Finally had the good fortune to take a decent 4x4 mule deer. Man this has been a long time coming. Today was the last day of deer season here in the units I have been hunting in Wyoming. I was actually heading over to Gillette to start working on filling my antelope tags. Now after a full year of seeing deer and really nice bucks right here in town I was feeling pretty low about not filling my deer tag when just 15 minutes out of Newcastle a nice 4 point buck ran across the road in front of my, right across the highway and, so of course I just rolled down the window and let him have it as I was driving by..........Just Kidding. Actually I thought to myself, here we go again, see deer cross the road onto private property. But I noticed there were not any signs or red posts so I pulled out my map and sure enough, there was private ground all around, but the big 2 acre wetland/cattail cover the buck ran into is actually state land. So I figured what the heck. I pulled over, put on the orange, strapped on the gun and headed out. I last saw the buck as he dissappeared into the cattails that were as tall as I was. So I started walking towards the them and he jumped up about 75 yards out into them and started bouncing away. All I could see was his head and antlers on every bounce up. So I tried to time the bounces and fired once, and wouldn't you know it. I missed, so I did what any decent shooter would do, I cranked in another shell and promptly missed again. At this point the deer was about 200 yards away, but he made the fatal mistake of stopping at the edge of the cattails and thats when my third shot made contact. Unfortunately, I could tell it hit him but he did not go down, in fact he kicked it up a notch and covered about 50 yards in a few bounds. Luckily by this point I had found a good dead rest on a fence post and just as he was about to head out of the cattails again and into sage brush he stopped once more and my bullet must have hit the mark hard because he dropped instantly. In all of my excitement of seeing him go down and hopping over the fence to go get him I forgot to mentally mark where he went down. Now let me tell you, when you get out into an acre or so of cattails, everything looks the same. I looked for a half an hour and couldn't see that buck anywhere, so I finally caved in and went back to where I had shot from and took a mental picture of where I though he was and slowly started walking in a straight line that direction. Just as I was about to run out of cattails, to my surprise he jumped up again and started running away, I knew he was hurt bad, but man he was running dead away from me. So this was the first time I've actually tried to butt shoot a deer. Seing as it was the only shot I had and I didn't want a wounded deer to get away I pulled up and put one right in the money maker and it dropped him like a ton of bricks. Then I went up and put the finisher into his neck. Man that deer was tough and took alot of lead. The first one had broke his front shoulder and yet he had still tried to run away on me. Amazing tough animals. Of course this was all the easy part, the real work in draging him to the truck and skinning. Forgot how much work that was. Well, I could finially go home and tell Kerie the marriage curse was worn off (haven't killed a big game animal since getting married....I actually call it the woman curse, but marriage curse sounds more politically correct) .... :)
He's not a monster, but I set my goal on a 4x4 and here he is. All smiles from me. He's not real tall, but a good solid 22 inches wide. 2 more years and he'd have been a real trophy.
This is one fun picture. Finally, that tag is punched.
