ORIGINAL: SilverKype
ORIGINAL: DarDys
1. Buck
2. late morning
3. woods
4. 130 yards
1. Doe
2. Late afternoon
3. field
4. 227 yards
Look at you. Killin' off the last two in central PA. Great ! Where the hell could you shoot out of your treehut to 130 ? Was the PGC dropping him from a chopper and you shot in the air ? 
(I guess down the hollow you could?)
Of course it was straight down the hollow, you know, the one filled with striped maple saplings. And that brings me to the amusing part of the story that you requested in the other thread. Until 9:30 I thought I saw a squirrel, but couldn’t be sure. With no wind and no creatures, I might as well have been staring at a photograph for almost three hours because nothing changed. Then someone yelled, why I didn’t know, but later found out. And then they shot. Close. So close in fact that at the shot I could hear the deer running. It came blazing down off the hill, quartering in. I could see antlers right away. Typically when deer come form that direction, they blast through the thick stuff and bound up onto the old tram road, where they take a pause for the cause to catch their breath. This one was not typical. It hit the contour line where the flat met the bank and followed it right around and out toward the power line, never to be seen again. I could not tell if the deer was legal and even if it were the Jordan buck, I had no shot I would take.
I looked up where the yell and the shot came from and there was a guy standing about 250 yards away on the top line of the ridge, slightly above me in elevation. I never saw him all morning. Soon he was joined by another hunter and the carried on a conversation for a short while. Then the one left and the other stayed. I stood up in the condo and tried to make myself known. He didn’t seem to notice. One of Doc’s slobs, I thought (and I would have been wrong).
In any case this guy stayed up there and was making more moves than a “C†List celebrity on “Dancing With The Stars.†In essence, I figured that I could discount deer coming from that direction and concentrated on the right side. At about 10 AM, two antlerless deer burst down off the power line, went straight across the tramp road, and down the alley in the striped maples. They too never slowed and had it been antlerless season, I could have only watched them go.
At 10:30 I saw movement down on the flat and could see a large deer angling up from the flat toward the bank. It climbed the bank about half way up and stopped, looking back down onto the flat. I glassed the deer and it was an old mature doe. The odd thing was as I glassed it, I thought I saw antlers over the middle of its back for the briefest of moments. I discounted it and wrote it off as wishful thinking.
It stood there for a minute or so and went back down the bank and started to work its way across the flat toward the tangle of grapevines. I caught some more movement and it turned out to be a BB that was following Mom. It took the same path.
I was enjoying watching them, when I said to myself that I had been doing this for a long time and I wasn’t one to imagine antlers if they weren’t there – although clearly neither of these deer had them. They were gone for a good 20 minutes, when I caught movement coming from the same direction. This deer was square, had its head down with nose to the ground, and was on a mission. It picked its head up once and I was able to get a good enough look at the antlers to get my attorney, antler consultant, and attending PGC official to sign off on the “it’s a legal buck†waiver. Now the problem was that it was in all of those maples. In addition, it was far enough away that it also brought the lowest limbs of the beech trees on my hillside into play as well. It was like looking through a screen door. I scoped ahead, looking for a hole, but the only one that I found was about the size of the bottom of a coffee can and there was no guarantee that the buck would ever step into that somewhat of an opening.
For a good 15 minutes the buck would follow the scent of the doe and stop to see if he could spot her. He was still 10 yards from my only opportunity when he cut the tracks of the two does that went straight over the bank and across the flat as opposed to the transcending tracks of the doe he wanted. It was odd, but he actually seemed to have a very confused look on his face like “which way did they go, which way did they go.â€
Unfortunately for him he decided to split the difference between the two sets of tracks and he stepped right through the “hole†I had picked out. At the shot he took off on a full run toward the tangle of tree tops and grapevines. I ejected the case and set up on where his path would take him across the turn in the tramp road. But he never showed. And I never heard him crash.
While I felt confident that I could put the shot through that opening and the distance was manageable, even though 130 is a little far through the woods, there were so many limbs that could have reached out and grabbled the bullet that I was starting to have my serious doubts. After about 10 minutes of not seeing a thing, I looked for my ejected case and there it lie on the seat of the tree stand, right next to the bleat can you gave me. I told you that you would find it amusing. I think I even laughed out loud and could hear you say “dummass rifle hunter.†I think with the way that buck was on that doe, then got confused at which way that it went, a few tips of the can may have drawn him right up out of the maples and onto the tram road – in the open, at 50 yards.
Then I got a bright idea. Since the deer never crossed the road and I never heard it crash, it might simply have run a short distance, confused form the direction of the shot, and was standing on the flat trying to decide what to do. I thought, what the hey and tipped the can twice, sending out a “we are over here†signal.
