Cowboy_Dan
11-15-2016, 01:27 AM
This is the second year that I have gotten a deer license. Last year I worked up a good load for my dad's Marlin in .44 Mag and was all fired up to get some venison. I was only able to make it into the field twice and didn't see anything. My pride was a little injured, but I put the rounds I had made for that year's hunting away and decided to bide my time for the next year.
This year, I decided to buy the bundle license rather than just the firearms one because I also now have a load for my caplock, and that would give me another chance if I was unsucessful in firearms season. For those of you not familiar with Indiana hunting laws, it allows you to hunt all the seasons and allows for three deer, up to one of which can be antlered.
I set up a game camera and locked my climber stand to a tree near it while hunting small game on some public land about an hour from me. I checked the camera a week later and didn't see any deer on it, but I did see some deer poop in an area it wasn't looking at, so I kept everything where it was and eagerly waited out the week before firearms season opened.
Opening day for firearms season was last Saturday, and I had requested a vacation day from work. My plan was to get out to my stand by 6:00 and let the woods settle down for an hour, at which time shooting would be legal. I would shoot at the first deer I saw since I am mainly in this for the meat.
Opening day I checked in at headquarters at about 5:15 and was parked at the nearest loacion to my stand before 5:30. In the woods, I used my phone gps to approach the pin I had dropped for my stand location. I had great difficulty locating the exact location and decided to just sit down on a log as close as I was able to find and await daybreak. This was about 6:15. As I sat on the log, I resolved to get some trail markers and practice finding my stand in the dark in the future.
I loaded Dad's rifle as the sun started cutting the horizon just a few minutes before 7:00. Every rustle in the woods made me want to jump and turn towards it, but I resisted making sudden motions, although in my excitement I am not sure how. I had brought my .45/.410 along as a combination coup-de-gras and small game gun. I was not going to take any small game before midday, and the hundreds of rabbits and squirrels I saw in those first few hours must have known it.
An hour or so after sunrise, I got up to relieve myself. Upon standing up, I saw my treestand about 15 feet behind where I was sitting. I also saw another hunter about 50 yards to the south of me. I had seen his trail markers as I circled through the woods, which is what gave me the idea. I climbed into my stand and proceded to wait and enjoy the symphony of the forrest.
About 9:45 I see a pair of does approaching from my left rear moving directly in line with forward of my stand (relatively south). The other hunter is on the ground looking for something in the leaves. I slowly raise my rifle and track the sights on the boiler room of the bigger one and wait for her to either present broadside or notice me and change her path. She presented broadside first, and I squeezed off a round. I must have blinked right after that and as I worked the lever, I felt the brass brush my hand and I involuntarily watched for where it fell from my range practice. When I looked up, all I saw was the smaller doe. I remember having time to not only wonder what happened to the big one (had I hit her?) and guess that she had spooked and run out of my field of view, but also decide that I should try for the other just in case. She had also spooked a bit and had run a little the way she had come from. So I took a hurried shot at her. Clean miss, Marlin empty. So I draw my .45/.410 and try to line up the longest shot I have tried with it. Another clean miss, dirt poof beween her legs. She ran over the hill and I notice motion near where I had fired the first shot. That deer had just gotten up and fell again within 3 feet. She tried to get up once more and fell immediately, kicked twice and was still. From the shot to this moment about a minute transpired. The dead doe was about 30 yards distant when I shot her.
As the deer was getting up the first time I saw, the other hunter approached me and asked me if I got anything. I said I was unsure, but as the doe stood up, he informed me that I had made an illegal kill. Due to the way that the bag count works with my license, the doe I shot counted towards my bonus antlerless count for Lagrange County. The kill would have been legal on private land, but public land does not allow you to take a bonus antlerless deer with a cartridge gun. I was aware of the second point, but not the first. The regulations explained in the hunting guide were silent as to the first point.
I considered various fairly-convincing lies I could tell to make the deer seem legal, but decided honesty was the best policy and called headquarters and told them what had happened. The ranger that answered the phone told me to bring the deer there without gutting her and told me she would call a conservation officer. She couldn't tell me how much trouble I was in, since the conservation officer has some discretion, but that it would show in my favor that I admitted my wrong right away.
The other hunter offered to help me drag the doe to my car. She weighed baout 150 pounds on the hoof, and there were hills and a recently harvested corn field between us and parking. About half way across the field, another hunter who was calling it a morning also pitched in. The three of us wrestled the doe onto the trunk of my Focus and I used my bike rack to help attach her.
At headquarters, I walk up to the window, and told the ranger who I was. A conservation officer steps forward and asks me to bring the deer behind the building and said we would talk there. As I walk out the door I thought "He didn't cuff me yet, that's a good sign."
I pull my car behind the building and wait for the officer to come out. I answered all of his questions honestly and even offered to surrender the deer. He told me that he was going to give me a written warning and would even let me keep the deer. He told me I could gut her in the former camping area and leave the guts as coyote food.
As I was gutting the deer, an older man who always visits the old camping area he used to use helped me not only with advice on gutting her, but also used his Jeep to pull the deer back onto my trunk. I gave him my thanks and headed to my chosen processor.
