Tim, Mickey and I all went hunting on Saturday morning, the 11th with visions of us bagging a couple of fat doe. Well before sun up, we all loaded on to my tractor and took Tim to Ma-Maw’s blind. He saw several doe but couldn’t get a good shot with his black powder rifle.

Mickey and I tractored over to a good parking place, left the tractor and proceeded to walk into the tree stand on the back of the property. Having successfully walked into this stand many times during darkness, not this time! We tromped around in the thick stuff and couldn’t even come close to the stand, so before we totally messed everything up, I parked Mickey in a tripod stand nearby. We must have totally messed everything up because Mickey didn’t even see a deer.

Not so for me. Climbing into the corner, tripod blind, I made a lot of noise and was sure this would scare all the deer off. Added to the noise, the previous morning, Mickey had been in this stand, had shot a nice doe and cleaned it close by. Where he did the cleaning a big, bloody spot was still evident. These actions didn’t stop the deer because at sun up, a yearling walked up and began feeding.

Then, as the pictures show and I’m sure the game cam in the back will too, two more joined in, then three, then four, then a big, old doe came out, and not hearing Mickey shoot, I decided to take this one. Raising my rifle, the metal clasp on the sling brushed against the stand rail and whoosh, the deer were gone. A bad case of pilot error!

The entire morning wasn’t good, I should’a made a video of the deer, but as my Dad once said, “If you got something every time you went out, it would be called shooting instead of hunting!”