Well, I finally got it done in the fading last light of 2020. I started deer hunting just last year and quickly discovered that the spot and stalk methods I use on hogs and squirrels do NOT work on deer. So I have been in a self-taught learning curve that has been slowly getting me closer and closer. I did have an easy shot on a buck in early November - broadside at 20 yards - that I missed completely with my crossbow when the bolt grazed the bottom edge of the blind window on the way out. I was really sick over that one.
Yesterday I was headed out and checked the weather for the wind direction, only to discover that it was exactly opposite of what it needed to be for any of the spots I had set up except for the one on the WMA that had closed the day before. A friend mentioned that it was the last day of a rifle hunt on a WMA I had never hunted, so I got on Google maps and took a look. I picked out two likely spots and headed out. The first had a truck parked near it, so I went to the second where sparse pine gives way to thick brush before going down to a swamp bottom. I found a blowdown and set up behind it by the root ball.
About 20 min before dark, this little doe came out, but she wouldn't stop moving. I thought she was gone, but she finally circled back at about 45-50 yards but was in the undergrowth. So I picked a shooting lane where the growth was thinnest (not absent) and tracked her until she got to it. I hit her moving with a rear-lung shot. I thought I might have missed because I saw undergrowth move and instead of bucking she just took off at a sprint, so I immediately got up and went to look for blood. When I got to the spot, I couldn't find any blood, but when I looked up, there she was just 20-25 yards away trying to keep standing. She fell over as I watched. When I got to her, there was a small hole in her side, 4" behind the right shoulder, with not a drop of blood coming out of it, and no exit wound. I immediately thought of INSIX's post last week of a hog he shot where the same thing happened. When I cleaned her later, the bullet had gone in, expanded, and taken out the back half of both lungs before getting stuck in the left shoulder.
In any case, it was a great way to end the year. I'm going to start this one with bacon-wrapped back strap.
Yesterday I was headed out and checked the weather for the wind direction, only to discover that it was exactly opposite of what it needed to be for any of the spots I had set up except for the one on the WMA that had closed the day before. A friend mentioned that it was the last day of a rifle hunt on a WMA I had never hunted, so I got on Google maps and took a look. I picked out two likely spots and headed out. The first had a truck parked near it, so I went to the second where sparse pine gives way to thick brush before going down to a swamp bottom. I found a blowdown and set up behind it by the root ball.
About 20 min before dark, this little doe came out, but she wouldn't stop moving. I thought she was gone, but she finally circled back at about 45-50 yards but was in the undergrowth. So I picked a shooting lane where the growth was thinnest (not absent) and tracked her until she got to it. I hit her moving with a rear-lung shot. I thought I might have missed because I saw undergrowth move and instead of bucking she just took off at a sprint, so I immediately got up and went to look for blood. When I got to the spot, I couldn't find any blood, but when I looked up, there she was just 20-25 yards away trying to keep standing. She fell over as I watched. When I got to her, there was a small hole in her side, 4" behind the right shoulder, with not a drop of blood coming out of it, and no exit wound. I immediately thought of INSIX's post last week of a hog he shot where the same thing happened. When I cleaned her later, the bullet had gone in, expanded, and taken out the back half of both lungs before getting stuck in the left shoulder.
In any case, it was a great way to end the year. I'm going to start this one with bacon-wrapped back strap.
