Instead of doing a month by month recap of my hunting season after early October I've decided to highlight the small failures I encountered on the way to today, the day after Christmas, as I prepare for my final hunting trip of the year that starts this afternoon. All in all this has been a freezer-filling year for me, being blessed with 3 does and a spike (that I thought was a doe actually) and seeing 27 deer to date, making for one of this public land hunter's best seasons ever. But along the way I ran into missed opportunities that I would love to have back, with none more so than the one that happened last Thursday. First, however, we must start in October.
Halloween night found me rushing home from Kentucky to prepare for the Pee Dee Wildlife Refugee Rifle Hunt #2 that my buddy Seth and I got drawn for. The forecast for the next day was looking rainy but I went to be hoping for the best. Fortunately we were able to stay dry in the morning, outside of our own sweat as the humidity was almost unbearable. As soon as we got back to the truck after our morning hunt however, the showers began. As luck would have it, a mere half-mile from where we just left stood a doe feeding in a fresh green field on private land, so we were excited about the possibilities for the afternoon as long as the heavy stuff stayed away. Having never been to the refugee before, I was having Seth drive around to various places so he could see the land when all of a sudden, on a dirt road in the middle of fields beside the river, Seth yells "Buck!" and I look over to see a nice 6 or 8 pointer jumping up from his bed right beside the road and take off running through the field. My attempt at getting a gun uncased and loaded was unsuccessful but knowing a buck was in the area we decided to hunt somewhere around there that evening.
After a quick scouting trip in another section of the refugee we found ourselves trying to avoid getting soaked before we could get our blind setup on a field edge; we were unsuccessful. Thinking that Seth, watching a field facing away from the road, would get a shot at his first deer, I sat there through out the evening watching birds fly around in and rain fall on the field between myself and the truck. Lo and behold, at 5 p.m. I looked up and here came two deer running our way! I get the gun up and scope on them to see it is two does headed straight for us. I wait til they slam on the brakes, the lead doe 75 yards from us. Settling the cross-hairs on her neck, I squeezed the trigger and all we heard was "click" and I realized I never loaded the gun - in fact, I hadn't even put any bullets in the receiver! Easing the bolt back, I fumbled in my pockets and finally got a bullet out and into the gun. But closing the bolt sent the second doe, that had actually hung around, into the hedgerow she was standing beside. Upset, I was sitting there kicking myself when out popped on the does from the aforementioned hedgerow. However, trying to pick her up in my now foggy scope was proving tough and when I finally realized I had the cross-hairs on her she bounded off away from us, never stopping before she turned back into the hedgerow. Little did I know that was just the beginning of my "fun" season.
-C.B.
After a quick scouting trip in another section of the refugee we found ourselves trying to avoid getting soaked before we could get our blind setup on a field edge; we were unsuccessful. Thinking that Seth, watching a field facing away from the road, would get a shot at his first deer, I sat there through out the evening watching birds fly around in and rain fall on the field between myself and the truck. Lo and behold, at 5 p.m. I looked up and here came two deer running our way! I get the gun up and scope on them to see it is two does headed straight for us. I wait til they slam on the brakes, the lead doe 75 yards from us. Settling the cross-hairs on her neck, I squeezed the trigger and all we heard was "click" and I realized I never loaded the gun - in fact, I hadn't even put any bullets in the receiver! Easing the bolt back, I fumbled in my pockets and finally got a bullet out and into the gun. But closing the bolt sent the second doe, that had actually hung around, into the hedgerow she was standing beside. Upset, I was sitting there kicking myself when out popped on the does from the aforementioned hedgerow. However, trying to pick her up in my now foggy scope was proving tough and when I finally realized I had the cross-hairs on her she bounded off away from us, never stopping before she turned back into the hedgerow. Little did I know that was just the beginning of my "fun" season.
-C.B.
RSS Feed
