I’m back from a 7 day hunt in Arkansas deep woods. I hope you will pardon me for writing it all down in a really large post, but it was a heck of an adventure and I thought some might like to read about it.
I hunt in a really nice place in south Arkansas. It’s a deer lease that is very exclusive and pretty much consists only of family and close personal friends. I was invited as a friend of two of the old members, and have shared the hunt with these gents for the last two years, but only for 2 days of the year as my main focus has been on growing my gunsmithing business and deer season is busy. I have tried to take care of the people I hunt with though, and never charged much for keeping their firearms in tip top shape, and every year, I take care of whatever they need to get going, including reloads, and maintenance as it might be required.
However, this year, the guys I hunt with (Clint and Bob) decided they wanted me to spend more than a day and a half, and they paid for 5 days of my hunt. They’re plan worked, and I worked my tail feathers off clearing enough elbow room that I could take off for a week to hunt.
Finally the time had arrived, and I packed everything but the kitchen sink on the truck and made the 2 ½ hour drive for camp, hoping I might be able to score two or three deer for the freezer.
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As is my habit, the firearms I took along consisted of my ever present M1A, a long range rifle just in case, and a primary cast bullet rifle as the main meat getter.
The rifle I chose to use on this hunt as my primary was one I acquired earlier this year from Bjornb: an 1886 Browning 1-3000. Rather extravagant I admit, but I have come to love the design of it above all others, and the gorgeous appearance of it is the icing on the proverbial cake. The only downside to the 1886 is that you cannot mount a scope on it without major elective surgery, and the sights are very small and hard to see. On the other hand, it has features that my Marlin 1895 rifles do not. First of all, when choosing a bullet design for this rifle, generally speaking, if you can get a loaded cartridge to enter the magazine tube from the loading port, that round will cycle through the action without getting stuck between the loading gate and the carrier as is common in the 1895 Marlin. The bullet may meet the rifling leadin too soon, but the cartridge will extract. Also, the 1886 allows me to easily short stroke the action and remove a loaded cartridge before the next one can be caught by the carrier. This allows me to make the rifle safe with an empty chamber and a full magazine tube which I enjoy very much. This rifle also allows me to carry 7 cartridges in the tube which is enough to take care of business no matter what. The rifle fits me, and comes to point naturally and I have loved shooting it this summer quite a bit.
The bullets, I cast myself from House alloy to a hardness of 14BHN using a mold I obtained from Accurate molds in the venerable 46-355RG. I used Hornady gas checks.
Most of my range time this summer was spent trying to figure out what lube or coating would provide the best solution for first shot accuracy. I was hoping to get PC to work out, but it was finicky and unreliable range session to range session. Larry Gibson had recommended that I try a simple lube made of olive oil and bees wax mixed 50/50. This proved to be exceedingly predictable and consistent across the board and accuracy was as good with this lube as any that I had tried (2.5” at 100 yards average).
The load I used was 30 grains of IMR4227 with a ¾” square of Dacron about ¼” thick, lofted so that the bullet pushed it into place when seated. Brass is Starline. Primers were CCI LR. This load pushes that bullet at 1650FPS
Friday afternoon I made the two hour drive to the deer lease, ready to spend 9 days in the woods, and hoping to come home with at least three deer in that time. I arrived and shook hands with my friends then sat down to eat the first of many meals in the coming weeks. The people I hunt with could give any culinary chef a run for their money and they like to go all out during deer season. Being local farmers and foresters, very little of the ingredients to the food is store bought, as much of it is raised in their own fields and gardens and the quality is easy to appreciate let me assure you!
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After diner, plans were formulated as to where each person would hunt the next day. The choices are truly staggering as the lease is nearly 4000 acres comprised of hardwoods, tree farms, fields and broad open spaces that would easily allow a 1000 yard shot. There are over 65 permanent tree stands located all over the place, so wherever the deer are, there is likely a tree stand in the area from which to ambush the game and make a clean harvest. Each stand has its own pet name and the conversation centered around statements like “I seen deer runnin ova yonder by the bicycle stand but since the weather changed I think I’ll ease up the hill to the old whiteoak” Or “maybe ya aughta set up in Angies ambush and catch what comes out of the thicket on the hill” or “the deer been hittin the corn awful hard ova yonder in the plum thicket” etc etc etc.
However, I like to climb trees with my API Grandslam climber and I chose to hunt in my favorite spot simply called “the cemetery” (so named because of a small ancient cemetery near there from the early 1800s consisting of mom, dad, and 4 children probably taken by some disease. (Yeah. It’s eerie).
Morning came early for me as I awoke at 4AM. I stumbled to the clubhouse (a polebarn where all the cooking and eating takes place) and I stirred up the fire in the wood stove and got a pot of strong coffee brewing. I tied my boots and nursed my coffee over the next hour as one by one the others awoke and made their way in. I tried to get everybody’s morning off to a good start by meeting them at the door with a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee, and I stood by the coffee pot listening to the bleary eyed conversations and keeping cups full (I used to always be camp cookie and old habits die hard).
Finally, everyone was good and coffee’d up, and daylight was coming in 30 minutes so everybody headed to the four wheelers. I loaded up my pack, the tree stand and my 45-70 jumped on the BigBear and started puttering out to my spot. I parked the wheeler in the brush about 75 yards from the place I wanted to set up, got the climber on my back and picked my way to my spot. I found a tree in the dark that looked like a good candidate, climbed up about 15 feet and got settled in.
