The Buck Stops Here

This past Friday evening, the day after Thanksgiving, I went out deer hunting hoping to shoot my one buck for the year and I did. My friend from high school met me at my house at 2:30 that evening so that we could get our gear ready to go out for the hunt. We got his blind, my self- climbing tree stand, and our guns loaded onto my four wheeler and the headed out to the two wood lots behind my house. We each went to separate woods which are about 200 yards apart. This greatly increases our chances of shooting a deer because we are able to cover more ground and if one of us spooks some deer then they are likely to run to the other person. We also had two way radios so we could tell each other if deer were headed there way.

We were both set up and ready at three o’clock which is a little early for an evening hunt but it is better to be to early then too late. Being early definitely paid off for me. After wait just an hour I heard a deer walking through the leaves behind me to my left. When I looked over my shoulder I saw it was a pretty nice eight point buck by itself. It was heading toward the creek, which was just five yards in front of me. I stood up in my tree stand to be ready for a shot. The buck crossed the creek into the open field and stopped perfectly in my shooting window between tree branches. I shouldered my slug gun, aligned the open sights, took aim for the buck’s neck and fired. This is me pictured above with my 2007 buck. Shooting the buck in the neck caused him to drop to the ground instantly. If you shoot a deer in the lungs or heart they will usually run until they bleed to death. The neck shoot avoided the buck running into a neighboring woods that someone else owns.

My friend heard the bang and radioed me to see what I had shot. When I told him about the buck he decided to end his hunt so we could clean my deer before it was dark. We gutted it and took it to Full Draw Archery to check him in. When they weighed the buck he only weighed 115 pounds. This is light for a buck and I was surprised he was that small. It is hard to tell in the woods because you have only a few seconds to decided whether you want to shoot or not. Regardless of his weight, he had a very symmetrical rack (pictured). I spent a good part of the rest of my weekend processing the deer. I made deer jerky, summer sausage, ground venison, and of course the loins. I was pleased with my buck this year and plan to shoot bigger next year.