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Randy's Michigan Whitetail
Michigan's firearms deer season opened Wednesday, 11/15. I saw a doe & a real
nice buck late Wednesday morning but couldn't get a shot. Saw a few does
Thursday.
Friday I started out at first light and quickly saw several deer in the viewing
lane right behind the house, sniffing around where a few apples & some corn had
been. One stepped aside, a nice doe, so since I saw no antlers anywhere I took a
shot at the doe and hit her low thru the rib cage. She bounded out of sight so I
walked on out there, at which time the other deer ran off and the wounded one
with them. As it turned out, my shot blasted thru and ripped the end out of the
sack around her heart, just at the tip. She bled real good but unfortunately
made it across the ditch [property boundary] where another hunter shot her from
a treestand, breaking her spine between the shoulders. That put her down for
good.
When he shot, I was about 50 yards from him, right at the ditch, looking for a
way across since it is very full. I called out to him and asked if he'd finished
off my doe and he said the deer he'd shot wasn't wounded. I figured he must have
shot one of the other deer that were running with her and said so to him, that
I'd come on around and have a look. A couple minutes later he said she was hit
but not badly. Well, then I had to look because the one I shot & was tracking
had been bleeding heavily. Finally I found a fallen tree that would bear my
weight so I crow-footed across and walked over to where this guy stood over the
deer.
After a few informalities about where I work, the fact that I’d known his dad
[his dad had worked there with me before retiring], and this guy also works for
the same company in another plant, I asked whether the deer was his or mine? At
first he said my shot was so low that it didn't even penetrate the chest
cavity.....then when he looked it over carefully and saw it had, he said she
seemed O.K. and would probably have gone a long way had he not shot her. Of
course, that's just a guess so I said why not open her up & see. He agreed and
proceeded to do so. An informal autopsy revealed what I related above. Again, I
asked whether he intended to keep her and, while not being arrogant or
antagonistic, he said he wanted to keep her.
I guess possession is 9/10ths of the law......even though there was no doubt she
would have died soon from the wound of my slug [a Federal hollow-point Barnes
slug] and under these conditions [good 3"-4" snow cover but the snowing had
stopped] I would have surely recovered her before long. I have since adopted
Fred Trost's position, shoot them in the shoulder and put them down immediately,
even if it does ruin a little meat. Better that then what happened here! Sure
wish I'd been shooting my rifle! Double lungs for sure!
As I left him I said that if he or his partners wounded a deer and it ran onto
my property, go ahead and track it down.... At least I still had both my tags.
After I walked away, I realized the guy hadn't tagged the deer....I don't even
know if he had a tag for it! After our outfitter told us about some crazy
stealing an elk from him & his nephew at rifle point last month and with several
unsolved hunter gunshot fatalities in the next county on the news lately.... you
just don't know whether to be assertive or not!
This episode and others like it are becoming increasingly common....and are well
explained in a prophesy pointing to our time in history. You're probably
familiar with it, recorded at Second Timothy chapter three....vss. 1-5. A very
accurate description of the attitudes becoming prevalent nowadays.
[quote]But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with
will be here. 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money,
self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful,
disloyal, 3 having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers,
without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, 4 betrayers, headstrong,
puffed up [with pride], lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, 5 having
a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and from these turn
away. [unquote]
I guess this shows what to expect AND how to deal with it..... :-]
[in response to a question] The gun I'm shooting is a Rem. 1100 12 gauge---2
3/4" with a Hastings Rifled barrel & 4x Bushnell scope. The slugs are Federal
Premium Sabot Slugs with the Barnes 1 oz. HP "Expander" bullets. These are very
similar to the Remington Copper Solids. I've been getting 5-shot groups about 6"
in diameter, right at the top of a 9" paper plate target, at 100 yards.
This deer was moving at a walk, which probably explains why I hit her just
behind the heart instead of thru it....shotgun slugs are much slower than rifle
bullets..... with my rifle her movement would not have required any
compensation, with the shotgun it obviously should have.
On Sunday afternoon, 11/19, my deer season took a great turn for the better.....
:-) After 38 years of hunting, I got the biggest buck of my life. A beautiful
big 8-pointer. .... this is the first deer I've every taken that I felt really
should be preserved--- as in a wall mount. The antlers span over 19" wide, each
beam is 20" long, both of the brow tines are over 8" long and the ones just
above the brow tines are about 9" long. The sides are almost perfectly
symmetrical and none of the points are broken or irregular. The antlers are not
unusually massive but not spindly either, a little above average and very nicely
proportioned. Very large deer, LOTS OF BURGER and a few steaks to compliments
the elk..... :-)
Here’s how it happened…..After the fiasco on Friday I didn’t go out Saturday
morning.. Jackie had spent the night in Greenville with her Mom, I didn’t feel
well rested when the alarm went off and we already had plenty of venison [elk]
in the freezer. So I went back to bed & dozed until I felt like getting up, then
just lounged around the house all morning and into the afternoon. By then,
though, I was feeling restless so I got around and dressed to go out & sit for a
while. It was pretty nice out but it did start to snow pretty good so just
before dark I decided to call it quits for the day and hustled back to the
house. Coming over the knoll behind our house to where there is a clearing you
can see from the house, I spooked one or more deer and heard them go crashing
off thru the woods. "RATS! You sure blew that! I thought to myself"..
