Date: November 9, 2019 aOpening Day of Gun Season;
Location: Western Kentucky (our lease);
Rifle: Cobbled Model 70 Classic 7MM StW;
Scope: Leopuld VX5HD 3x15 with firedot;
Load: 160 grain Accubond Chronograph 32007 to 3224 fps;
Game Taken: A 2 year old point with no brow tines and a yearling doe;
Game Missed: A very large and beautiful 130 class eight pointer.

Two for the Freezer:

A reader may recall that I had pictures posted of deer on our lease this summer out in Western Kentucky. Such a reader would recall that I did not expect to get on any of those bucks because I do not bow hunt and the others do. Bow season came and went. One of our group drew back on one of those bucks. The heavy, eight pointer. He is more selective than I, so he let him walk.

We left out Friday after work to meet up at camp. One of our group is a First Sargent and we stay with him in the local armory. My Man loves his trail cameras, "They have not been in to our stands all day and none are there now."

I am generally a pessimist. However, I oddly had a very good feeling about tomorrow. It was to be the coldest day of the year and a frost heavier than most of or snows had already set. "Would you rather they were there tonight or in the Morning."

Despite my adventures and best efforts, I am also the meat hunter of the group when it comes to Whitetail Deer. The entire camp made me swear on a box of Winchester 300 Win Mags that I would not shoot the first doe I saw. There was one last catch. I had been ordered to hunt out of a tree stand. I killed my first deer a two year old broken ten when I was fourteen. All these years later, I have never killed a deer out of a tree stand. In fact, I have not been in more than three tree stands in my life. The stand we set up for me was a ladder stand about 15 feet of the ground set in a stand of oak trees in the middle of a field. I had one of our food plots to my front, a creek bed about 300 yards to my right, and a cut power line to my left.

The morning arrived as promised. Jack Frost had decided to make our part of Kentucky his weekend home. The temperature in my truck thermostat was 20 Degrees. I took my route to the stand. I slung my rifle with the chamber empty over my shoulder and pack. The ladder was sturdy as I pulled myself up. I'll be honest. it took all my bravado to make it up that ladder. The worse part for me is reaching the top and turning to get into the actual stand. Nothing about this was comfortable. There was a hook to hang a rifle by its sling. I dared not use it. There would be no taking a rest in this stand. The bar that came over was too low once brought down. I kept the rifle setting up and horizontal in my lap with both hands on it. I charged the rifle after finding myself in the center of the ten inch mental bench that made the seat. This is suppose to be a two man stand. If the two men were anorexia maybe it was.

The sun was rising directly behind me and had not reached over the trees that made the premature of the field. I looked left and just outside the gap of the power line hugging the tree line was a deer. No more than thirty yards away. The deer upon drawing parallel to the oak tree in front of mine cut right across the field to the oaks. This deer was going to be in my lap. The head came up, and sure enough a doe.

Later my Man in a stand at the top of a tree line said he could see the doe work across and just knew I was going to shoot her. Against my natural urges I did not. I did keep hoping that a buck would be coming behind her. I would rap my head around the tree to see as much behind me as possible without moving my torso from the center of the bench. I would see nothing. The doe walked across out into the field. Then she turned left like she was going to walk behind the stand only to turn back and walk back across from me. She waled a half square across the lower edge of the food plot back to the gap of the power line.

"Sweetheart, I swore I would not shoot the first doe I saw. But you walk back down into these oak trees, and that two." She must have sensed my silent declaration because she turned back into the power line gap and was gone.

I was looking to my right across the field to the creek bed no time at all had passed. A doe darted out of the creek bed up a small bank. She stopped bird dogging into the creek bed. A second doe ran out below her. The first doe than ran to the left behind the stand of trees. The second doe took off to the right.

Something is going on over there. The second doe ran out of the creek bed toward the first doe. Behind her was a buck no one had seen to date. I do not know his dimensions. All I could really tell was he looked like a mule deer with a bunch of tines coming off his third point. stopped in a opening just long enough to get the crosshair near him when he took off after the does. I could see flashes of them running in circles and zig-zaging against the back lighted hard woods.

Movement would catch my attention to the right across from me. A small five point was heading toward the two does and the mule deer looking buck. The five point would stop as three does from somewhere started to march across the field to him.

I was watching the does as they past in a line. Then a heavy antlered buck came from the top corner at a trot. The little five saw him and passed back in front of me covered by a group of ceders standing alone in the field. The big buck never broke his trot. I watched him disappear behind the ceders. I got the rifle in front of the ceders and out came the little five point. He be here soon enough.

