- Joined
- Jan 28, 2003
- Messages
- 13,331
My wife Kim has been hunting with me since before we were married. She has served as a tracker, packer, wrangler, cook, camp security, counselor, tent-temperature control expert, emergency medic, financial consultant, tire chainer, guide, spotter, alcoholic beverage moderator, critter taker aparter, horse whisperer, and overall a wonderful person to spend time with. Kim is a great shot with a rifle, she's a natural who can pick up a rifle and shoot it, she always has been. And until recently has had almost no interest in shooting a critter for herself. With the exception of one doe antelope 6 years ago has not ever shot a critter. Two years ago she drew a coveted Rocky Mt Goat tag and we hunted above tree line for The Whole season but never got a chance at a goat.
This year Kim drew a buck tag down in the south eastern part of the state. She told me that she'd like to try and get her first deer. Things were going great, Kim arranged her time off for opening weekend, we got the rifle sighted in and we started making preparations. One week before season started I had an unfortunate accident and ripped some tendons in my left arm, it was serious enough to require an immediate surgery! I went into surgery the day before season started. It looked like deer season was not going to happen.
Fast forward 7 days I'm feeling pretty good, and we decide to run down to the unit 3 hours away and give it a quick go for the afternoon. On the way down I ask Kim what her trophy expectations for this hunt are. She tells me that she wants a legal buck, but the most important thing is to make a good shot and a clean kill. Day one we hunted all afternoon and saw one mature buck but he was walking through the trees at over 350 yards, so we enjoyed watching him with no chance for a shot. Kim had to work the next day so we drove home that night.
The next day we decided if we could leave the house by 1:00 PM that we'd run down and try to hunt for the last afternoon even though we'd only have an hour or so once we got there. We hit the hunting area at 4:30 with legal sunset at 5:45! I was thinking that there was no way we were going to pull this off but we threw on our backs and proceeded to the area where we'd seen some deer the night before. The wind was in our face, the sun was at our back and we were in good country. Within 20 minutes we were seeing deer. We jumped a whitetail doe out of her bed and then watched another whitetail move from the brush into some corn. It is now about 5:30 when we jump another whitetail doe out of the corn and she trots off into the brush. I watched her through the binos as I always do. You never know what a critter running through the brush is going to kick up.
Sure enough! As she trotted off into the brush I see another deer several hundred yards behind her stand up out of his bed. I whisper to Kim, "there's your buck!". She says "really?" With a doubting look on her face, "really" I reply. I hit the range finder and he's 439 yards away. So now we are in a bit of a conundrum. We are out in the open, the deer is up and we need to get at least 200 yards closer. I tell Kim that this probably isn't going to work but, we are running out of day light, it's our last day to hunt, let's give it a shot!
The two things we have going for us, the deer is watching the doe, not us, the wind is good and the sun is low and behind our back. I use an old trick that I learned in Africa and slowly and calmly start walking at a diagonal towards the deer but not straight at it. Much to our amazement it worked! When I set up the shooting sticks and range the deer he's 246 yards away. Kim sets her rifle up on the sticks and try's to settle in for the shot. She is standing on a tripod shooting stick and is having trouble getting solid, I brace her elbow and things settle down immediately. I hear the safety slip off, she's nervous. I tell her that she can do this, shoot only if you're rock solid. I hear her breath out slowly.
At the shot the buck kicks his hind leg out and spins and stops with his butt to us. I know it's a good hit, he stands there momentarily then disappears into the brush. The sun is now disappearing at a rapid rate and out light is gong away with it. We quickly head over to where the buck disappeared and are relieved to find good thick blood on the trail. After a short tracking job we find Kim's first deer laying dead.
She made a perfect shot.
