So yesterday I talked about my 2019 success shooting ducks. Duck hunting for me is a pretty new thing going back maybe 3 years, as I mentioned I've been hunting for around 30 years now and the vast majority of my time in the woods will have been deer hunting. In those 30 years I had zero success. I'd seen a couple deer but never even pulled up on one. I did have the potential for a shot once but the deer was running directly away from me which is a lousy shot option.
So opening day 2019, snowing like crazy. This is first of December and very unusual for us. There was probably 4" on the ground when we first went out. I was hunting with a group of guys who drive deer and, as I had a doe permit and had never shot a deer before they were kind enough to give me a bunch of choice spots. So it was that after lunch I was stationed at the output to "The Dungeon". A dense section of woods alongside a highway. Buddy Ben called on the radio to say he was on a hot track and coming right for me. I stationed myself halfway up a hill, there were tracks in the valley and tracks on top. I figured from where I was I could adequately cover both.
I was wrong.
Three deer came blasting along the ridge. I pulled up on them but I was only maybe 10 yards away, I couldn't find them, even in the 4x scope on my Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun. Finally as the third deer came by I figured I'd better try. I got a good idea where she was and pulled the gun up again. This time all I could see in the scope was brown, I yanked the trigger.
By the time I put the gun down there was no deer. "Oh rats." I clambered up the hill just to be sure.
Well son of a gun...
The shot went in her behind which is normally a terrible shot but I'd gotten lucky and it had bounced forward making this a humane kill, it lasted maybe a minute after the shot. I'd gotten doubly lucky, if she'd taken another step she'd have gone off a cliff onto the highway...
We recovered the remains of the slug a few days later. Not much left considering it started out as an ounce of lead.
The last Saturday of the season I hunted with the same group of guys and Buddy Ben once again sent me deer. This is muzzleloader season, you might remember my Thompson Center Renegade.
This time I was better prepared, pulled the gun up at maybe 20 yards and fired and the deer ran off. I'd cursed myself earlier in the day by saying I had hit 100% of the deer I had ever shot at. A few seconds later Zack fired too but his was a squib, we joke that the bullet just fell out of the barrel. Those were lucky deer that day.
Fast forward to the day before the last day of the season.
I hunted this one plot pretty heavy, we still had snow and I could tell nobody else was going in there although they had hunted it real hard during shotgun season. Previously I'd had little luck but recently I had learned where the deer were traveling and headed toward that spot. I cut a fresh track and started following. The deer were moving between sections with oak trees, eating the acorns. I found myself in a little glade and looked up to realize there were deer everywhere. There were probably 7 or 8 deer in a 40 yard patch. I was hunting for antlers when they realized I was there and scattered. For the next 2 hours I chased 3 of them. The led me on a merry run but finally, with the sun setting I had to break it off.
That night I pulled the ball out of the rifle and found that snow had packed in on top and melted but interestingly hadn't gotten to the powder.
I attribute this to a good tight, lubricated patch making a good seal in the barrel. Buddy Ben puts a piece of tape over the barrel of his gun to prevent wet powder. I think the plastic wrapped bullets the inline guys use don't seal as well as a patched roundball.
Which brings us to the last day of the season. I'm back in that same area and cut another fresh track. Theres new snow so I know this track is from today. I follow it for awhile until I run across what I can only describe as a deer super highway. We're close to where I had seen the deer the day before and I'm presented with a conundrum.
Do I follow the track I've been following or change over to the super highway? As I stand there pondering two deer run up the hill and stand within 30 yards of me, probably closer to 20. I pull up the old Renegade and with Saturday's failure in my head I aim low, the rifle is sighted at 50 yards, the ball is still rising this close.
The roundball goes in through the ribs on the left side of her body, through both lungs, out the right side and kept on going. I don't want to hear that a .54 with 50 grains of powder is underloaded, if they had been lined up better I'd have gotten two deer that day and been in legal trouble...
So anyway with my success I got a lot of other learning, Buddy Ben helped me dress out the first deer, the second one I did myself. I got to help cut up 5 or 6 deer and then recently we had the annual "Sausage Party".
The party is what it sounds like, get together, grind up meat and make sausage. We had something like 150# of grinds to which we added around 40# of pork fat.
I was unprepared for the volume of sausage we made. Theres hot, Italian, breakfast, garlic and garlic parmesan. I brought home 27#, there were 2 extra packages of hot and I snagged one of them. Angie made meatballs with a package of the Italian and called it the best sausage she's ever had. I'm glad about that, I was worried we'd be stuck with a whole bunch she wouldn't eat.
In view of today's challenges I'm sure glad to know we've got a freezer full of sausage...
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