My first deer

[staylo]

So, tonight I get home from work at around 3:45 and decide to run out and get in the stand. I have permission to hunt the farm behind my house so I only have to walk about 200 yards to get into the tree.

I get situated and begin the wait. I hear a shot or two off in the distance but not much is going on. As the light starts to turn blue I hear a shot from not far off. I think my up the road neighbor got one. I had seen a small group of doe grazing his property as I passed his place driving home, which is what prompted me to get my gear on. Dusk keeps creeping in and I start to resign myself that nothing is going to happen today. There are only a few minutes of daylight left and what are the odds that something is going to walk in at the last minute.

Just about the time I'm thinking of getting ready to head in I see a pair of ears appear on the crest of the ridge. The field behind my house rises to a ridge and sitting in my stand is like sitting at the bottom of an amphitheater with the hill rising in front of me. A perfect shooting gallery if there is anything to shoot at. I can see the doe's silhouette against the still bright sky off toward the horizon. A couple of moments later another pair of ears appear. Then another. Within about 5 seconds three doe have crested the ridge and are coming down the slope toward me. I take up my rifle, chamber a round, pop the scope caps, and switch off the safety. The does are making their way downslope off to my 2 o'clock, and I'm a righty, so I have to scooch sideways in the seat to get the proper angle. I bring the rifle up and get a sight picture and start to try to figure out which deer I would want to take a shot at if I got the opportunity. Unfortunately, there is a branch that hangs down in front of the stand towards the right side of my field of view so there are a lot of little finger-thick branches right in the line of fire to the entire group of doe. I didn't want to shoot through the branches for fear I might catch one and send the round stray and either miss and scare the herd off or, worse, only wound the doe and have her run off.

Since I have no clear shot I keep moving my sights from doe to doe looking for a clean shot to develop. My support arm started to get tired so I scrunched down a little more in the seat so I could rest my fist on the rifle rest of the stand and prop the forend on my fist like a bipod. I still have no clear shot so I count how many doe have come in. In the end there were nine altogether. One came over the hill bounding like Bambi so I at first thought it must be a young female, but it turned out that she was nursing a terrible limp in one of her front legs. I'm guessing that someone might have winged her somewhere along the way.

By this point about five minutes must have passed and it's getting to the point that there's not much light left to make a shot. Most of the group is still behind the branch and the thought of having to gut my first deer in the dark starts to cross my mind. I'm torn because I might not get another opportunity this season, but I don't want to put myself in the position of making a kill then having problems in the dark. I flip the safety back on. Rats! Nine doe in front of me and I'm not going to get any of them!

Wait. Don't be so hasty. Back behind the scope. A couple are moving down the hill out from behind the branch. Flick the safety back off. Ok. Now someone just turn broadside to me. There's three now that are in the clear enough to shoot if one gives me an angle. They kept turning, alternating between presenting my their butts and facing right towards me. One of the three is the one with the gimpy leg. The thought goes through my mind that maybe I should take that one since it's already injured. Seemed like it might be the 'right' thing to do. Then it crosses my mind that if she's injured from a bad shot she might not be healthy and I might end up with no meat after it all. Ok, don't shoot her. The three are milling around and I keep scoping back and forth between the other two looking for a good shot, while trying to keep track of the gimpy leg doe so I don't get confused. At this point the light is getting low enough that the does are becoming dark patches against the ground. I can still make out their anatomy but I won't be able to much longer. Rats!

I go for the safety again but stop. Then go for it again, but stop. I'm feeling very nervous about the idea of taking a shot at this point of the day. Then one doe turns broadside, grazing. Perfect shot. I have the crosshair on the spot but I'm not sure I should take the shot. If I do I'm going to be responsible to make sure that I don't lose her in the fading light, get her gutted(my first time ever and it'll be dark by the time I get to it), and get her to the processor. But she's just standing there still, like she's tempting me. I put my finger on the trigger. I'm going to take the shot.

Oddly, in hindsight, the only thing I really remember about the shot was the muzzle flash in the scope and the report echoing back to me. I almost don't even remember squeezing the trigger. It's kind of bizarre. Is that what doe/buck fever feels like? Anyway, she jumps and takes off running downhill. Rats! I was hoping she'd drop. I don't want to have to track my first deer in the dark. She goes about 10 yards then turns 180 degrees and heads back up the hill towards the ridge and the rest of the does who have taken off that way. She runs about 10 more yards then I lose her in the low light. Rats!

I think she ran into the brush at the edge of the woods. I safety my rifle, clip it to the rope and lower it to the ground. I climb down the stand as fast as I can and run towards the last spot I saw her. As I get to the last row of corn stalk stubble at the edge of the woods I look uphill and there she is! Thank God she didn't get into the woods. I wasn't sure I'd be able to track her if she'd gone far.

I turn, run back and grab my rifle and run to the house for the tractor. I drive back to her and point the headlights on her and jump off. When I get to her I'm a little thrown off by the fact that there's absolutely no sign that she's been shot. I've never shot a deer before but I've been around when some of my friends have brought their deer in from the stands and you can always see the wound. On her there's nothing. The first thought that comes into my mind is that this isn't my deer and I've stumbled onto another doe that died of natural causes or something, but what are the odds of that? So I walk over and grab her back leg. She's supple so she's fresh. She's mine, but there's still no sign of a gunshot wound. Where the heck did I hit her? So I grab her other back leg and roll her over. There, in the middle of her chest, just behind the shoulder a little red circle appears and then a trickle of blood runs down her side.

Once she was gutted it turned out the shot was through and through. She had a dime sized entry hole on the inside of her rib cage, and a quarter sized exit hole on the inside of her ribcage on the other side. The blood spot in the photo above was the exit wound. The entry wound was invisible in her hair.

