Some deer hunts stand out in memory, for example, the buck I killed with cast in a .308 Savage 99 is probably my most perfect deer hunt ever, everything went right, he wasn't the biggest buck I ever took, but a pleasing hunt.
Today is probably the most unsatisfying successful deer hunt I ever had. Been stressing, I only killed one last year and we are almost completely out of venison, a situation we haven't been in for years and years. To add problems to it, I didn't get one during muzzle loader and it seems everything is becoming a perfect storm to keep Rich from deer hunting. The lake flooded and my honey hole stand is out in the lake now. Even my secondary sits, some pretty good, have been affected by it, large areas where I hunt were under water a month ago. The herniated disc in my back and bone spur that's pinching the big nerve to my left thigh has gotten worse too, and long sits on cramped tree stands aren't easy anymore, did it a couple of times during muzzle loader and payed for it. This weekend is out early antlerless segment and has been a good time to get meat.
So I had to change some things if we were gonna have meat. God forgive me, but I resorted to jacketed bullets, used my old Model 70 in .30-06 which I knew responded real well to 165 grain Sierra Game Kinds and Winchester 760 powder and it did indeed shoot it well just as I remembered (hadn't done this in ten years or more). Got a good chair and carried it out to overwatch a really sorry soybean field which was more Johnson Grass than beans and waited. I know the area and knew I had a good chance of seeing deer, sure enough, half an hour before sun set, a few presented themselves including this mature doe. Shot was 100 yards or a tad more. She ran maybe 35 yards into some thick brush, took me a few minutes to find her. The cart trip back to the truck was fun, about a mile and the flooding washed all kinds of big drift wood along the route and grew thick grass to conceal it. At least the weather was good and a nearly full moon helped. Took her to a processor with a walk in cooler. I usually do my own anymore, but I was already tired and irritated and I want to take my dad to a gun show tomorrow so I took the easy route.
Haven't used a jacketed bullet to kill a deer since 2009, just cast and the occasional broadhead, and kind of hate myself for having to resort to it, but I really had some set backs to my usual routine and was low enough on venison (the only red meat we keep in the house) and I really felt like I couldn't take a chance of not being able to make a good shot with cast. I think I'm going to make a resolution here and now that if I can't do it the way I want to do it, I just won't do it at all. This was basically a grocery shopping trip, not a hunt.