These ceders are about ten yards from the center of the food plot. I looked right for some reason and saw a nice buck standing at the edge of the food plot on the other side. This was the fourth buck. I took a bird and the hand mentality and brought the rifle over to this buck.

There were a lot of things in play here: Adrenaline, this was happening really fast. I told my friends I felt like I was playing that duck shooter game on the old fashioned Natendo. Pure fear, I could not bring myself to lean out or adjust. All I could bare to do was stay square in the center of the bench and twist at my upper torso. Finally, range. When all the excitement was over the Leupold range finder said the shot was 245 yards. This shot would be taken off hand. I will let the readers decide which factor was more prevalent. I had to clear some branches from the oak tree directly in front of the one my stand was in. I found the shoulder blade. My thought, not being sure of the range in the moment, was I would drop the bullet right in the lower center of the lungs or center the shoulder blade. I pressed the trigger back. The buck simply stepped right into the treeline. There was no reaction. The does broke out of the food plot back to the other side of the food plot and stopped looking back where the buck had walked in.

"How did that happen. Should I shoot one of those does?" I was staring at the does. The does were starring back at the food plot, so I looked where they were looking.

"A buck!" He was standing at the edge of the plot just outside of the trees where he had walked in. He was facing the does with his body turned and his chest square. I took one glance with the naked eye and saw the beam had more than four points and some mass.

I put the red dot of the FireDot where his neck met the top edge of the shoulder blade. If I did anything different, I crushed the trigger. The shot cracked and echoed. I brought the rifle down out of recoil and saw nothing. I mean nothing. Think of the best disappearing act you have ever seen.

Well, I want out of this cursed tree. However, I am not about to stand, twist, and dig into the overlapping metal that makes the bench of this seat for a hand hold and juggle a rifle. I call my friend. "Come get me out of this damn tree!"

"Just be calm. I am coming." I was offered as assurance.

"I am calm, but I need down."

I once he got off the ridge walking down slope at the edge of the food plot where it abuts the treeline. I saw him stop, looking down in a low spot. It is funny in the how the brain works or does not work sometimes. I thought nothing of this.

When he got to my stand his first words were, "That first buck is a lot bigger than the second one. He came running right by me after you shot at him."

I am still too dense to follow. "There was doe that came out right over there and walked all around me. I thought hard about killing her, but I kept my promise. Second one?"

"The one you killed laying there at the edge of the food plot."

"It is dead?"

"Yeah right there he turned around and pointed. "I can't see him from here, but right there. If you did not shoot it, it died of a heart attack."

I was clearing the rifle as he was speaking. "I am going to reach this rifle down to you and then the pack." He climbed up the ladder to were he could get the rifle without stretching. I dropped the pack to the ground. "Now how do I get out of this thing."

"I put my fingers into the holes in the bench to balance with."

I did this gingerly. My feet found the ground. He handed the rifle back to me. I charged it and we proceeded in a line across one other to the deer. Sure enough, he had manged to turn like he was going to go back into the wood, but did not make a step after the turn. He fell in a little depression which made it impossible to see. The entrance hole on the point of the shoulder blade had not started to bleed. The exit was just behind the elbow of the off leg. He was a different buck entirely than what I had first shot at. His right side had four points and good mass at the main beam for any age. This side had no brow tine. His left side had grown very wired. It was abnormally short with two long thin tines. The third tine was at the base of the beam, but was not a brow tine. In the pictures the two main points hide it. We did not weigh him. There is no confusing him with a 250 plus buck up close in the body, but he was a heavy drag. I have pictures if anyone wants them simply PM your email or IPHONE number. The exit wound is most interesting.

That evening I still hunted out a creek bed flanked by oak trees on the other side of the property. I would kill a yearling doe. I do not have pictures of her. I shot her in the same place, but with no angle the bullet exited right behind the entrance. I would also call another two year old eight point right up to me using my vocal chords as dark became too dark.

One of our members killed a very big bodied four year old eight point last Saturday. It was not the one I shot at, but he has been back on the camera. Another member killed an eight point smaller than mine. Both these deer came from the stand I have described here. We have all seen five or more bucks when hunting this stand.

Last night I made Venison bolognese. There were no three of us. I finished the last of it today after work.

Nice hunt. Congrats too.

Thank you Just A Humter.