| DEER SEASON 2007 page 3 of 5 |
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| Nov. 26, 2007 Today was opening day of the shotgun season for deer here in Ohio. Piff and I put away our arrow slingers and grabbed our shotguns and headed down to Adams Co. to try our luck. It was a rainy, soggy, cold and dreary day. After donning our rain gear we sloshed our way to two different stand sights; Piff in his ground blind in the bottom of the pasture, mine, a ladder stand in the south end of a woodlot. |
| The morning activity was slow for the both of us to say the least. The only movement was the 6-8 cows that we seem to always attract. I was beginning to wonder what compels a grown man to get up at 3:00 and drive for an hour and a half just to climb 15 feet up in a tree and sit in the rain! I was getting cold and wetter by the minute. Sometime after 9:00 I stood up and wrung out my soggy gloves, and repositioned myself in the stand. While fidgeting around I looked to my left through the gray haze out into the grassy field behind me when something about the cover along a ditch didn’t look right. I focused more on the area and thought I could make out a white muzzle and a black nose of a deer! I then slowly shouldered my slug gun and looked through the cloudy scope. It was a buck and he was looking right at me! I could see that he was a good size buck that had main beams that wrapped around and almost touched. He finally lowered his head and began to slowly walk the edge of the cover. He was getting closer to me but was moving from my right to left as I was looking behind the tree. Soon he would be directly behind the tree and I knew that once he got on the other side that I wouldn’t have a shot at him because of a large oak tree that was there. I had to kneel down in the stand and lean out to the right to get a shot. It was now or never! When he came into view through the branches of my tree I pulled the trigger. My first thought was that I rushed the shot. At the report of the shotgun he reared up on his hind legs and fell into the ditch. I waited a few minutes to see if he would run out. I then waited for the rain to pick up and used the noise to slowly descend from my stand. I crawled under the barbed wire fence and eased over to the ditch, gun at-the-ready. There he was, dead, not too far from where he was when I shot him! He was hit in the neck which confirms that I did rush the shot. We field-dressed him and called it a day. Both of us were soaked and the rain was not supposed to let up until after dark. We headed home to dry out and planned on coming back in the morning. |
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| Upon observation the buck has seven points. One of his brow tines had been broken earlier while the second tine on his long left beam has a recent break near the base. Both main beams are over 24 ½ inches long. The tips of the main beams hook in and are about 1 5/8 inches apart. The first tine on the left beam is around 8 ½ inches while the one on the right is over 10 ½ inches. The inside spread is 16 inches. |
| Nov. 27, 2007 Yesterday afternoon we came back home and dropped off my buck at the processors and spent the evening drying out our clothes and getting reorganized for the hour and a half ride back down to Adams Co. in the morning. With our buck tags now filled we where both looking to take a few does. On the ride down we talked about where we wanted to hunt and decided that we both would hunt out of Piff’s ground blind. I have been hearing from Piff about all the deer he had been seeing out of his “nest” and I was looking forward to finding out for myself if there were and truths to his stories. Not that he would tell any lies, of course. As we approached the blind in the predawn light Piff stopped to hang a scent bomb along the ditch. I continued on up the hill and started to set up in the blind but before I could sit down I heard something moving in the field behind me. I turned around and peered through the barbed wire fence and I could barely make out a nice size doe about 40 yards on the other side. When she moved out of sight I slipped up to the fence and saw her walking away towards a wooded draw in the neighbors pasture. A few minutes later as we were just getting settled in the blind I nudged Piff, who was on my right, and told him that I think I see a deer coming out of the woodlot above us. Sure enough it was a little buck. As he walked towards us we could hear him grunting. Soon he eased up the hill to our right and crawled through a hole in the fence. He looked as if he was on the trail of the doe. It wasn’t but a few minutes later that another young buck appeared out of the woods and he also eventually went through the fence and followed the first buck. That was three deer already and we have only been at the ground blind for about ten minutes! I was making that same comment to Piff when yet two more young bucks came out of the woods further down to the right. They stopped beside a tall skinny cedar tree for a moment and then three more deer came out of the woods and joined him. Two of the smaller deer walked over to check us out and eventually spooked and they all ran up into the woods. It was just a short time later another small buck with half of his rack missing came out of the woods and walked along the opposite hillside from us. I couldn’t believe all the action that was going on, I looked at my watch and it was only around eight o’clock! About an hour later Piff pokes me and says that there were deer on the tractor path to his right. A doe and two yearlings were moving down the path and were getting closer to us by the second. When they got within 30 yards they spotted us and stopped. By this time Piff had his scope on the big does head. He fired and all three of them took off and high-tailed it to the next county. A clean miss! He must have shot between her ears! For the rest of the morning we sat there and told stories and ate snacks while waiting for more action. Piff complained that I was keeping him up from taking his usual morning nap! Unfortunately all we saw was a dozen or so of the cattle that always seem to manage to show up. Around noon Piff walked back up to the van to get his lunch and on the way back he pushed a few woodlots to see if he could run any deer my way, but none did. After arriving back we sat there awhile until I decided to get up and head to another part of the property. I went to the east end of the pasture and thought that I would set up along the fence corner where the pasture, hayfield and the neighbor’s pasture join. Upon arriving I didn’t like the setup because wind was blowing my scent into the woods to the east and that’s where I expected the deer to be coming from. I then moved up to the front of the property and sat down in the hayfield at a vantage point where I could see into a clearing in the southeast corner of a woods while also being able to observe any movement coming out of the east side. This is the woodlot where Piff had seen a lot of deer come out of during one of our hunts a few weeks ago. There was a little draw in the hilly field to the east of the woods that had some cover in it. I used my range finder to mark the nearest scrubby tree at 76 yards Further down the field to the north was a big tree and I marked it at 186 yards while the fence line measured 212 yards. Just before 4 o’clock I noticed three deer scurrying along the fence to the north. They stopped and nervously looked back behind them. I propped my shotgun up on my shooting sticks and looked through the scope and identified them as a doe and two yearlings. I watched them through the scope off and on for about ten or fifteen minutes. They eventually moved down towards the corner of the fence where I had just come from. I was thinking to myself “If I had I only stayed there I might have had a chance to take the doe”. Suddenly the deer spooked and ran along the top of the hayfield right towards me! They stopped in the short grass and the doe stood perfectly broadside to me, her tan hide glistening in the afternoon sun. I mentally figured that she was about half way between my 76 and 186 yard markers. I still had the scope on her and knew that the Hornady SST 300 gr. slugs that I had in my 12 gauge Mossberg only drop about 2 inches at 150 yards. I decide to take the shot and then pulled the trigger. At the blast of the shot they all ran off towards the woods. They went out of sight around the 186 yard tree. I knew from hunts in the past that there was a fence crossing not too far from the tree. I figured that’s where they were headed. After gathering up my gear I decided not to go to the spot where she was standing when I took the shot but to the area around the fence crossing. I figured that if I hit her that I might be able to pick up the blood trail from there. Sure enough as I walked near the crossing I found a big pile of blood in the overgrown hayfield. I looked over the fence to see if I could find any sign of more blood but I didn’t see any. I then looked around the in the field some more and found another pile of blood and soon I was able to find a good blood trail. I didn’t know if I was back tracking the blood trail or not but stayed on the trail which eventually led me right by the tree. Soon I found the doe. She must have ran to the fence and turned back into the thicker cover around the tree. I hit her 3-4 inches back further than I hoped but it still was a killing shot. Man, what a difference a scoped gun makes. I would have never taken that shot with open sights! |
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