My first goat, mule deer, and hands free spontaneous orgasm!

[WhitewaterDuck]

10/28/19, I went after a speed goat with a new friend out here who's educating me about long range rifles and such. Seeing as I can't be hunting outside of 20 minutes from the hospital, I wasn't too picky. This weird, old goat trotted out of a draw at 485. Did not have a good rest with the bipod on the front of the truck, but it was good enough with his sweet 7mm mag that has a straight up "brain trigger;" you think about squeezing the trigger, and it goes boom.
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I figured out that morning that my deer tag needed to be punched by Oct 31 or I would have to travel 1.5 hours or more to the next zone that opened up. I headed out to try to find one of the mule deer that I had been hoping to shoot with my recently-completed self bow (before I screwed it up and shattered it). Because they cut the corn that was helping funnel the deer consistently to a spot I could easily ambush, the deer changed their pattern< and I suspected they had moved over across the road to the nearest standing corn in the area. Regardless, I pulled into where I park to hunt my Bessie-blind, now frozen pond to see if I could catch one bedding in the grass near Bessie like they had been doing before the corn got cut. I noticed a pile of ducks circling the corn field as I headed into the grass to see what I could get close to. Well, for the 1.5 hours that I eased around in that grass, I couldn't help but watch as more and more ducks piled into the field next to me. I finally gave up on the deer hunt and drug my layout blind over to the edge of that field wearing my blaze orange hat. I remembered I had packed my sony video camera, as my iphone camera is giving me fits. Here is video I took standing on the edge of the field in a blaze orange hat after dragging my layout blind from the middle of the field that is directly behind where you see the ducks landing. Did not actually have the big O, but it was close!


10-29-19 After a good morning of work, I grabbed the rifle and headed out to try to punch that deer tag. After checking the grass field beside my frozen duck hole to no avail, I went and walked a long stretch of Laramie River bottom to no avail. After glassing a few other spots, I decided to head back over to the cut corn field for the last hour of daylight to sit and see if maybe one of the mule deer might show up to get a nibble; if no deer showed, I was going to at least get to watch the ducks again. As I pulled into the road leading to the corn field, I caught movement to my left and looked over to see the small 4x4 (I've been watching 2 spikes, a 2x2, this small 4x4, and a big 4x4) cruising the scrub brush/trees choked fence line. I saw that the fence was behind the deer, so I got out of the truck and let him have it. I wish I'd have seen the spike and 2x2 that were ahead of him, because I was meat hunting and wanting to leave the 4x4s for next year. Regardless, he ain't big, but he's going to eat much better than the tag soup I was about to be served. I'm happy with him considering he's my first mule deer and basically an in-town buck.
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Let me take this time to warn folks...do not shoot a custom rifle with a well-adjusted, quality trigger unless you are ready to spend some Benjamins. I used to think that stainless stalker was a "sweet shooting gun." It did the job, but it felt like I was going to have to employ a come-a-long to get it to go bang compared to my buds Christiansen Arms. I will surely be coming off some significant cash in the coming year to be ready for next year's big game season.

So, now that my tags are punched, I am about to go hit that cut corn field in the am. I'm not going to take anything for granted, but I'm thinking I might be able to scratch out a solid limit laying in and amongst that "little wad" of ducks! I'm going to try to figure out a way to secure the sony cam about 10 yards behind the layout, turn it on, and hope the auto focus feature on it works well enough to capture some decent footage of the action. Stay tuned!