Short Midday Hunt Pays Off
First of all let me say congratulations to all of you who have posted success stories on here this season. I've been trying to catch up but have been away from home and everything else, including the internet, for about 17 of the last 28 days. I spent a week in NW Ontario on a muzzle-loader deer hunt (thread posted in Big Game forum) and another week closer to home for the rifle/shotgun deer season.
The first week of the gun season was strange to say the least. The heat really changed things and although we saw a few more deer than the last couple of seasons, we didn't get many shot opportunities. A couple of the opportunities that did present themselves ended with some embarrassing misses, which has been a rare occurrence in our camp. We managed to shoot one decent buck on the Friday and ended the week with just the one deer. Not as good as our previous 2 years with 4 and 5 deer between 5 guys, but still a great time as always.
I settled in back home on Saturday afternoon. My kids are 7 and 4 and after being away for so much of the last few weeks we had lots of catching up to do. My Dad, brother and I butchered the deer from week 1 on Monday afternoon and I wasn't due back at work until Tuesday night at 11 pm. With a tag still in my pocket, I wondered if I could sneak out for one last hunt before my holiday was over without pushing the envelope too much at home.
I ended up finding my window Tuesday during the middle of the day. I wanted to sleep in to get ready to go back to midnight shift that night, but I also had to be home by 3:30 to meet the kids off the school bus. It wasn't discouraging, I had been itching to try a midday hunt because the rut was heating up and we had seen deer feeding in the fields during midday last week. Also, there was rain forecast to move in that day by around 2 pm. My gut told me they would be moving.
By 11:15 I was settled in some cedars on the edge of a big swamp adjacent to a cut bean field. The setup was perfect for the east wind. It's kind of a "backup" location that I use when the wind is wrong for most other spots and it's the only time I have to get out. It's really thick and I had originally set this spot up as a ground blind for archery season. I really only had one good shooting lane about 5 yards wide and about 35 yards long to the edge of the swamp.
After pouring a coffee and leaning back in my chair, I thought I heard a grunt from the northeast, out by the field edge. Slowly setting the coffee down, I turned in my chair and looked for a makeshift shooting lane to the north. There was one little hole through the cedar branches that l thought might work if it came to that. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later (around 11:30 am) I heard something coming my way. Seconds later I can see the shape of a deer coming over a little knoll angling towards my left side, right towards that little shooting lane I picked out. I caught a glimpse of antler but couldn't tell how big. When he stepped behind the last big tree I brought the gun up, put the scope on the opening in the cedars and c o c k e d the hammer. It was only going to be a 25 yard shot or so. For some reason he was taking too long to get to the opening so I took my eye off the scope and looked for him. Bad timing... he was starting to move just as I had taken my eye off the scope. I quickly got back on the spot as he was stepping through, tried to slow him down with a "baaaa" and pulled the trigger when it looked right. Right away I knew he was hit, but I also felt like I was a little late on the shot. He took one or two hops with his tail down and stood about 20 yards behind me staggering a bit. This seemed to be a good time to get another shell into the H&R so I popped the empty out, popped a new one in and the movement and noise sent him trotting away to the west. I rushed another shot at him but knew I missed because there was too much crap in the way. Just after I lost sight of him, I heard a satisfying "CRASH" in the leaves in the direction he went. Or was it? I didn't know for sure, it had all happened really fast.
Not feeling 100% great about the shot, I decided to wait half an hour before getting on the track. If I was to bump him and he kept going west, he would cross a busy road and be on a different property within a couple hundred yards. That was one very long half-hour.
It wasn't hard to follow the blood, there was plenty of it, although that doesn't always guarantee anything. After covering less than 80 yards, the picture below is pretty much how I found him. He was hit a couple of inches further back than I intended, but still a quick kill. I bought this 20 gauge H&R Ultra Slug Hunter from another forum member a couple of years ago and it's the first deer I've taken with this particular gun. Sorry, the pic is a little blurry. It was a cell phone pic and there wasn't anyone else to hold a camera this time.
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/m...pstb3xjmyl.jpg
