Another first buck
Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of the bedroom door opening and my youngest son walking over to the side of the bed. "Dad, when you get up I'll be down the hall watching TV. I've already got my hunting clothes on." I checked the clock and it was 15 minutes before the alarm was set to go off. Being the second son, he and I don't hunt nearly as much solo as I have with his older brother, but Saturday was just the two of us. Whether he was really that excited or just woke up early I don't know. I suspect it was the latter, but I prefer to think he was that excited.
In the truck we talked about what stands would be good to hunt and it was decided that we should hunt the same stand his brother killed his first buck from four years ago. It looks down a road that runs through a saddle between two hilltops. It's one of those spots you would put high on the list if you had to get a deer killed for a million dollars. We didn't need a deer quite that bad, but after killing a doe for his first deer last year he was pretty adamant about wanting some antlers in his room like his brother.
Sure enough we didn't have to wait long. A lone doe stepped out from the left and slowly made her way across the roadway. I asked him what he wanted to do and he wanted to shoot. So I helped him ease the rifle up on the rail and sat back to watch. Just as I expected the gun to go off he realized he didn't have his ear muffs on. We got the muffs on but he couldn't get back on her before she made it in the woods on the right.
I tried to reassure him that passing her up was the thing to do if he was intent on killing a buck, but when the second doe appeared from the same trail ten minutes later there was going to be no quarter given. Just as he slipped the safety off I caught movement behind her and I whispered to him to wait a second. Sure enough it was a buck. It was actually a really nice buck that needed to take a few more steps to offer up an unobstructed view of the shoulder. I told him to just wait and if he started across the road I would stop him, and when I did to settle the crosshairs on the shoulder and squeeze off the shot just like we practiced. As the doe trotted off the road the buck was right behind her. I whistled a couple times and as a last resort hollered right before he went in the woods but he never skipped a beat.
I didn't let on what a nice buck it was, but I was just as disappointed as he was. I had just finished telling him to hang in there and how you never know what may happen when I looked over to see another buck coming through the woods on the left. Although nowhere near the caliber of what had just slipped by us, he was in a whole heap of trouble. I whistled as he made it into the roadway and he paused perfectly. I could tell by the size of the circles the barrel was making when the crosshairs found the shoulder. At the shot the buck folded up like he had been struck by a bolt of lightning. 65 yards with the 7-08 Hornady reduced recoil load.
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Originally Posted by Griffin
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