This thread will be a place for us all to share hunting stories from our lives and of course with permission from the story owner(?) post others experiences.
We can [I]TRY[I] to keep the story as true as we can but hey, one of my favorite sayings is "I fish, therefore i lie"
I suppose that any of the members of the armed forces past and present can tell stories of that illusive sniper or tracking a band of Vietnamese to their camp etc.
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The story of my 2010 Deer Hunt, Dec 2010.
Opening weekend was fast approaching and i was excited as this was going to be my first Legal hunt after graduating from Hunters safety courses the previous summer. My rifle was clean, sighted in, my Orange clean and properly aired out. I had bought a box of hand warmers, ammunition, and an Orange Hat to keep my head warm.
Then i got the news: my buddy's dad couldn't take me with as his GF decided she wanted to go
So opening weekend came and went. I sat at home, bored out of my mind until a warm day came and i took my younger sister to the nearly deserted firing range and let her try out a few of my rifles to see which one suited her best (Czech SKS).
Then i get the phone call i had hoped i was going to get someday, My buddy was coming back early and told me, not asked, but told me we were going hunting. Excitement coursed through my veins in anticipation of the next few days of waiting. Then it hit me, where were we going to be hunting??
The answer was simple, we didn't want to have to camp out, so somewhere local was preferred so we had a warm bed every night, now my friend and i grew up in relatively the same area so we know of a lot of decent places to hunt any type of game be it Pheasant or turkey, to Deer and Coyote.
Being that my Girlfriend lives out in the middle of BFNE and the surrounding areas on the way are deemed Public hunting land we figured since we had family in the area we could hunt there.
Crap! I don't own a shotgun!
So a quick trip to the local Gun emporium proved to us that the price of Shotguns goes up around hunting season and i couldn't afford the one i really wanted
Going to another bigger store we hit up the used shotgun section and i picked up a few to try out the "feel" I was deadset on buying a Bolt action 16 gauge as i had used one to shoot barn swallows out at my sisters farm a few years back and the gun completed me. Well my bud had a different idea, he wanted me to get a Remington 870- express since it was a 20 gauge and he had a youth model and in the interest of saving ammo.
Then i saw it- the dark black barrel, the light hit the scope just right and twinkled like this -*
I knew i had to have it, The mossberg was a perfect fit for me in weight and length as i have a harder time shooting smaller rifles and shotguns near accurate.
a fair price for a used non sabboted barrel shotgun with a scope, sock and two boxes of ammo later, i was flying to the range to try it out.
It was insanely accurate!
I figured i would have a nasty advantage over the wary deer in the fields and streams of the Wisconsin Tundra with my hammered tracking skills and the addition of the scope.
Now, i am a hunter that feels that sitting in a tree stand all day is not hunting. It takes the Hunt out of it, so i have spent the last ten years since my first walk along with my brother in law when i was 9 learning the ways that the deer communicate, the way they walk and how to avoid detection by their powerful ears and noses. I can honestly say i can get to within about 20 yards of a Doe and her fawn before she sees or smells me and runs away(multiple witnesses to testify this happened 3 times).
So fast forward to the night before. I am set with my license, now i need a tag holder. We drove to 5 area walmarts to try to find one and NONE had any. So after some quick thinking, i fashioned one out of Blaze Orange duct tape and a windowed pencil pouch. threaded with a boot string and i have a legal back tag holder! Bought two more boxes of slugs and went to the apartment to catch a few hours of sleep before we headed out.
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MY opening day
Sometime during the night the power in the apartment complex went out and the alarm clock was reset
We overslept sunrise by an hour and a half add on a 45 min drive and you get the picture.
We spent that whole day walking all over gods creation looking for sign, any sign at all that any animals had been in the area recently. What was Erie was the fact that we didn't even hear any birds or other wildlife, no field mice, no crows in the distance not even the distant moo of a cow ready to be milked.
We got so bored that we even walked up to another man hunting in the area and wound up chatting about the lack of the supposed overpopulated deer population.
We called it a night shortly after not even having heard the usual distant shotguns blast.
THE NEXT DAY
My younger sister decided she wanted to come along and we outfitted her with gloves, a hat and my spare orange jacket. She couldn't hunt but she could provide noise in our next tactic- a deer drive in the long grass on the Killsnake river. We walked a total of 5.7 miles that day with no sign, not even a cold pile of poo or a scrape mark in the dirt.
My buddy's uncle has some wooded property and the river runs right through it and a railroad bridge is the crossing on the left side and the farm field on the right the other. His father offered to take us on a ensnaring drive being that we had 4 people in our group. One person from each of the 4 polar points converging on the center to drive any deer in the area into the waiting gun barrels of the Hunters.
I was to take the southern side of the riverbank in the woods and had the half mile walk to get to my starting point. Beginning this walk in his uncles backyard i saw them- two does and a buck. Now thinking with courtesy in mind i did not raise my gun nor fire a round although i was close enough to see the strands of their winter fur poking up around their ears. I figured his uncle did not want people shooting in his backyard so i began my Last of the Mohicans run after them, (yes the theme was playing in my head the whole time
) I could not see them anywhere, having not heard any shots i got on my cell and called my sister to report the news and to relay it to the others. Walking to the glen where i had sat in Vietnam Issue Tiger stripe camo, watching the bedded deer go about their lives in the off season a barrage of gunfire was heard! BANG BANG BANG my buds 20 gauge went off, the slugs slamming into the trees around and above me showering me with splinters and flora. I hit one knee and tracked the lead doe as she ran the rivers edge, BANG! the Mossberg sounded beautiful with each of the 7 shots i sent after her. Not one hit! Then i heard it, i heard the cannon like percussion of the semi auto 12 gauge Remington 1100 custom my friends father was using. Then the chorus of cheers!
Quickly i reloaded and began running the half mile back to the yard and the rest of the 1/4 mile to them, The does presented another shot! Less than 15 feet away they stood frozen with fear as i raised my weapon and opened fire having to do a "Clyde's side aim". Another 3 rounds and they were gone, no sign of blood, no fur, only a torn up patch of earth where my slugs had torn a hole about 4 inches in diameter.
Cursing under my breath at the loss of a shot i walked back to the group to see the amazing sight of a 10 point 235lb Whitetail Buck laying in the Field with a proud hunter standing over it as his son began the gutting process.
While not the biggest buck i helped take it was a decent animal and field dressed weighed about 189lbs. The Shotgun slug had hit it in the right rear flank and embedded in its spine (this gets important later). Loaded it into the truck and we drove back to our base camp after an agonizing search for any sign of a wounded or dead doe.
Later that night we made a discovery, while butchering the deer we found the slug that had taken it down (3 shots from a .357 patrolman special took it out when it was down) and it didn't look right, for one, the animal had been running all out towards my buds father and the slug entered the right side, he was on the left, there was no exit wound, we held the slightly deformed slug to my 12 gauge barrel and it was too small, the 20 gauge however the back of the slug fit perfectly! My buddy had taken his first 10 point buck! Yes his dad tagged it so it was registered as his, but the mount is now in the den at the house there.
For my cooperation i got to take a few steaks and a 15lb roast that i am STILL slicing bits off of to cook up for Omelets or stir fry!
This hunting story does not end there however and the next two days were just as eventful and even include me injuring myself! Those storys are for a later time however as my eyes are having a hard time staying open as it is.
I hope you all enjoyed my First hunting story and i want to hear yours!
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| | | quote | Originally posted by pontiackid86:
Also what does yoga and farming have to do with eachother?
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