Sunrise broke shortly after I was set up and I started picking out shooting lanes and making fine adjustments to the stand, and got the skirt tied around it. The skirt is a marvelous addition that my sister had sewed for me several years ago. It acts as a wind break, and protects my feet from view so I can move without the deer getting spooked.
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About 8:00AM I saw movement at the top of the hill and made out a nice buck picking his way along finding acorns to munch on. He was too deep in the brush and timber to get a shot at though. It took a good half hour for my heart to stop racing.
An hour later a couple does wandered down off the hill to my 7:00. I quickly stood up and got in position. They inched along getting closer and closer and the lead doe was heading right for a nice hole in the foliage I could shoot through. I aimed my rifle at the hole and suddenly realized that I had a serious problem. I could barely see my sights! The 1886 has a very small front sight and a rear sight with a small notch that works fairly well on the range, but to my extreme consternation, does not do me any favors whatsoever in shadowy timber! As the doe entered the kill zone, I was lifting the front sight, and bringing it down into the rear notch, where I would lose sight of it, then repeat. I did this about three times and felt I had a good idea of where it was, then made the worst mistake I have made since I started hunting as a teenager: I took the shot.
The deer jumped and kicked and tor back up the hill. I knew what I had done within seconds. The doe was simply running too well and I never heard it go down. I climbed down the tree, found where the shot was made and started searching for blood. I found my bullet where it impacted the ground, but only a few drops as I traced the doe’s path up the hill.
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Once I got to the top of the hill I found a small patch of blood in a thicket. Dark red, and not much of it. I tried to pick up the deer’s trail by cutting semi circular traces, ever increasing as I got further away from that patch of blood. Nothing. Not a single speck of blood. I had simply hit her too low, and clipped the brisket. I continued like this for several hundred yards, all the way down the mountain to the creek at the bottom and never found another trace of blood. I finally abandoned hope and returned to camp.
It’s a horrible feeling knowing that your own arrogance and failure to consider every possible scenario has caused you to harm a living animal. I was angry and horribly ashamed of myself. I have failed to recover game before, and even experienced bullet failure in the field, but I have never made a bad shot that caused harm to a game animal before.
I practice a lot with my rifles and have confidence in their performance, but this was something that should not have happened. I should not have pulled the trigger. Anybody who has ever fired a gun can tell you that if you don’t have a front sight picture, you don’t have anything, and I should have known better. I’m very sorry for my actions that day and I resolved to never repeat it.
The next day began exactly like the first. I woke up before everyone else, fixed coffee, etc etc etc. However, I decided to leave the 1886 in the truck and I opted to hunt with the M1A instead. The M1A has those classic battle sights that are big enough to get a sight picture even at dusk. Before leaving, I took a lighter and put fresh black on the sights front and rear.
After climbing my tree and getting set up, I checked the dope on my elevation by bottoming the rear aperture out and coming up 9 clicks. I was advised by a very competent Army Sergeant to determine my dope in this way and memorize it like I do my SS number which I did.
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About 9:00AM, I caught a glimpse of a deer walking fast through the woods from my 10:00. I had a nice opening at 12:00 and the deer was heading right for it. I slung up the M1A, and when the deer walked into the lane, I drilled it right through the shoulders. It dropped like a sack of grain, rear legs kicking hard for a few seconds till it laid still. The whole affair took about 15 seconds. Quick and humane. This did a lot to restore my confidence in myself. I got the deer packed up and drove back to camp where I quickly got it quartered up and packed away on ice. Unfortunately, it was a running shot and I led it about 2” too much and contacted the front leg bone which made the bullet fragment and destroyed most of the meat on the front legs (it was a running shot, so sue me). Still, I cut around the damage, and managed to salvage a lot of it. The cuts of meat I take from a deer are the neck roast, the tenderloins, the front legs, the rear hams, and the “sweet meats” from under the backbone on the inside. Personally, I find the ribs to be more trouble than they are worth.
The evening hunt yielded nothing.
The next day (Sunday) was a bust as well.
Monday was a bust too as rain was on it’s way in. The morning was uneventful, and it started drizzling about noon, which turned to light rain a few hours later. Still, a little drizzle never hurt anybody and I’ve seen deer move in it before, so I decided to hunt. A friend of mine asked me if I could give him and his buddies a hand with the wide open clear-cut, because they knew I brought the 300 WinMag and what kind of shooting I have done with it. I got totally soaked and didn’t see a darn thing, and to be honest, I was glad of it because there’s no way I would take a long shot in the rain. Even if I made the shot, the deer would have to go down immediately, or it would be lost as soon as it got out of sight.
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Going back to camp to a hot meal and the woodstove was simply wonderful. That night, the real brunt of the storm hit and it rained cats and dogs all day Tuesday. There were tornados kicking up several places in the state (one of which was just a few miles from my house as I found out when my wife called me in a panic. All was well in the end though.). I took a drive into Arkadelphia to avoid going stir crazy. The local Atwoods store had a sale on Boresnakes and I snagged a few of them and bought a new flashlight as my old one had bit the big one the night before. I drove back to camp and handled a few gun repairs for my fellow hunters. Most of them had left Monday, and even more had lit a shuck when the weather got bad, so I pretty much had the whole place to myself. Just me and the owner of the lease and his wife and daughter. Just hung around and had a nice evening.
The rain cleared off about 7:00PM but I just knew in my gut that the next day was going to be beautiful and a total bust for deer hunting.
Sure enough, Wednesday was simply gorgeous. There was a chill in the air, and everything looked fresh and wet from the hard rain the previous day, but the wind was blowing and the deer were having none of it.
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ammohead
Originally Posted by white eagle
