culmination

For the last hunt of the year I decided to forsake the familiar woods of the cabin to spend time with my father. Not that I was giving up anything in quality, for my father's place is just about the best place I know to deerhunt. The last few years has seen him tag a monster buck every year. But this year he was under the weather and had hardly hunted. With a pair of deer in the freezer already I was as much interested in spending time with him as I was hunting.

The weather forcast for the late season muzzleloader hunt was nice. Too nice in fact and I didn't have very high hopes. The first morning I saw a doe and her two fully grown fawns cross the path about about a hundred yards away on the walk back out to the house. I probably could have taken a shot as the doe stopped and stared before walking off but I was using an old fashioned "real" muzzleloader with open sights and didn't feel comfortable with the shot. All morning turkeys had called thru the woods but all I saw were squirrels. Well and a small herd of cattle that milled around about fifty yards out before wandering off. Another odd moment in a year of odd moments.

That evening before I left for the tree Dad had offered the use of his inline muzzleloader equiped with a scope. You know one of those that shoot like a high powered rifle out to close to two hundred yards. But I refused and took the old Thompson center. All was pretty quiet for over an hour then out in the field I saw a doe. And another. And another till there were six. Now I was up a tree about fifty or sixty yards inside the woods and they were on a route that would take them by at about seventy five yards. Right off I was thinking you big dummy if only you had taken the inline. The lead doe then stopped at about eighty or ninety yards looking out over the huge field they were in nervously. I seriously considered shooting but held off. Suddenly she spooked and ran the other way. But then she looped back into my woods followed by the other does. And there they stood for several long minutes before they began working my way. I picked out the biggest one and just let them come. Closer and closer they came till they were well inside bow range much less gun range. The big doe stopped and looked back the other way just as I centered her chest in the iron sights. At the shot she disappeared in a huge cloud of white smoke from the muzzleloader. Then she ran about seventy yards and stood there looking back. I was just wondering how I could possibly have missed when her legs buckled and she went down. It had been a long and eventfull season even with no big buck. I had passed on two smaller bucks waiting for the big buck that was rubbing trees as big as my leg at my cabin. But I had spent alot of quality time in the woods and had done my part in balancing the herd and feeding my family by putting three does in the freezer. A successful year in my book.