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« Last post by cordex on December 03, 2023, 09:12:58 PM »
Didn’t see charby’s hunting thread for this year, so I’ll park this here.
Went hunting this morning but didn’t see anything. A friend came over to hunt the afternoon. We kicked up two deer hiking out, but didn’t have a shot. Later I spotted a deer running across a ravine behind a bunch of trees, but again no shot.
I was looking across the ravine a while later when I saw a doe coming straight for me from the other side. She was downwind from me but didn’t act like she had any idea I was there. I figured meat was better than no meat so I started to raise my shotgun for what was rapidly becoming a very easy shot. About that time I saw a second deer following her. Figuring it might be a buck, I held fire and waited. Sure enough, I saw the antlers and shifted target. The doe had made it to the small creek at the bottom of the ravine - only about 15 feet from me - and suddenly she noticed me raising the shotgun. She spooked and the buck stopped with just his head and chest showing around a tree giving me a quartering to shot. I aimed at his chest just forward of his shoulder and fired. He turned, then he and the doe ran up the hill together and out of sight. He didn’t jump or act like I’m used to them reacting when I put a slug into them, but I was pretty sure of my shot.
I waited for my hunting buddy to make his way over from the field he had been sitting on. While I waited I broke a stick and pointed one piece toward where I shot at him and another piece toward a tree at the top of the hill where I lost sight of him. When my friend got there we hiked off to where I shot him but found no blood at all. Another not great sign, but again, it wasn’t that long of a shot and I felt pretty confident about it.
We made our way up toward the top of the hill, but still no blood. I looked around and immediately saw the deer’s body. His feet were pointing away from me and all I saw was the brown back. When I got to him, my friend pointed out another deer skull not 10 feet away from the body. Weird. In total he only ran 40 yards or so, mostly up the hill.
I hit him right where I intended, and the slug went through his shoulder, breaking bone, deviated to the side a bit and jellied a lung instead of the heart, then stopped just after the diaphragm without punching into any guts. We found the slug (with a fragment of bone still stuck in it) when gutting. Usually I get passthroughs because usually I get broadside shots, but I guess it is not likely when it hits a big bone and then goes through it longways. Without a through and through and with the lung shot I guess he didn’t start to bleed until he lay down to die. There was some blood around his mouth but nothing coming out of the bullet hole.
Fighting the setting sun, we gutted it then dragged it down another ravine and back up to my neighbor’s field and the neighbor picked us up with his Ranger.
Good sized buck. Would have been an eight point if not for both brow tines being broken off to sharp nubs.
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