Please expound on these hunts. They sound super interesting.
Im pretty sure Ive told that story before....but i cant find it anywhere.
Anyway.....This was back when my folks owned a shrimp farm, and I was in highschool. I spent every minute when not working or doing school-related activities (senior year I was only in school for 2 hours a day) out "hunting". Back then I was far more a part of the world around me, and far less aware of it LOL.
One afternoon, I had walked out past the end of our property and into a short, relatively narrow forested strip between the road/trophy park fence, and the mudflats. This area had a huge amount of run off from a major flood a few years before, so there were some 3-4' deep channels cut into the ground, with cane grass well overhead height for me in some areas.
I was walking down one and kept hearing movement the just off to the side of me, which I knew had was another channel. As I was getting closer to the end of mine, the ground had risen up enough that I could see over the cane grass, and pretty much keeping pace with me were a set of small antlers.
I cant remember exactly how I got to "hit him with a stick", but Id probably thought about tackling him and using my knife, or something of the sort, and having had a fight with a doe tangled in the trophy park fence probably didnt wanna play with something that had pokies on his head.....or trying to knife something that was fighting back.
I KNOW the impetus for not shooting him was the fact I only had one round left in my rifle, and no components to load more....couldn't afford 20 bucks a box to buy any.
Somewhere between laying my gun down, and the end of the tall grassy bits, I picked up a decent size keawe breach or broken off small tree....and in all likely hood probably made enough noise the buck SHOULD have known I was there. I set up just back from being visible a little way behind where his trail would come out and waited, stick over my right shoulder (buck would have been coming from my left). The deer paused right at the edge of the grass, then took a step out and looked to his left.....I took a step forward and started to swing, then realized I was either going to hit his antlers, wack him in the side of the head, or change the angle I was going to swing from.....ALL of which took time and he SHOULD have looked back at me....but he didnt and I changed the angle and hit him in the back of the head/neck right behind the ears.
I didnt expect that to actually KILL him either, but he dropped like someone turned off the lights. I still slit his throat, but he head was all floppy im 99% sure getting whacked broke his neck.
The shotgun in the tree was far more impressive in the imagination than in the doing.
This one also happened in high school....I copied this from an older thread.
One of the places I used to hunt was on the border of coastal mangroves and keawe (mesquite) forest, it also was where a rather large ravine dumped into when it rained. Anyway, i was hunting right after a major rain, and the California grass was taller than me.
So i decided to climb a keawe tree that was over a small clearing. Deer came in at an angle i wasnt expecting so i was leaned way out and using my legs to keep me from falling. The 3" 1oz slugs i was using generated enough recoil to unbalance me, and I slipped and fell out.
I was only about 10' in the air so it wasn't horrible. landed on my back with the gun pointing straight up. Took a couple weeks for all the thorn tips to come out tho.
I actually thought of another good one that isn't mine....
A friend of mine managed to take out a trophy class Mouflon with an Ohia tree.
The short of it, was we were on an eradication hunt, and tasked with shooting till we were out of ammo, out of targets, or out of energy. He took a shot at an already spooked ram running flat out down a rocky and forested ravine at about 30 yds, and I THINK hit the rocks in front or just to the rams right. It freaked the ram out so bad he jumped blindly, and straight into the trunk of a rather sturdy ohia tree.
Knocked himself senseless. We only realized he didnt have a hole in him as we were dragging him back to the side by to load up. Im fairly sure I actually have a picture of Vince with his tree kill....Ill go look