with all kinds of wildlife (including three coyotes that ran past me at 10, 5, and 1 yard, respectively!). And now I am grateful for a lot of excellent venison, and an interesting rack of antlers for the memories. He was old, his antlers beginning to regress (a 5x2!), and his teeth worn. He'd had a good life out there...
