Hunting with Sean, my grandson who you’ve met before in several of my posts, in MaMaw’s blind, we climbed up into it and hadn’t waited 15 minutes, when a big 7 pointer walked up behind the feeder.  Sean was a little nervous and surprised that the buck had just walked up.  He already had the .243 stuck outside the window, as he moved the rifle slightly and waited and waited and waited until the buck walked off into the thick stuff.  Asking him, “Why didn’t you shoot”, his reply was a series of reasons why he didn’t shoot, mainly nerves I expect!

Within 5 minutes, an 8 pointer showed up and Sean was ready this time.  With very little coaching, BOOM, the .243 sounded off, I wasn’t expecting the shot so I didn’t see the buck jump, but he ran off behind the feeder at speed!  We waited the 15 minutes, they seemed very long, then we closed up the blind and walked to the feeder.

Good, there was a spot of blood and it looked like some lung mixed in, this wouldn’t be a long search.  We found the buck out in the open, the shot was right through the lungs and he hadn’t run less then 50 yards.  Here’s the picture with Sean smiling and his first buck.

Last Wednesday, hunting with Randy, he addled a buck, a nice one, at a friends place, knocked him down, but he jumped up and no worse for ware ran off.  Addled was the word we used because obviously, he hit a wire of the feeder and the shot must have glanced up to the horn area.  We searched and searched, but no buck, no blood trail either.  Going back on Thursday AM early, no sign and no blood from the buck, so I guess he wasn’t hit very bad!  My neighbor hunted for him Thursday morning also, no buck or, a good sign, no buzzards circling.

Then the bad weather hit, I was frozen in my place, ice on the roads, ice on my driveway, ice everywhere, but lucky for me no power outages, I was frozen in for 2 days.  No deer hunting either, way too cold.  During this cold snap the temps got below 10 degrees, too cold for me!

The first buck just jumped over the fence to the feeder.  The feeder went off and he just had to get some corn and protein.

We’ll continue with a real nice 3-1/2 year old buck, he’s a 7 pointer now, but in a year or 2 he’ll be a 10 or 12!  He came right up to the feeder and jumped over the closed gate, caused by the Barbary, Sheep you know.  They’ll eat anything and they mop up on the protein that’s mixed in with the corn
   
These 2 sheep just showed up one day and are still hanging around.  I’ve closed the gates to the feeders, maybe that will stop them!

Funny thing, this yearling deer is all bowed up at the 10 pointer outside the feeder.  There is a good 8 feeding inside, but on the outside this little one is getting in trouble.  The 10 on the outside looks just as big as the 142-6/8 buck I shot on the November 8th.

An 8, point buck showed up at the feeder with a 2, pointed brow tine.  He’s just 3-1/2 years old now and he’ll be a real good one at 4-1/2 or 5-1/2.  Maybe the corn/protein mix has something to do with it?
    
Then a nice 8 pointer 3-1/2 also, showed up at the feeder.  He’ll be a good one too!

Bucks, white tail deer, do funny things, this buck that I shot on Saturday, November 9th was more interested in fighting than chasing doe, this was his downfall!  The second thing that led to his downfall was that he was hanging around the feeders too much, hanging around in broad daylight.

Opening morning, November 4th, Randy and I hunted and rattled in the tree stand along the back of the property, but didn’t see a shooter.  In fact we didn’t see anything!  Then on the second morning Wesley and I saw a lot of deer, several bucks, but still no shooter!

On November 6th this “shot” showed him checking in at another feeder, thinking he was safe since I had hunted this blind on opening day afternoon (and he didn’t come around then). This “shot” and the following “shots” were all taken on successive days.

The next “shot” shows the buck leaving the feeder on November 7th he thought, if bucks think, that he was double safe here.

This “shot” shows almost all of his 11 points.

Then on November 8th, back at the same feeder, feeling real safe, this “shot” caught him.

My guess is that he was 5-1/2 or 6-1/2 years old.  Mickey Donahoo will do the taxidermy and he will age him then.

On Saturday the buck made a fatal mistake, he came to a grunt call and I was left with this picture of him laid out in the back of my truck!  Bucks do the stupidest things when they’re rutting!

The first week of deer season was a bust for us.  We saw very few deer and bucks were scarce.

Saturday morning, November 9th, dawned clear and bright, but Tim Albee called and said that he’d hit a deer driving over from Copperas Cove and that he wouldn’t be hunting with us, that just left me to save the day.  The first deer, way before shooting time that came to the feeder near Mamaw’s Blind was a buck and a spike, with the binocs they were just gray looking blobs.

Day was fast approaching, the light was getting better and now, I could count the points on the bucks.  The first, a nine pointer was one that I’ve seen around the feeder back in September, a good one, but, as the Texas Aggies say, “Wait ‘till next year!”  He will be 5-1/2, will rut this year and be much bigger, that is if he makes it until next year. The other was a spike that I would end up saving for Will.  He and his dad will be over next week to shoot one.