After 20 minutes, I gave it another tip. Nothing. It was worth a shot. Wanting to see which tree I mortally wounded I climbed down and headed across the tram road and over the bank onto the flat. I no sooner hit the flat when a buck bounded across the flat toward the power line. I could see antlers, but could not tell if it were legal. Even if it were, there was no shot that I would take. A few moments later, there was a shot about 500 yards away. Then there were three more farther out. And then another two at the top of the next ridge.
At this point I was booting myself in the behind hard enough to leave a mark. My thoughts were that I was correct, the buck had stopped and the bleats were giving it a direction to go, but I had not waited long enough. Really, really, dummass rifle hunter stuff.
Trying to figure out which limb I hit, I went to where I thought the deer was at the shot. There were kicked up leaves that gave a clear path to follow. I carefully followed for more than 100 yards with no sign of a hit. I was shooting my .240 Weatherby Magnum with 95 grain Ballistic Tips. While deer do often run a short distance, maybe 30 yards at most, with that cartridge, there is always a telltale sign of a hit because of the size of the exit wound.
So I back tracked to where I started. Getting down to deer level, I looked toward the condo and there was no way I could have put a shot through that stuff, so I knew it was not the shot that I tried. I shuffled around in small circles until I cut another set of kicked up leaves. I followed those for about 100 yards, again with no hint of a hit. I did the back track thing again and again when at deer level, there was no way to but a bulldozer bullet through there, let alone a light, high velocity one. This was not the spot either.
I made a few more ever expanding circles, because all the spots in those saplings look alike and found myself a few yards from where the tram road bends and where the deer should have crossed. I stopped kicking myself long enough to calmly state to my mind that you used to be very good at this. If you think you had a shot, you had a shot. And if you had a shot, you made the shot. Now think. I could see then condo form where I was standing, so I visualized the corner of the window that I shot from, traced a line with my finger that would represent the trajectory of the bullet to the approximate area where there deer was at the shot, and then envisioned the direction the deer went after the shot. I turned around, walked 15 yards along the downhill side of the tram road and there lie the dead buck. It was headed right where I thought it would cross, but never made it.
Not being satisfied, I followed the very obvious blood trail back to where the hair from the impact was scattered on the ground, about 10 yards closer to the stand than the last trail that I followed. Getting down to deer level, there was the hole I thought I saw from the other end, plain as day. The confusion as to where the deer was at the shot was compounded by the saplings, which were all the same, and the 15 or more stumps in the immediate area that were also all about the same.
After retrieving my stuff and closing up the condo, I went to dress the deer and just as I started, here comes a hunter. He told me that his buddy was on the hill and had radioed him that there was “some nut†walking around in circles out in front of him, so he walked down to see what was going on. Getting that slob image in my head, I told him that I did indeed see his buddy up on the hill and wondered if he had not seen me. I was informed that they had not seen me at all and had no idea I was there. I led him about 10 yards from where the deer lie onto the tram road and pointed to my tree stand. “See that phone booth looking thing right there? That is my tree stand. It has been there for three years. Now look to the right of it. See that old permanent stand. That was built there with the permission of the current landowner’s grandfather in 1972. In other words, I have had permission to be on this section of private property for 39 years. And my father has had permission to be there since 1947.â€
He said he was sorry, that they had no idea I was there (remember I didn’t see his buddy either until he yelled and shot), and had they known, he would not have put his buddy there. He did go on, however, to tell me that he really couldn’t have taken his friend much farther because he was 78, had bad respiratory problems, and had an asthma attack this morning, so they stopped the first place that he could see. I asked him why his friend yelled before he shot. He just started laughing. He said that the deer burst out of some green briars and darn near ran him over, so he basically yelled in self defense.
Thinking back on it, when I arrived, it was light enough and I know where I am going enough, that I didn’t use any light going in. I hadn’t seen him and he hadn’t seen me. In short, he wasn’t a slob, just an older gentleman that went as far as he could, found a spot where he could see the woods, where he saw no other hunters and he sat down.
So even being a dummass rifle hunter worked out.
As for the antlerless deer, that was shot way closer to home and where some folks are having a “deer problem.†Before I shot it, I saw a buck, which really didn’t matter because 1) I had one already, 2) the agreement to hunt there is antlerless only, and 3) even though it crossed an open bean field at about 75 yards, I couldn’t tell if it were legal. But it was unique. It had antlers that were not huge, but they swept up to the top of the ears before turning forward. At the ends of the main beam they crab clawed into a small point, but they were about three inches wide at the tips, even though the main beam didn’t have any mass. There were no other points visible except for a small, about four inch long, drop tine on each side. I had never seen a live drop tine buck before, so it was pretty unique to me. If I had the opportunity to take the deer – no already having tagged a buck and agreed to no bucks shot, I would have had to let it go because it really didn’t “seem†to have three to a side because of how small the crab claw point was. But it was really cool to see.