Bambistew
Well-known member
Dial up sucks... Here is a small picture of the buck. The milk was a little crusty on his lips. 
Not much to the story. There are deer all over the place where my parents live, getting one to stand still long enough is the hard part, and the second hard part is getting permission to hunt. I usually just shoot the stragglers as the cross through my dads place, but with a little luck we were able to get onto the neighbors property and had the green light for bucks. First time in about 12 years or so...
With basically the run of the ranch, it was hard to make a plan on where to hunt. I grew up hunting this place, and haven't hunted it in years. The last caretaker decided that the only deer that could be shot were does so my ol man had to suffer the fate of that fiasco, by loosing about half his hay crop every year. My dad will let anyone that wanted to hunt on the place, but after a while the deer would just show up after dark. I've seen this place go from over 200 resident mule deer to probably 350 resident whitetails and no mule deer in the last 15 years or so, they’re everywhere. Anyway...
The plan was to head to one end of the ranch that is coincidently bordered by another ranch which doesn’t allow any hunting, which is bordered by another with no hunting… you get the picture, a place that is just filthly with deer. The only down side is the deer typically don’t grow very big. A mature deer will usually be about a 120” 4pt. There are always a pile of deer on this ranch but they usually cross back and forth from ranch to ranch. My dads place is at the end of these petting zoo's so we only get a few that cross back and forth...
We arrived just at first light and glassed up about 30-35 deer out in an oat field but there was nothing really worth getting excited about. We thought maybe we should hop in the truck and ride back down to the other end and hope to catch the another group out in the fields and cut them off before they could get back down to the brush along the river. We spotted this deer on the ride back, I quickly gave him a glance and determined that he was good enough for me. At the time I really didn't know how big he was, just saw that he was a 5pt, and pretty wide. I hopped out of the truck and scrambled about a 100 yards to find a rest. He looked to be about 300 yards or so from me out in a huge flat field. The wind was blowing about 15 mph from left to right and he was standing facing the right. I lined up the x hairs on about his liver area dead center in the middle of his body. My 7mag was sighted in to be dead on at 300 so I figured it was all over but the gutting!
At the shot, the buck looked at me and then back at his doe. Everything happened so quickly I thought maybe I should use this over priced piece of glass, plastic, and crystal hanging around my neck... so I pulled out the range finder and hit him... 530 yards! Holy fugg!!! Should I try the shot again or what I thought to myself?!
I thought if I want to kill this deer, I MUST get closer. So I scrambled about two hundreds yards down a small road and sat down, hit the range finder, 330 yards, anchored the sling and took aim off my knee. I never would have thought that he would have stayed put, but the wind was howling and I don't think he knew what was going on, and he was also pretty pre-occupied with his lady friend.
Well the next shot was true and he flipped over on his back, which by the way makes two 'back flips' on this trip.
So here he is. Gross scores just a hair under 150, and is 20" inside spread, my best whitetail to date.
Not much to the story. There are deer all over the place where my parents live, getting one to stand still long enough is the hard part, and the second hard part is getting permission to hunt. I usually just shoot the stragglers as the cross through my dads place, but with a little luck we were able to get onto the neighbors property and had the green light for bucks. First time in about 12 years or so...
With basically the run of the ranch, it was hard to make a plan on where to hunt. I grew up hunting this place, and haven't hunted it in years. The last caretaker decided that the only deer that could be shot were does so my ol man had to suffer the fate of that fiasco, by loosing about half his hay crop every year. My dad will let anyone that wanted to hunt on the place, but after a while the deer would just show up after dark. I've seen this place go from over 200 resident mule deer to probably 350 resident whitetails and no mule deer in the last 15 years or so, they’re everywhere. Anyway...
The plan was to head to one end of the ranch that is coincidently bordered by another ranch which doesn’t allow any hunting, which is bordered by another with no hunting… you get the picture, a place that is just filthly with deer. The only down side is the deer typically don’t grow very big. A mature deer will usually be about a 120” 4pt. There are always a pile of deer on this ranch but they usually cross back and forth from ranch to ranch. My dads place is at the end of these petting zoo's so we only get a few that cross back and forth...
We arrived just at first light and glassed up about 30-35 deer out in an oat field but there was nothing really worth getting excited about. We thought maybe we should hop in the truck and ride back down to the other end and hope to catch the another group out in the fields and cut them off before they could get back down to the brush along the river. We spotted this deer on the ride back, I quickly gave him a glance and determined that he was good enough for me. At the time I really didn't know how big he was, just saw that he was a 5pt, and pretty wide. I hopped out of the truck and scrambled about a 100 yards to find a rest. He looked to be about 300 yards or so from me out in a huge flat field. The wind was blowing about 15 mph from left to right and he was standing facing the right. I lined up the x hairs on about his liver area dead center in the middle of his body. My 7mag was sighted in to be dead on at 300 so I figured it was all over but the gutting!
At the shot, the buck looked at me and then back at his doe. Everything happened so quickly I thought maybe I should use this over priced piece of glass, plastic, and crystal hanging around my neck... so I pulled out the range finder and hit him... 530 yards! Holy fugg!!! Should I try the shot again or what I thought to myself?!
I thought if I want to kill this deer, I MUST get closer. So I scrambled about two hundreds yards down a small road and sat down, hit the range finder, 330 yards, anchored the sling and took aim off my knee. I never would have thought that he would have stayed put, but the wind was howling and I don't think he knew what was going on, and he was also pretty pre-occupied with his lady friend.
Well the next shot was true and he flipped over on his back, which by the way makes two 'back flips' on this trip.
So here he is. Gross scores just a hair under 150, and is 20" inside spread, my best whitetail to date.
