This year was a little slow for the deer season. Wind, rain, you name it, there weren't a lot of good days to hunt here.
I didn't make use of my archery tag, but I did manage to work out some kinks in my ML and that proved to be very beneficial.
Initially, I wasn't getting good groups with my .54 cal; I cast up about 100 RB, and used them all up just trying to sight in! So, knowing that my cast projectiles weren't the issue, I had to decipher the problem. After a few good suggestions, I changed my patches to a material that was just .003 inches thicker, and on my first trip to the range, I was dead on the bullseye at 50 yards.
Late in the ML season, I went out in a -18 wind chill; the benefits of sub zero temps (actually was about 1 when I went out, and -5 when I left), are that you don't have many people willing to compete at those temps, and the deer have to move to survive.
So, about half an hour before sunset, a 6 point buck walks over a ridge. Wind was out of the south, he followed a trail 50 yds south of me. As he stepped between two trees, I set my crosshairs on his heart and let that homemade patched RB fly. He initially headed ENE, then quickly turned downhill. I wasn't sure at that point, but I thought I heard him crash as he disappeared.
I headed back to the car, partly to warm up, and to make sure he had time to expire, and headed back out after half an hour. Sure enough, he was at the bottom of the hill, the shot went clean through the heart. There was, however, some confusion, as he had no antlers. The buck I shot had antlers on him, but this one had evidence of having had antlers, but nothing attached to his head.
I found one antler several feet away from him; after over an hour of searching, and a couple of return trips to that spot, I never found his other antler. I am absolutely certain I counted all 6 points when he stepped into view, but I only found one 3 point antler.
The drag out of the woods was brutal; my nephew and I had to go almost half a mile, most of it uphill, to get him out of there. Deer just seem to love to expire as far downhill as they can get.
Upon skinning him, I found that his ribs were bruised; it took some work to figure out that he'd tried to jump over a small downed tree as he fled, and instead of clearing it, he slammed his chest into it. I would have thought he'd been hit by a car, but the bruising was even on both sides, and just behind the front legs where he got hung up. He was laying just a few feet beyond that tree, and I suspect he actually may have slid under it to the bottom of the hill after he ran into it.
No pics ended up being available; due to the extreme cold, my phone died, and I even had 2 of my 3 flashlights go dead as we dragged him out. If the third light hadn't had lithium batteries, we would have been wandering in the dark.
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