First Deer Ever, A Twisted Second Deer, and A Three Scream Night
Please understand I have never taken a deer home that I've shot at. I come from a place of shot guns and slugs where no scopes are used = very low accuracy. I've hit three over several opening days and never eaten any of them and it's been over twenty years since I've hunted due to a bullet hitting the back of the tree I was sitting against…while it was still pitch black out.
A couple weeks ago I went to a deer blind I had not hunted from on the property we bought 13 months ago. I'm pretty sure I got busted at the first blind after jumping a buck on opening day. One side of the second blind looks out over a ravine. On the other side is a six or seven acre field that hasn't been row cropped for two years and has clover around the edge, but was hayed once this year. It had rained several days and I was arguing with myself on hunting that crisp sunny afternoon because I felt I should help my wife pack up to leave the next morning to visit our daughter for a week.
But, at 2:45pm my wife suddenly announces she's going to take a rare late day nap. My brain suddenly blurts a grunt, "I'm going hunting!" and the argument with myself was immediately settled. After changing clothes, I took the four wheeler part way, parking before rising to field level; walking up the rest of the trail and across the open field, arriving at 3:15pm. Around 4:15 an 8 point comes into the edge of the field. Of course, it's like your first time all over again after all these years: the heart rate sky rockets, the shakes begin, the brain ceases to function and I take a shot at him. Gone. Not knowing if I had hit him, having lost all the deer I've ever tried for by going after them too soon and not being able to see this one because of him going into the woods, I made myself wait 20 minutes. On the 17th minute I shut the blind up, get half way down the stairs and notice suddenly the deer was back. Or I thought it was the same one. It was a quick glance in between the branches of a cedar tree that blocks the view. Anyway, I immediately go back up the stairs, open the door, fumble with putting the wooden window flap back up and sit back down on the old office chair...there was so much noise that two doe 300 yards on the other end of the field hastily leave the area, but somehow this deer, just 70 yards away, keeps munching.
It wasn't the 8 point, but it was a mature doe. It walks back out of sight behind the Cedar tree so I sit there for a few minutes hearing it, ready to shoot. When it comes back out I make a huge mistake! I shoot at it. It runs into the wooded ravine so I quickly open the window flap on the that side and am able to see it. It zig zags out of sight going away from me and then suddenly coming back into sight toward me and I see the white fur go down and stay down; memorizing its position.
When I walk in to get it I'm surprised by how small it is and somewhat confused and disappointed that I had shot something so small. Shooting small was NOT the plan. However, I figured out that what appeared, in the heat of the moment, to be a zig zag in the woods, was actually two different deer. I knew I had seen a mature doe, but apparently, they had switched places behind the Cedar tree and the young deer had stepped out. My mistake was not re-identifying it, but just immediately shooting it.
After putting it on the four wheeler, I go look for the 8 point. One note, these two were shot at within 20 feet of where each other stood and within around 25 minutes of each other from the same blind. The 8 point had run into the woods so I didn't know whether I had hit it and the accidental zig zag small one didn't know what had happened. There would not have been a second one if the 8 point had gone down within view. Anyway, I found the 8 point about 15 feet inside the tree line. After all the years of messing up and after not hunting all that time, I couldn't believe I had hit both.
I wanted to surprise my wife about getting the deer, but couldn't lift the 8 point up onto the four wheeler by myself so I decided to text her saying the four wheeler wouldn't start and asking her to get the side by side and come and tow me back. By the time I shot, waited, shot, and then went and found them, put the small one on the back of the four wheeler and dragged the 8 point into the edge of the field it was getting dark pretty fast.
Our texting out there isn't reliable. Well, she didn't get the text telling her where I was AND couldn't get the side by side to start. AND, she wasn't able to jump the battery. AND, in her infinite it's-rained-for-days wisdom, she decides to drive the pick up out to tow me back. BUT, she headed to the wrong blind.
