Brad came over Thursday afternoon to try and hunt, and I say try, because a ‘norther’ had blown in around noon packing 25 to 35 MPH winds. It never dawned on us that this particular afternoon we’d see a lot of deer.

Because of the wind, Brad decided to hunt in Colton’s blind and I thought I’d give the haystack another try.
It had been 8 days since I had hunted in the haystack, in the feed lot, right by my house and 4:50 PM found me ‘schrooched’ down looking over the top of the hay. Nothing happened until 5:30 and then, almost as a group, here came the deer, a total of 3 does and 5 yearlings. Within thirty yards of me, I felt like I could reach out and touch them, they began browsing and watering. It was getting dark, when all a sudden, the deer froze and looked, not at me, but into the thick cover.

Way back in the thick stuff I could see movement, two big deer, couldn’t see horns, but they were big. They came steadily on toward the feed lot and water trough, all of the deer around me were still frozen, and I was caught in a very uncomfortable position, but like the deer, held my ground!

With the wind still howling and the mesquite trees blocking a clear view of them, the two deer came on. In the quickly fading light, I cautiously raised my rifle and scoped them and could barely make them out. The does began moving off, warning the yearling with hisses that sounded kinda’ like a buck’s snort/wheeze, without the snort. Still no luck with the scope, it was just too late, but there’ll be another time!

In the dark, driving out to Maw-Maw’s blind, I picked Brad up and he told me that around 5:20, after the feeder had gone off, he saw a total of eight deer, including a spike with just one horn. He said, “Seeing movement near the feeder, I looked around and there was the spike. I noticed he was limping and had only one horn and by the time I got my rifle up to shoot he was back into the thick stuff. Maybe I’ll get him tomorrow?” Laughing, I replied, “Maybe it was a unicorn?”