I shot my first deer last year, at the age of 44.
The story is fresh in my mind, and it's a little long.
As a kid I was too invovled in sports for deer hunting, but did hunt birds.
In my late teens I gave up hunting, for other hobbies, and returned to it a half dozen years ago or so. Mainly predator calling, and bird hunting. And last year I got my trapping license.
Even as a kid I would go to deer and elk camp, to help out, and go on deer drives/hunts (to hunt for campmeat mostly).
The last few years I'd done the "camp cook" thing.
Last spring I decided to put in for a doe tag, mostly to build up some points, for our group application.
I didn't get drawn, so I hunted through the early season halfheartedly, mostly "guiding" my ol man (who is a senior now, and gets "any deer" is the area we hunt) until he got his doe.
Neither myself or my brother got a buck in the early season, so we went back for late buck and to set some cat traps.
I had gone a day earlier than my brother and my Dad, to scout some new areas.
I was mostly driving around that day, looking for places to call and/or set traps.
I got one of those "hey pull over" feelings, and hit the next pullout. I'd reached a flat on the top of long ridge, it looked like a good place to do some calling.
The area is logged by skidders. A bulldozer makes main roads every so often, all running parallel, then a skidder makes runs across from road to road and in between.
The whole place turns into a "basket weave" of roads and tracks.
I grabbed my rifle, a heavily customized Russian Mosin-Nagant mil-surp, in 7.62 x 54R (yeah one of those Big 5 rifles)... but that's a whole story in itself.
I had wandered a mile or so from the truck, and found myself in a thinned area of forest, overlooking a long shallow bowl almost devoid of underbrush. On the far side of the thinned trees was a fresh cut.
It was the perfect area for bobcats, where three ages of cut forest meet... one old (30+ years) and free of undergrowth, one newer (10-15 years) thick and brushy, and a third fresh cutover in the last few years and bright and sunny.
I was standing on a push-up of dirt left by the skidder or dozer, stamping out a seat in the dry grass so I could sit down and call, when I heard the footfall of hooves behind me, accompanied with a snort-wheeze.
Suprised, I whirled around to see what I thought was a "nice doe!" hopping off down the left edge of the dozer track. I was mezmerized by it's white tail flagging, just like I'm supposed to be.
It turned 90° to the right, hopped across the track and into the brushy side, and danged if it didn't have antlers... LOTS of 'em!
A startled deer never hurts a calling stand, so I sat down and went back to what I was doing.
I called for about 35 mins, waited quietly 15 more, and decided I better get back to the Ranch to meet up with my dad and brother, and some GRUB.
I had hunted into the wind the whole way in, figuring to do a one man wind drive, in a big loop back out to the truck.
I pulled my varmint rounds out, and replaced them with four 180gr roundnosed cartridges.
Leaving the spot I took a path to my right, paralleling the brushy edge where the buck had disappeared, and following and older skidder track.
I hadn't gone 20 yards, when I see the buck coming back my way 175 yards ahead on the next skidder track (over to my left 50 yards or so).
I can just see his head, over a stump in the center of the track, so I dropped to the ground.
When he passed behind a few small pine trees I moved out of the deep track and up next to a tree (for a rifle rest), and to hide behind.
I never had it happen before, but when I mounted up there was an earthquake in my rifle.
And it didn't even have a scope on it.
I calmed myself down and waited for him to present a shot, when he did I let 'er rip.
The front leg on the far side folded, just above the elbow, and for a second he looked right at it.
I had forgotten to adjust the ramped battle sights, when switching to the heavier bullets (which didn't group well anyways).
I quickly cycled another round (somehow actually being careful not to lose the empty round), held a little higher, and just as he hopped forward fired a second round. This one hit him right where his neck meets his chest, just peircing through.
(*There will forever be debate in camp, as to whether or not this shot killed him).
I figured I was doomed, and I also figured I was going to do everything I could not to let him run off with them horns.
Again cycling the empty onto the only clean spot on the forest floor, I ready for another shot.
He coughs, and bolts forward! With a slightly higher hold yet, I fire again... he buckles upwards and kicks, and a tuft of hair floats on the breeze.
He finally realizes where the shooting is coming from, and somehow takes off running back to my right, quartering across my skidder track.
Instinctively I chamber my last round, placing the third empty neatly on the growing pile, I shoulder it, track and fire.
Directly between myself and the deer the bark explodes from a tree.
He goes another 20 yards and piles up, just out of view in the next deep skidder track to my right.
I cleared the chamber, put a varmint round in it, and safety my rifle.
Then I gathered my empties, and myself, and went to get my deer.
I found him parked upside-down, like you park a bicycle when you work on it, so I still didn't get a good look at his rack until I flipped him over.
That's when I realized two things... one I just shot a really big buck, and two I am a long way from the truck and all by myself.
My truck is a Suzuki Samurai, and was fairly full of gear.
I had left the truck with calls and a rifle, no knife, no drag rope, nothin'.
The only thing I had going for me was my GPS.
I waypointed my deer, after tagging it and covering it with a little snow and some branches, and went down the skidder track it had landed in, in the direction it was going, towards the newer cut.
I knew they had to have driven in and out of that cut on another dozer road, because the one I had parked on was blocked.
I soon found that road, and headed back out on the three mile walk to my truck.
I could barely move my buck, I had no way to butcher it, and dangit I just remembered I was hungry.
The weather was cool, and other than coyotes, I knew my deer would be okay.
When I got to my truck there was a fresh coyote turd right behind it. I didn't like that, as a sign.
As I was pulling out, I ran into a guy who let me use his cell phone, I called my brother and left a message that I got a buck too big to move.
He thought I was pullin his leg, since I had joked the day before I'd get er done before he even got there.
I ran back to the Ranch and got Jim, he runs the Ranch and does a lot of loggin', we took his truck (a flatbed Toyota with a boom winch).
We were able to 4-by our way in to about 50 yards from my buck, and used the hoist to lift him up onto the bed.
My brother and my Dad were just getting there when I pulled in with this;
The bucks from this area tend to have basket racks, but big bodies.
He was about 225 on the hoof, and scored 112 1/2.
The neck roast was huge, the backstraps alone weighed 22 pounds, and we forgot the cooler with all the hamburger meat in it... so I ended up with a couple dozen jars of canned meat instead.
Ohhhhhh it's so much better than meatloaf!
I keep joking that I'll have to bring the skull to camp this year, and like on the NASCAR commercial, just hold it up whenever somebody starts telling me how to hunt...
No really, I got lucky.
It was the rut, and he had other things on his mind, otherwise I wouldn't have seen him the first time, let alone twice.
I've had lots of family and friends help me learn to be a good hunter... but like the saying goes, "I'd rather be lucky than good".
Krusty