Yes, she took the path that has the worst water flow and mud and got the truck stuck...SIDEWAYS…in high four wheel drive "because low four wheel drive wasn't fast enough."
Her text stating she was stuck came through twice. Thanks ATT for texts that are sent once and come through twice...that's double the great cell coverage at exactly the wrong time!
Well, I finally receive her text that she couldn't get the side by side to start and is bringing the truck. I immediately text her to NOT bring the truck because it would get stuck. Maybe we should use some walkie talkies from now on?
The stuck truck texts show up and I tell her I'll come and get her. She walks back the side trail from the stuck truck. It's pitch black now except for her phone flashlight app and the four wheeler lights. You know, the four wheeler that I told her wouldn't start.
She sees me and thankfully isn't thinking "hmm, I thought it wouldn't start" because she's too busy apologizing for getting the truck stuck. I can't exactly yell at her and make her feel bad about it because 1- I got 2 deer. 2- she's leaving for a week. 3- It's actually my fault for lying to her about the four wheeler not starting to trick her into coming out. 4- I'm smiling ear to ear in the dark and trying not to laugh because of what I'm now trying to pull off at her expense.
The wonder woman who had attempted to come and "git her man." The woman who had my children. The woman who had just spent a couple hours making home made chicken and noodle and had spent more time the day before making lasagna and meat loaf and mashed potatoes and put it all into meal sized containers in the freezer so I wouldn't starve for the next week while she was gone...
Was about to once again meet her match in the prank hall of fame.
I pull up in the pitch black. She puts her phone/flashlight into her pocket before stepping toward the four wheeler. I stand up and get forward as close to the four wheeler's handle bars as possible so she can climb on. She's still apologizing. I'm trying to keep my mouth shut because she will hear me smiling. Yes, seriously, she knows when she's about to get pranked because I can't keep it off my face or out of my voice. I just quietly say it's okay, no worries, let's get back to the house.
We get to the garage. The anticipation is killing me. I get off first. There are NO lights on other than the four wheeler's and they shine forward, not backward.
I know from habit, due to her bad knee, that she always leans back and grabs the metal rack that's horizontal on the back of the four wheeler so she has room to lift her bad leg over the seat to join her other leg before stepping off.
She puts her hands back there and, instead of grabbing the cold metal, they touch something so unexpected that she screams bloody murder.
I was laughing so hard!
The "the four wheeler won't start, please come and get me" lie to get her out to see my deer had backfired into a stuck truck, but turned into the greatest all time prank!
Almost immediately after the blood curdling halloween scream, she realizes I'd gotten a deer and she literally screams "congratulations". I can't stop laughing. And now she's laughing and yelling at me at the same time about what I did to her.
Well, she didn't know about the first deer I hit, the 8 point. So, after we remove the small one, I tell her we need to go check on the truck so I can figure out what is needed for getting it out the next day. Not trusting me at all now, she starts to see through this excuse rather quickly and knows for sure when we drive past the trail leading to the stuck truck. She says, "Wait, I know I heard two shots. Did you get two deer?"
There was no lie available: "Yes, dear." So, we go on up to and across the field, pull up, and she sees the rack on that thing, realizes it's a buck and screams again. I just happen to look all the way to the other end of the field and see two sets of light-reflecting doe eyes wondering what in the world???!!! It takes us a few tries to get that heavy eight up on the four wheeler and we head back down to the garage with her reaching back, this time, knowing something furry is back there, holding an antler of this deer to keep his head off the muffler - first deer, first buck...goes on the cabin wall.
We're back and she now realizes we have to unpack the trunk of the car that she had literally just packed for her trip because the truck is stuck and I need to take the deer to the processor.
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever made this woman scream three times in one night.
It was a great night!
(Pictures are of where/how the 8 point was laying and what it looks like to have a body in the trunk of your car instead of in the back of a mud stuck truck.)
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Congrats on both deer!!!
