First Blood on a New Hunting Lease, Page Two
Tracking Her Down
She had crossed a deep dry ditch, so I made a hole in the brush and crossed there also. The terrain was mainly flat, with chest-high palmettos interspersed with small clearings where light brush grew thinly, up to about waist height. Thankfully, the deer had avoided the palmettos.
I kept finding blood up high on brush, but every time there was a gap in the blood trail I would get a little nervous.
Blood-trailing deer can be nerve-wracking, no matter how many times you've done it.
After maybe 25 yards of trailing, I spotted the deer lying nice and still and dead. The time was 6:21, and she had only gone about 35 yards. It had only been twelve minutes from the time my boots hit the ground until I recovered her, but as usual, it had seemed much longer. After tendering thanks to The One Above, I dragged her out to the road and went off to fetch my ATV to haul her out. The walk to my ATV (back at camp) was not much shy of 3/4 mile.
Back at Camp
I got the deer back to camp around dark, rigged a rope between two pine trees, got it hanging, and commenced to shuck 'er out. She wasn't very large, only eighty pounds, but she was definitely an adult. The deer around there just don't usually get very big.
The bullet entered the doe's right shoulder, breaking the right front leg in the process, took out some of that lung, pulverized the heart, and pureed a large portion of the left lung. The exit hole was about one inch in diameter.
The deer died within only a few seconds of the shot. The ammo was hand-loaded, using a 150-grain Remington Core-Lokt bullet in my handy little bolt-action 308. I have taken a fair number of critters with that rifle and that load - including the buck over my fireplace.
Shot placement was right on - which pleased me, considering that the range was 230 yards, and I had made the shot left-handed. This shows what you can do when you take the time to steady up and really concentrate on tightening up your aim. Before firing, I made sure that the crosshairs, though they were moving, never left the kill zone - and it paid off.
Food Plots Can Help Hunting, and the Herd
And I may never have gotten that shot - heck, those deer may have not even been on my lease property - without the food plot I'd planted, in which two of the three deer were feeding. Most of the deer activity on the lease is in the neighborhood of the food plots, although much of it seems to happen when I'm not there. Most of the deer that feed in those plots are never seen, and that's fine - it keeps them on the property and provides needed nutrition.
It's nice to know that hard work and attention to detail does pay off sometimes.
- Russ Chastain
She had crossed a deep dry ditch, so I made a hole in the brush and crossed there also. The terrain was mainly flat, with chest-high palmettos interspersed with small clearings where light brush grew thinly, up to about waist height. Thankfully, the deer had avoided the palmettos.
I kept finding blood up high on brush, but every time there was a gap in the blood trail I would get a little nervous.
Blood-trailing deer can be nerve-wracking, no matter how many times you've done it.
After maybe 25 yards of trailing, I spotted the deer lying nice and still and dead. The time was 6:21, and she had only gone about 35 yards. It had only been twelve minutes from the time my boots hit the ground until I recovered her, but as usual, it had seemed much longer. After tendering thanks to The One Above, I dragged her out to the road and went off to fetch my ATV to haul her out. The walk to my ATV (back at camp) was not much shy of 3/4 mile.
Back at Camp
I got the deer back to camp around dark, rigged a rope between two pine trees, got it hanging, and commenced to shuck 'er out. She wasn't very large, only eighty pounds, but she was definitely an adult. The deer around there just don't usually get very big.
The bullet entered the doe's right shoulder, breaking the right front leg in the process, took out some of that lung, pulverized the heart, and pureed a large portion of the left lung. The exit hole was about one inch in diameter.
The deer died within only a few seconds of the shot. The ammo was hand-loaded, using a 150-grain Remington Core-Lokt bullet in my handy little bolt-action 308. I have taken a fair number of critters with that rifle and that load - including the buck over my fireplace.
Shot placement was right on - which pleased me, considering that the range was 230 yards, and I had made the shot left-handed. This shows what you can do when you take the time to steady up and really concentrate on tightening up your aim. Before firing, I made sure that the crosshairs, though they were moving, never left the kill zone - and it paid off.
Food Plots Can Help Hunting, and the Herd
And I may never have gotten that shot - heck, those deer may have not even been on my lease property - without the food plot I'd planted, in which two of the three deer were feeding. Most of the deer activity on the lease is in the neighborhood of the food plots, although much of it seems to happen when I'm not there. Most of the deer that feed in those plots are never seen, and that's fine - it keeps them on the property and provides needed nutrition.
It's nice to know that hard work and attention to detail does pay off sometimes.
- Russ Chastain
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