Successful Hunt

WARNING:
If you're an animal rights activist, you might want to discontinue reading this post immediately.
But, if you love to hunt like I do, read on and check out the picture attached.

On Monday, I took the afternoon off to hunt with Chris D. We hunt on the ranch his wife's family owns. By the way, I feel EXTREMELY BLESSED to have received an invitation to hunt with him on such an AMAZING parcel of land.

Well, on Monday evening, we came upon a couple small herds of deer. One herd was bedded down on a hillside. We had an advantage (other than having rifles that can reach the kill zone at about 600 yards:-) in that the wind was blowing across us and not taking our scent to them. Thus, the only challenge we faced was getting closer without being seen.

We ambled over several ridges to get closer. (Oh, the reason we did this is because there appeared to be a HUGE buck with the herd) So, after practically wearing ourselves out traipsing up and down hills, we finally came to the "magic" ridge that was above the herd.

We crawled to the top (cactus REALLY hurt your knees) and saw that the deer had gotten up and started down the draw. We were now at about 300 yards.

Sure enough, the one deer was a really nice buck. Chris graciously asked if I wanted to shoot that particular deer - (did I mention that he was a really nice buck?!). I told him to go ahead. He drew down and shot. The bullet hit and the deer staggered and fell. Shortly after that, he rose to his feet again and stood there! We waited for what seemed like forever (probably about 2 minutes).

The shot caused all the rest of the deer to run around, but they still didn't know where we were, so they weren't running off. Another nice buck appeared at about the 400 + yard range and I drew down on him. Unfortunately, I missed (because the wind had risen to nearly hurricane force gusts:-) My shot caused Chris' deer to start walking away. Chris took one more shot before the deer walked out of site behind another small ridge.

What do we do now? We decided to give the deer a chance to lie down - and probably die because he had been hit hard. We went back to the truck to retrieve some warmer clothes (remember the hurricane gusts), our knives and some water. We had only planned to take a "short look" on these ridges, so had left much of our stuff in the truck.

We walked into the draw, and as we approached the spot where Chris shot, we saw the buck bedded down very near where he was first hit. Chris took one final shot and we went to check our success.

As you can see, the buck is a beautiful 4X4 mule deer buck. So, the hunt was successful - sorta. Chris got his, but I missed mine.

Actually, the land is so beautiful, I couldn't bear the thought of not continuing to hunt for another buck, so I purposely shanked my 425 yard shot. - If you believe that, I've been authorized to sell you a parcel of the ranch:-)