Oh, Deer by Chet

Two years ago, I was in a deer stand and had a doe come trotting in with a four pointer following it.  Having not shot a buck yet I thought this was just dandy.  The couple trotted around my stand and I dropped the buck after the first loop.  Within a few minutes I hear more crunching and a nice 6 pointer or so comes in and is apparently trying to find the buck and doe.  Having dropped the forky, I couldn’t take this one.  So I talked to it and explained its luck as I looked through my scope at it.  Now, when I told my brother Cole about this, he asked why I didn’t just shoot it and use his tag? He said as long as it was big enough to justify he would be fine with it.  Hmm, guess we should have communicated that sooner.

Fast forward to this past week.  Me and Dan G. went up to Solona State Forest for three days of deer hunting.  Day one we went scouting and I hiked 6.5 miles and found a few spots that looked promising.  Day two I went and did morning stand in one of those spots but promptly got bored and wandered off scouting again.  I found a neat little island off the beaten path and almost surrounded by swamp and brush.  It had an old dilapidated wooden tree stand that someone had built a thousand years ago and a wide grass trail going past the stand.  I, of course, climbed it and only broke one board on the way up but decided I would come back the next morning with my harness.  I kept scouting and hiking and at one point forgot my pack at one of the places I had stopped to cool down and try calling.  I had to backtrack around a mile and ended up near that rundown stand.  I decided that being that it was almost two thirty I had better just use that stand for evening stand after all, harness or no.  I used some rope and tried to give the stand some extra support and then climbed up. After adding layers for warmth, I ate and settled in.

Twenty minutes later, I hear crunching and a few quiet grunts behind me and I turn slowly.  I line up as the doe comes in about 15 yards out but she doesn’t stop and is starting to angle away.  I can hear another coming in so I decide to let her go and wait for the next one, thinking I should get a safer shot.  De ja vu, it’s a forky and it stops at 15yds broadside.  I’m using my M44 in 7.62x54R and it’s a big round at 209gr.  I hit the forky behind the shoulder through a lung and the top of the heart, it gave me a shoulder quiver and trotted away. I saw the red dot where my round hit but put another round after it for good measure. I missed and it was unnecessary as it made it 15 yards and flipped over as it jumped a log and didn't twitch. 

A minute later, crunch crunch crunch. It was getting busy around here.  In comes another buck along the same route but a little farther at maybe 25-30yds.  It had its head down and was obviously rutting as it was acting funny and had come in to the roar of the M44, which is obnoxiously loud even for a large gun.  I counted at least four points on one side and decided to take it, recalling Cole’s offer to give me his buck tag. I didn’t look at its head any farther as I was more worried about lining up sights on the vitals.  In similar fashion I fired into the lung and heart and got even less reaction. It looked over at me, quietly snickered and walked away. I was floored and fired two more rounds at it.  Neither of those hit and it was the first one that hit true.  It trotted around the edge of the island and out of sight, but dropped not far off.  I didn’t see it drop and after waiting awhile, I texted Dan a Sit-Rep and called Cole to explain that I had taken his offer and hadn’t made the same mistake twice.  I got down and marked the first blood I found and headed back to the truck.  I waited for Dan and got a fire going. We ate and grabbed the game cart and started the 2 mile hike back.  With Dan trailing and me marking the last found blood we found it shortly.  As the picture shows, what I told Dan was maybe a decent 8 pointer with a fairly mature body was actually a trophy.  As tired as we were and as late as it was getting I still didn’t realize how big it was until I saw the picture Dan took. 

Then it started to sink in.  12 points and two more drop tines that were broken off that would have made it fourteen.  We were worn out when we found it but we did somehow manage to drag it through the brush and swamp to the cart.  I think Dan was at least as excited as I was since he knew how big it was and  I told him he can take half the credit since he was the one that has gotten me more serious about this whole deer hunting thing.  We got them both back to Grangroth’s after a fruitless Saturday hunt and butchered them.  Jim measured it at 145 and I wish I had the money to do the shoulder mount it deserves but that is not going to happen.  We’re going with the European mount so I’ll at least have something.