As you can see from the picture I posted above, our favorite deer blind limits view to about 15 feet wide out to 500 yards. I didn't have a doe permit last year, but saw over 40 does go by and a couple of small bucks that I declined to shoot on opening day. The deer only appeared in the road for about 10 seconds, so we don't have time for rangefinders. My rifle is sighted-in to minimize holdover out to 400 yards.
Opening day last year, after seeing so many deer, I decided to not shoot a buck the first day, so sat back and left the rifle, as shown in the previous post's photo. A few minutes later I saw what looked like a bare tree moving from my left, about 130 yards away. It surprised me so much I wasn't aware that it was a huge rack, moving quickly toward the road. I leaned forward and clumsily grabbed at the rifle as the buck entered the opening.
Mounting the rifle as best I could, I got the crosshairs on/near the shoulder, and as it made it to the right ditch, his front legs found the ditch and his back dropped about 6". At the shot the deer jumped high in the air with it's head upward, and twisted around. When he came down, he jumped back toward where he came and ran off. I was so surprised, I didn't work the action to get another shot, but wouldn't have had time anyway.
I though I'd hit it well, but it took me about 15 minutes to find where he'd been when I shot. I finally found a clump of what looked like back hair and a little skin/fat, but no blood. Unfortunately, my rifle was sighted-in to be about 1.5" high at 100 yards, so the combination of the buck's front legs dropping down in the ditch, the trajectory of the bullet being about 1 3/4" high and my clumsy rifle mounting caused the shot to be a bit too high. Following the tracks to the left of the road, I found the new tracks and followed them for a quarter-mile, but didn't find a drop of blood, then lost them among all the other tracks in the leaves.
The next week, we had a tremendous wind storm that knocked all kinds of trees down in our hunting woods, blocking access by ATV. My son finally got some of the second access path cleared out, so we could get a deer out by ATV, but it wasn't easy getting in and out by foot. After shooting a moose a couple of weeks before, we didn't have any freezer room left anyway. Hopefully, nobody else got that buck and I'll get another chance this season.
