I was wandering through the bottom of a gully with my bow in one hand and an arrow at the ready in another. My hunting partners were walking the tops of the ridges and we all had headsets to talk to one another. These are hills covered in sagebrush and the gullies have a bit more vegetation but not much. Think spindly trees and shrubs. We hadn’t seen any deer all day and I was just looking for animal bits on the ground. I find a lot of bones and skulls during the season and those are always neat to grab.
As I was strolling along, I saw a shed antler directly in front of me. I was pretty stoked because I had never come across one before so stopped, put the arrow down and picked up the antler to check it out.
I was then almost run over by a doe and four bucks (the doe and three bucks were legal targets) as they charged through the gully. I stood there like a dork, holding the antler as they leapt around me. THEN they paused on a hill to look at me, knowing in their evil way that I still didn’t have time to get an arrow ready and take a shot before they bounced off again.
Apparently my husband and his buddies had seen the deer coming and were trying to catch my attention on the radio but the earpiece wasn’t working.
And about an hour later, the deer were spooked back in my direction. This time I was ready! They split up and one buck headed straight to me…the one buck that wasn’t legal. Figures.
I kept that damn antler shed. I get teased a lot by the guys about this but it’s all good.
Back when I had my first horse, this would have been about 1981, I guess, my cousin and I were out roding together on a dirt road that ran throu some strip mining land. We weren’t being particularly quiet, just laughing and talking, and there was some rustling in the woods off to our right. A young dow, probably a yearlig, stepped out of the soods and onto the road, maybe 20 feet away from us. We stopped the horses and sat quietly in the saddles, watching. The little doe started walking toward us with her ears swiveled forward.
She walked right up to the horses, sniffed noses with them, and when we started walking forward, she fell in beside us! She followed along for probably a quarter mile or so before walking calmly back into the woods! It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me!
A few years back I went on one of my rare deer hunts. I was sitting on stand with my grandpa nearby, while my dad and brothers were driving them through the woods. A decent little 8 pointer came trotting along, I pull my shotgun up, waiting for him to stop so I could take a better shot, but he never did… Just before he was out of my effective range, I took a shot…
And he continued running off.
Because the moment I pulled the trigger, a small tree i had failed to take notice of, about 2 inches, was directly between him and the bullet. Which I killed, splitting it right through the middle.
Fast forward to christmas day, when I get a large, suspicious package from my brothers(which is why its suspicious, since we never, ever get each other gifts). I open it up, and… Its a 2ft section of that goddamned tree, right where I shot it, nicely stained and mounted. :smack:
A friend’s dad was driving up to his spot when he hit a nice sized buck with his truck. Deers wasn’t dead but was severely injured so him and his friend got out, looked at each other, dragged the deer the required 200 feet off the road, pulled out his pistol, shot it, dressed it and spent the entire weekend drinking beer.