I was so focused on getting her gutted I didn't stop to examine the wounds more, but I wonder if both the entry and exit wounds were in between the ribs. I don't have any previous experience of my own to go on, but they seemed like such small wounds for a 150gr 30-06. It seemed like an unusually clean through and through. Anyway, I shot her at about 5pm(talk about cutting it close!) and it took me until close to 6pm until I had her gutted and drug back to the house with the tractor. I've seen experienced hunters gut a deer in just a couple of minutes, but it took me forever. I felt pretty confident that I'd made a hash of gutting her but the guy at the processor said it was a good job so I felt a little better. I definitely need more practice. Now that it's over I am very happy that I took the shot, but I was very conflicted at the time and almost didn't. So, I've got two more days and still have a buck tag so maybe I'll get to try again. Hopefully a little earlier in the day next time!

[Emptymag]

Congrats.

I don't recall much about the immediate moments right after I pressed the trigger on my first (only) buck. I recall the loud sound of the rifle discharging and I recall seeing the deer sort of just hop over a log and away from me over the crest of a rise in the woods and out of sight.
I know that I worked the bolt, ejecting the empty case, and quickly chambered another round "just in case", but really can't remember doing it. The whole thing was pretty surreal.

Turned out he only went about 40 feet. When I crested that small rise I saw him lying there on the forest floor. He lifted his head and looked back at me, as I slowly approached, and wondered if I'd have to shoot again, then lay his head back down, and that was that.



The only time I ever saw a deer near dusk I was standing under an apple tree at the edge of a field and the forest.
As the sun began to fade I watched a deer approach slowly. When I realized it was too late to shoot I just watched and waited for the fun of it. Turned out it was a doe anyway, but she soon spotted me and kept stomping and snorting, and bobbing her head up and down trying to "figure me out".
I waited until she was about 20 feet away and said "BOO!" and watched her spring out of there in a way that only a whitetail can do.

[tarzan]

Good for you. It's always great to hear first time hunting stories. I'm not much on grammar and such but I think you wrote it very well, you definitely had my interest how the story played out.
When I shot my first deer I thought I was having a heart attack, the heart was pounding, I couldn't catch my breath, and I was shaking like a leaf.
After that I was a lot more comfortable taking a shot at them.
Congats on your success and good aim.

[MOUNTAINORACLE]

Congrats!!!

Hopefully the first of many

[Qtrborecrazy]

How gruesome all that blood, just make sure you don't cook all that taste out of the meat. Nice goin Staylo, don't worry about the in and out, just watch out for sharp bone fragments when gutting.

[jerkin]

Great story man and congratulations. I wouldn't have wanted to gut my first deer in the dark, lol. My BIL did his first one by himself a couple years ago and hacked the loins all up reaching in to cut that membrane to let the gut sack come out. Lesson learned. At least he didn't puncture the bladder and let piss run all over the meat like I see a lot of guys do.

One thing concerned me with your story and it may be that you just didn't write all the info down:

I safety my rifle, clip it to the rope and lower it to the ground.

It sounds like in the heat of the moment you may not have unloaded. It's an easy thing to forget, especially with a first deer but try to remember to unload every time you lower your rifle. You have the barrel pointed right back up at you so if the rope slips or breaks and the gun drops it could mean trouble. I've never had a rope break but I did have the plastic clip at the end of the rope break once. Now I bust those off and put a carabiner on.

[staylo]

At least he didn't puncture the bladder and let piss run all over the meat like I see a lot of guys do.

Rats! I forgot all about the bladder while I was cutting stuff loose inside. I have no idea what I may have gotten on the meat. The only thing I do remember about that was that pee was running out of the pee hole while I was cutting around the rectum from the outside under her tail. Maybe, if I'm lucky, she was empty by the time I got inside. That reminds me of about the only thing that Janet Reno ever said that I agreed with. She was talking about the rash of people getting sick from e-coli tainted chicken that was being sold in stores and that people were calling for meat to be irradiated before sale to kill the bacteria. Her response to that was: "If you irradiate poop it will be sterile. But it's still poop. And I don't know anybody that wants to eat meat with filth and feces on it." Hear, hear! Pee may be sterile, but it's still pee. I'll have to pay more attention to what I'm doing next time. I hope I didn't do any damage.

My BIL did his first one by himself a couple years ago and hacked the loins all up reaching in to cut that membrane to let the gut sack come out.

I made a shallow slice into that area while trying to cut the gut sack away and a rush of blood came out. I'm not sure if I nicked one of the loins(I didn't know that's what they were at the time) or if there was a vein or artery there. It makes it hard to see what you're doing when the cavity is filling up with more blood. When I got to the processor, like a dope, I pointed at(what ended up being the loins) and asked "should I have cut those out?" They were the only meaty looking things inside the cavity and I wasn't sure if they were meat or organs of some sort. He looked at me funny and said. "Those are the loins. Some guys take them out themselves because they're right there, but you don't want to throw those away." I imagine they get a laugh after guys like me leave.

One thing concerned me with your story and it may be that you just didn't write all the info down:

It sounds like in the heat of the moment you may not have unloaded.

Thanks for catching that and looking out for a newbie. Because it was so dark there was no chance of a follow up shot so never bothered to chamber another round. I have taken note, though, that the rifle is pointed right at your face as you pull it up and lower it down. There's nothing less comfortable than staring down the bore of a hunting rifle on the end of a rope pointing at your face, empty or not!

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

[Swamp Fox]

Congratulations! Always nice to get that first one!

[Svickstc]

Congrats, hopefully i can exp this for the first time this weeked

[GrumpyBear]

Congratulations on your first seer.


Good luck with your remaining tag.