Sorry for being so long winded, as a reward for reaching this point, here is a picture of the deer on my trunk. Round was the RCBS. 44 240 SWC, Hornady gas check, Lyman 50/50 lube, pushed by a middle charge of Unique.
This year, I decided to buy the bundle license rather than just the firearms one because I also now have a load for my caplock, and that would give me another chance if I was unsucessful in firearms season. For those of you not familiar with Indiana hunting laws, it allows you to hunt all the seasons and allows for three deer, up to one of which can be antlered.
I set up a game camera and locked my climber stand to a tree near it while hunting small game on some public land about an hour from me. I checked the camera a week later and didn't see any deer on it, but I did see some deer poop in an area it wasn't looking at, so I kept everything where it was and eagerly waited out the week before firearms season opened.
Opening day for firearms season was last Saturday, and I had requested a vacation day from work. My plan was to get out to my stand by 6:00 and let the woods settle down for an hour, at which time shooting would be legal. I would shoot at the first deer I saw since I am mainly in this for the meat.
Opening day I checked in at headquarters at about 5:15 and was parked at the nearest loacion to my stand before 5:30. In the woods, I used my phone gps to approach the pin I had dropped for my stand location. I had great difficulty locating the exact location and decided to just sit down on a log as close as I was able to find and await daybreak. This was about 6:15. As I sat on the log, I resolved to get some trail markers and practice finding my stand in the dark in the future.
I loaded Dad's rifle as the sun started cutting the horizon just a few minutes before 7:00. Every rustle in the woods made me want to jump and turn towards it, but I resisted making sudden motions, although in my excitement I am not sure how. I had brought my .45/.410 along as a combination coup-de-gras and small game gun. I was not going to take any small game before midday, and the hundreds of rabbits and squirrels I saw in those first few hours must have known it.
An hour or so after sunrise, I got up to relieve myself. Upon standing up, I saw my treestand about 15 feet behind where I was sitting. I also saw another hunter about 50 yards to the south of me. I had seen his trail markers as I circled through the woods, which is what gave me the idea. I climbed into my stand and proceded to wait and enjoy the symphony of the forrest.
About 9:45 I see a pair of does approaching from my left rear moving directly in line with forward of my stand (relatively south). The other hunter is on the ground looking for something in the leaves. I slowly raise my rifle and track the sights on the boiler room of the bigger one and wait for her to either present broadside or notice me and change her path. She presented broadside first, and I squeezed off a round. I must have blinked right after that and as I worked the lever, I felt the brass brush my hand and I involuntarily watched for where it fell from my range practice. When I looked up, all I saw was the smaller doe. I remember having time to not only wonder what happened to the big one (had I hit her?) and guess that she had spooked and run out of my field of view, but also decide that I should try for the other just in case. She had also spooked a bit and had run a little the way she had come from. So I took a hurried shot at her. Clean miss, Marlin empty. So I draw my .45/.410 and try to line up the longest shot I have tried with it. Another clean miss, dirt poof beween her legs. She ran over the hill and I notice motion near where I had fired the first shot. That deer had just gotten up and fell again within 3 feet. She tried to get up once more and fell immediately, kicked twice and was still. From the shot to this moment about a minute transpired. The dead doe was about 30 yards distant when I shot her.
As the deer was getting up the first time I saw, the other hunter approached me and asked me if I got anything. I said I was unsure, but as the doe stood up, he informed me that I had made an illegal kill. Due to the way that the bag count works with my license, the doe I shot counted towards my bonus antlerless count for Lagrange County. The kill would have been legal on private land, but public land does not allow you to take a bonus antlerless deer with a cartridge gun. I was aware of the second point, but not the first. The regulations explained in the hunting guide were silent as to the first point.
I considered various fairly-convincing lies I could tell to make the deer seem legal, but decided honesty was the best policy and called headquarters and told them what had happened. The ranger that answered the phone told me to bring the deer there without gutting her and told me she would call a conservation officer. She couldn't tell me how much trouble I was in, since the conservation officer has some discretion, but that it would show in my favor that I admitted my wrong right away.
The other hunter offered to help me drag the doe to my car. She weighed baout 150 pounds on the hoof, and there were hills and a recently harvested corn field between us and parking. About half way across the field, another hunter who was calling it a morning also pitched in. The three of us wrestled the doe onto the trunk of my Focus and I used my bike rack to help attach her.
At headquarters, I walk up to the window, and told the ranger who I was. A conservation officer steps forward and asks me to bring the deer behind the building and said we would talk there. As I walk out the door I thought "He didn't cuff me yet, that's a good sign."
I pull my car behind the building and wait for the officer to come out. I answered all of his questions honestly and even offered to surrender the deer. He told me that he was going to give me a written warning and would even let me keep the deer. He told me I could gut her in the former camping area and leave the guts as coyote food.
As I was gutting the deer, an older man who always visits the old camping area he used to use helped me not only with advice on gutting her, but also used his Jeep to pull the deer back onto my trunk. I gave him my thanks and headed to my chosen processor.
Sorry for being so long winded, as a reward for reaching this point, here is a picture of the deer on my trunk. Round was the RCBS. 44 240 SWC, Hornady gas check, Lyman 50/50 lube, pushed by a middle charge of Unique.