The 9 pointer was edgy, he knew a bigger buck was in the area, the spike, with his non-swollen neck was happy just to be feeding. Just then, a doe flashed by behind the feeder and I knew a buck would be behind her. All I saw was a tail end look at him and he was huge!  Sticking the grunt call out of the window, I blew a challenge grunt, three blasts, grunttt, grunttt, grunttt, then nothing.

Shortly, not 3 minutes at the most, the big one came back I centered the scope just behind his shoulder and fired.  He hopped, then took off at full speed, I waited for 15 minutes, climbed down from the blind and began my search.  He ran at full speed for 50 yards until he couldn’t run anymore then crumpled under some brush.

My job now was to get him out of the brush to where I could load him up and tag him. Dragging the buck for 50 yards was no small chore, I did it and then it hit me, I couldn’t call Layla, so I walked back to the house to get my truck. Danny and James, my closest neighbors were gone and as I was walking up I saw James’ pick up heading down the County Road, also I walked past the tractor that was on the fritz. It almost had gotten me to the house last night, almost!

Calling Laura, luckily she was at home, and she would wake up Mikayla and be right out. Twenty minutes later she drove up.  All three of us loaded the big buck into the back end of the truck, then Mike drove up, he was going to fix the tractor, and he gutted the deer and I took it down to get it scored.  It scored 142 on the B&C score sheet.

This buck had some mule deer in him. Notice the back left tine, it really is an outgrowth of the G-2 and the right tine is exactly the same, this is common on mulies!  The buck also had a kicker, it can barely be seen in the photo on the brow tine, he was a 11 pointer

The buck I shot last year, almost to the day, scored 142.5, his picture below.

I know that Layla was looking down from Heaven saying, “All the good bucks are shot out of my blind!”

There were worlds of mourning dove coming in to feed on the grain field stubble, in a field, on an Indian reservation in the Phoenix area. This particular reservation allowed hunting in the grain fields, but we had to be careful not to go into the “No Trespassing” areas that were well marked with signs.

My family, Brad, my ex wife and I, were fast into knocking down these twisty fliers, Randy and Suzanne were doing the retrieving and our bird count was rising. This afternoon, we were the only hunters out so we were hunkered down, a hundred yards apart, along an irrigation ditch, now dry. Many of the birds flew over us as they came into the field to feed, providing some easy overhead shots.

We took a break to count up our birds and our tally indicated that we had knocked down 31, five short of our combined limits. Shooting time was just about over so we let Brad, who was an excellent shot with a shotgun and the reigning Arizona, junior state champion trap shooter, finish out the string.

We set to breasting out the dove, leaving both wings on and dusk was settling in by the time we finished. Rinsing our hands, we loaded everything up into the camper, kenneled up the kids and drove off the reservation, we thought. Coming to a cross road, we turned, we thought, the correct way because there weren’t any signs. The next thing we knew, through the dust, here came a pickup barreling toward us, loaded with Indians and as they came closer, we saw they were all armed!

As the truck pulled to head us off, all the Indians were shouting and waving their firearms, we looked to be in deep stuff, but didn’t know of any tribal laws we had broken. One, possibly the headman, yelled over to us, “You’re on private, no trespassing, property and are under arrest! Been hunting, too, we’ll get all of you for shooting after hours?” This really looked serious now.

The year before, we had a run in with an Apache Policeman, he confiscated our .22 pistols and was going to ticket us for carrying firearms on the reservation, until he calmed down some and I told him that I was friends with the Tribal Chairman and named him. He relented, but told us “Friends with the Tribal Chairman or not, if he caught us on reservation with loaded firearms again, we be in big trouble!” Luckily, we never saw this policeman again!

Back to our immediate plight, the Indians were really heating up and I started fearing for my family. My ex had the, formerly confiscated, .22 pistol on her hip and she slipped it over to me, one pistol, 6 shots against a truck full, bad odds, before another Little Big Horn, I thought, I’ve got to get the headman talking. Telling him we thought we were headed out toward Baseline Road, he settled down a little and told us we took the wrong turn and were heading deeper into the reservation. He added, “Over the past weeks, we’ve had an increase in grave robberies, but to me, it looks like you just took the wrong turn.” The occupants in the truck were still yelling until he told them to be quiet and told us, “Just turn around and we’ll follow you out.”

Grave robberies meant that folks were sneaking on to the reservation, not robbing the graves of recently buried people, but rooting around in the desert trying to find graves hundreds, up to a thousand years old. This definitely wasn’t part of our program!

This was to close a call, so during our remaining years in Phoenix, we never went back to that reservation. That truck full of Indians really scared us off!