The Hunt -- Day 4 (cont'd): Tango Down!

As soon as I found the deer in the field glasses, it was obvious even from that distance he was a legal buck. I could see his rack jutting up about a foot or so above his head, and could see he was almost certainly 3 points on one side, as the very least. Still, something didn't look right, but I couldn't quite figure it out. That was until he took a step up the lane and looked directly at me with his head raised. Even though his rack was plenty tall and had at least the legal number of points, it was completely inside of his ears!

Unlike the previous two shootable bucks I had seen, this guy appeared to be in no hurry. I took a few minutes to text my B-I-L and let him know that I was watching a legal buck, size yet TBD. As this guy inched closer, I noticed that something else didn't seem quite right. As I studied in him the glasses, it looked like he was standing on one front leg. Eventually, he took a step forward, then showed me his right side. At that angle, I could clearly tell he was holding his right leg against his side, up in the air. Then I noticed him literally hop twice, literally walking on three legs. I texted my B-I-L and told him I had a smaller buck with a bad leg that he wasn't putting any weight on, and asked whether I should take him. My B-I-L responded, "yes, if he's legal."

By the time I got the text, the deer was threatening to head down the same path and into the woods that the earlier does and first buck had. Within 5 seconds, I acquired him in the scope and with just his shoulder to his rump showing (head and neck were already off the trail), squeezed the trigger.

The funny thing is, I don't even remember the sound of the gun shot or the recoil. My ultralight .270 WSM is known for it's ferocious report and bruising recoil, yet I don't remember either. Strange. I looked down the lane with my field glasses and I didn't see anything. I immediately began to doubt my shot. I had been pretty shaky that morning, and it was a formidible distance. I didn't feel that perfect feeling every shooter gets on a great shot, where the trigger feels so good when the sear releases that you know before looking through the spotting scope that you were dead on. Nope, I remember the trigger feeling sort of mushy against my finger when the sear released.

My B-I-L obviously heard the shot and texted "well?" "Not sure," I responded, "didn't feel all that good, he was walking off the path, and it was a ways down the lane." "Heading there now," he said. I waited for about 10 minutes then decided to go have a look. I walked out to the spot where I though he was standing and saw nothing. No deer, no blood, nothing. I texted my B-I-L that I thought I missed and I was going back into the stand and hope other deer show up. He called me and asked me why I thought I missed. I told him about all of the reasons that had me wondering. He told me to just sit tight, he'd be there in 2 minutes.

When he arrived he asked me where I thought he was standing when I shot. I stood on the spot and told him it could be up to 50 yards in either direction. My B-I-L told me that it's usually further than you think, so he was going to go into the woods on the spot and work an arc going further away. He told me to go to the end of the lane, and work an arc back toward him. Before I even reached the end of the road, I heard my B-I-L proclaim, "you know, you should never doubt your own shooting ability." It took about 2 seconds, but then it registered -- he had found my deer!

I walked into woods where he lay and we examined the fellow. He did not drop a spot of blood. We checked my shot location -- dead center left shoulder entry, precisely where I aimed. The exit was just behind the right shoulder, but for some reason, he just didn't bleed much. In any event, we looked at his right leg. It wasn't obvious how he'd been injured, but it was clear he hadn't used that leg in quite some time. It was so atrophied in the folded against-his-body position, that you couldn't even straighten it out. Up close, it was apparent the deer was older than I had originally thought. He was 9 points total (with one tiny fork that just barely counted as 9), and had fresh bark on the base of his antlers where he'd been rubbing a tree of some sort.

When we walked out of the woods, I realized that he was just about 210 yards away when I shot him. I had figured about 170 when I went down to look.

Here's the pics I took right in the lane:

When we got him back to camp, he weighed in at 132 pounds. He was quite the attraction with the rest of the members, with his atypical antlers and being essentially 3 legged. Everyone congratulated me, which is normal when you take a buck. What sort of surprised me, however, was how many of them thanked me for shooting him. Apparently, antlers like that are bad for the gene pool, so they called him a "cull" deer. Indeed, one member, shook my hand and told me "thanks, not many people would use a buck tag to take a deer like that which needed to be taken." I was certainly glad to do it.

In all, I was pretty proud. I had taken a wounded deer that was subject to being taken by predators, with atypical antlers that the other members wanted to cull. But most importantly, I had made a fantastic shot from a relatively long distance. I would spend the last 1.5 days hunting without any pressure.