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!”