Once I got in, I took off my heavy outer clothes and taking the gun to the
garage, took it apart for a quick wipe down, then an anti-rust spray. Back in
the house I put everything away. As I walked thru the house into the den, I
glanced out the window to the clearing I’d just crossed minutes ago and saw a
large deer standing about a hundred yards out there! Rushing back to the other
room, I grabbed & loaded the gun and rushed around to where I could get a shot.
At the shot, the deer went out of sight to my right so I quickly went back and
got my boots & outer clothes on, switched barrels on the gun and loaded it with
buckshot. Then I grabbed a couple flashlights and headed out to track down this
deer.
The sign at the scene of the shot showed that the deer had gone down, wallowed
around in a furrow there, then scrambled up and ran back across the clearing and
into the woods right on the same trail the doe had used the day before.. This
deer was obviously dragging something and bleeding.
The trail went thru the same flooded area, then up a little ridge and on to the
county drainage ditch at the property boundary. By the time I got there, it was
pretty dark and this newer blood trail didn’t look distinct at all, almost as if
the bleeding had stopped. The snow that had fallen lightly all afternoon got
heavier and was quickly filling the tracks. I had things that HAD to be done
before the next morning so I reluctantly left the trail, went back to the house
and my other duties. I was still uncomfortable about the situation but wasn’t
sure just what to do next. The following morning, Sunday, we went to our regular
meetings and off on a short shopping trip afterward, getting home about 2:00
p.m. By a little after 2:30 p.m. I’d fiddled around with my gun a little, gotten
dressed and headed out. I went back to the scene from the afternoon before and
walked the trail again. It was a little warmer so the snow had softened and the
speckles of blood has diffused into the snow more, showing up quite well. Again,
I followed it to the ditch, frustrated.
Deciding to go to the end of the property & sit, I went about 75 yards and
suddenly came upon another blood trail! Aha! I quickly backtracked it to the
flooded area and found that, after coming thru there, the second deer had forked
off, going straight north and across the ditch rather than northwest as the doe
had. At this point the ditch is not so deep and I waded it. Within 60 yards the
deer had bedded down and bled quite a bit, then got up and moved a few yards,
bedding again. It did this 8-10 times in the space of 50-75 yards. As I
carefully picked the trail apart my anticipation grew...I knew the deer would be
close in this dense cover of wild raspberries, goldenrod and assorted swamp
brush.
I’d gone about 100 yards from the ditch when the brush ahead & to my right began
breaking. I pivoted, bringing my gun up as I searched for the source of the
noise. There, struggling to run was a large buck, almost surely the one I’d seen
Wednesday and the biggest of three I’d seen together early in October. As he ran
with difficulty, I snapped a shot off when he passed between a couple trees.
DOWN! OH, WOW! As the deer struggled to get up, I shot again...and missed! Calm
down, Randy!
I walked on over, keeping the deer covered as it struggled but he could not
regain his feet. It looked at me, then turned it’s head and strained to move
forward. At about 10 feet, I drew my Ruger .357 Mag. revolver and finished the
deer off with a shot in the left side of the neck.
Since I’d have to cross the ditch with the deer, I postponed field dressing
until I got him back onto my side of the ditch and into the end of my 200 yard
shooting lane. I didn’t want the inside drenched in ditch water! I also wanted
some photos before the field dressing. Then I hustled up to the house and took
the excess clothing I’d been carrying off, telling my wife Jackie that I’d
gotten a monster 8-point buck. She went back to assist with the field dressing
and loading the buck into the back of our pickup. I figured I’d drive right over
to the MI-DNR deer check station but when I called, there was no answer. Once I
got him hung in our shed, I went in to eat and started to reflect on the events
of the past 24 hours. Later I moved the buck into our garage and looked him over
closely to see how & where he’d been shot. At this point, as I fit pieces of
this episode together, it became even more amazing.
When I shot this deer late on Saturday afternoon, he was quartering toward my
right with his head down, sniffing around for food on the ground or possibly
scenting the ground for does….. He was right where I’d shot the does the day
before. I shot at his right shoulder but my shot apparently went low, creasing
his right foreleg and breaking his left hind leg at the knee just below the
thigh. Since I have an antlerless license also, I didn’t look for or even notice
his antlers against his body. The postmortem examination showed his left foreleg
had already been broken above the knee by a slug fired squarely from his left...
So this buck had 'run' away with both left legs broken! He had traveled about ¼
mile and was doing good trying to get away when I jumped him about 3:30 p.m. on
Sunday afternoon. My first shot then had hit him in the middle of the back,
putting him right down...then the revolver shot in the neck finished it... I
knew from past experience and reliable accounts that deer can get along almost
unhindered on three legs and sometimes they do quite well on two if the broken
one[s] are broken low and/or on opposite sides. This buck had two left legs
broken up high, very close to his body. The vitality & will to live he showed
will always remain in the back of my mind----WHAT A BUCK!
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