The moon is waxing and almost full the river is almost deeper than I am tall and the deer are running a stretch across the river from my property to the nabors place. These conditions are not the best for getting that pope and young of your dreams. The difference between getting a shot at that buck of a life-time and settling for a fork-horn are three simple things, timing, timing and timing. The conditions are simply just something to overcome and show us who we are as a sportsman and to test why we are really out here. The answer is simple; we choose to spend our free time and every spare moment thinking about this ridiculous is because it’s in our blood, hardwired into our DNA somewhere is the deep need to hunt, kill, eat and survive. This is the hunting fuel that drives every sportsman.
I started my season with a coon kill. Walking down to the river in the early twilight was a coon at 35 yards staring me down from a tree, how could I let that fly? I poped him in the head with my 22 revolver. Proceeding to the river I find that the deer were bedded in the fallow alfalfa. I kept moving down the river to get an angle and gain the wind. This would lead to the discovery that the river had jumped 4 feet seemingly overnight. Then without warning every deer within a mile jumped up and ran, not jogged, ran across the river through the flood plain infront of me at 87 yards and off the property. It’s still just getting light enough to see and every deer I know of on this property is across the river and on the next door place without any influence from me. Now I had done some homework by dove hunting I had noticed some things for my evening hunt. They came right off the end of a hay stack every night and a tree had fallen over last spring on the hay stack and I decided to sit on the haystack behind the tree. Although they did not come within range of my stand the hight of my position gave me an exalent view of their exact movemet paterns across the river.
The next morning i still couldn't get across the river so i went to a place on the river where the deer came to a "bottle neck" and kept their habitual fence crossing within range. Just as light broke, I could see that the deer were on the move, running, just like the morning before. I felt that all famillar warm chill overcome me, it would've seemed that they were going to come right through the hole in the fence just across the river. knowing exactly how far each sage was i checked all of them again just out of nervousness. They were all still on the move from 120 yards to 100 yards to 85 yards, and they halt! Dead in their tracks they stop and stair at the fence. They weren't looking at me they were looking to far to my right to be looking at me; and out of the sage right on the fence i can see this bluejay. just minding his own busness, then poof! into a clowd of blue and white feathers. The deer saw this and bolted. I was to bewildered to really care, I wanted to know what just happened.What i had just witnessed was a bobcat distroying a bluejay in fractions of a second! I could just barly cetch a glimps of him halling away his breakfast.
later that day i finally got across the river! i was so excited, I set up an ambush closer to a corner on the river where i could pick my range and instead of all the deer bing in a huge bundle they would come through single file. Deer martchin in single file line are good for several reasons. First they aren't piled so you can look at them all and identifi the one you plan to shoot. Seccond one deer can't get in the way of the other when it comes down to shootin, and finally there is almost no danger of getting caut. The leed doe is the only one really paying any attention, the rest of them are kinda zombies, they just fallow the deer infront of them. So you can draw and shoot really without them knowing, this keeps them from jumping the string and misplacing a good shot.
I really love when a plan comes togeather, and it did holly cow there was a huge 4point in the middle of the line and 20 min before sundown he steps out at 37 yards and stops to pee. I gave little mercy, my 470grain arow drove through his sholders at 340 fps and he bolted like he was shot out of a cannon. usually when they take off like this it can only mean one thing, hart shot. He ran down the hill and through the river on to a point and tries to cross again and he falls in the middle of the 6ft raging river. He is swept away with no chance of recovery. I have a mix of dissapointing emotions and the sight of him floating down the last bend in the river at dark is imprinted in my mind.
I can't tell you how sick I feel, or how everything can go perfect and you make a perfect shot and it strike the bread basket and despite all of that you did't get your deer. A wise man once told me,"If bows and arrows were so grate why did the indans fight so hard to get Winchesters!" He was right, bows are siveraly outclassed by modern rifeles. Next weekend is the opening weekend for rifle antlope, this also means that rifle doe is also open. So go get your doe tags filled and your goats hung up you only have 2 weeks till opening rifle deer, the gratest mack season of them all!
Good luck and good hunting
The next morning i still couldn't get across the river so i went to a place on the river where the deer came to a "bottle neck" and kept their habitual fence crossing within range. Just as light broke, I could see that the deer were on the move, running, just like the morning before. I felt that all famillar warm chill overcome me, it would've seemed that they were going to come right through the hole in the fence just across the river. knowing exactly how far each sage was i checked all of them again just out of nervousness. They were all still on the move from 120 yards to 100 yards to 85 yards, and they halt! Dead in their tracks they stop and stair at the fence. They weren't looking at me they were looking to far to my right to be looking at me; and out of the sage right on the fence i can see this bluejay. just minding his own busness, then poof! into a clowd of blue and white feathers. The deer saw this and bolted. I was to bewildered to really care, I wanted to know what just happened.What i had just witnessed was a bobcat distroying a bluejay in fractions of a second! I could just barly cetch a glimps of him halling away his breakfast.
later that day i finally got across the river! i was so excited, I set up an ambush closer to a corner on the river where i could pick my range and instead of all the deer bing in a huge bundle they would come through single file. Deer martchin in single file line are good for several reasons. First they aren't piled so you can look at them all and identifi the one you plan to shoot. Seccond one deer can't get in the way of the other when it comes down to shootin, and finally there is almost no danger of getting caut. The leed doe is the only one really paying any attention, the rest of them are kinda zombies, they just fallow the deer infront of them. So you can draw and shoot really without them knowing, this keeps them from jumping the string and misplacing a good shot.
I really love when a plan comes togeather, and it did holly cow there was a huge 4point in the middle of the line and 20 min before sundown he steps out at 37 yards and stops to pee. I gave little mercy, my 470grain arow drove through his sholders at 340 fps and he bolted like he was shot out of a cannon. usually when they take off like this it can only mean one thing, hart shot. He ran down the hill and through the river on to a point and tries to cross again and he falls in the middle of the 6ft raging river. He is swept away with no chance of recovery. I have a mix of dissapointing emotions and the sight of him floating down the last bend in the river at dark is imprinted in my mind.
I can't tell you how sick I feel, or how everything can go perfect and you make a perfect shot and it strike the bread basket and despite all of that you did't get your deer. A wise man once told me,"If bows and arrows were so grate why did the indans fight so hard to get Winchesters!" He was right, bows are siveraly outclassed by modern rifeles. Next weekend is the opening weekend for rifle antlope, this also means that rifle doe is also open. So go get your doe tags filled and your goats hung up you only have 2 weeks till opening rifle deer, the gratest mack season of them all!
Good luck and good hunting
