Getting There

It was early in the year 2012, and my thirtieth deer hunting season was rapidly waning. And although deer season had ended in my portion of Florida, it was going strong elsewhere.

My Uncle Dick and Aunt Dee were, as usual for that time of year, staying in their travel trailer in the panhandle of Florida, taking life easy, my uncle playing golf and hunting deer at his leisure. He had already bagged a buck, and was planning to stay a few more weeks before heading back to his home.

I was determined to join them and, even if things went as usual and I didn't bag any game, I knew we would have lots of laughs and spend some good time in the woods.

Some of my first hunting was done in Croom Wildlife Management Area (WMA), staying in Uncle Dick's old house trailer that sat on a lot not far from the hunting area. So I had first shared a camp with him and Aunt Dee more than thirty years earlier, when I was just a squirrel-chasing tenderfoot who didn't like to get very far away from his trusty 410 shotgun. So hunting out of the same camp was kind of a tradition, even if we didn't always hunt the same woods together.

And so I hit the road one Tuesday morning, dragging my travel trailer behind me. By that afternoon I had set up my trailer and Uncle Dick and I went to scout a potential new hunting area. It looked very promising, with a large and well-used hog waller right in the dirt road and a plethora of deer tracks as well. We mulled our options that evening, and decided to sleep in the next morning.

Setting Up and First Hunt

On Wednesday morning, we drove back to the new place and I selected a spot for my climbing tree stand. Rain during the night had washed away all of the old tracks and there were already fresh deer tracks crossing the dirt road in both directions. The pine tree I used was a bit on the skinny side, but its location was excellent, and I was definitely looking forward to hunting it that afternoon.

After lunch, I spent some time cleaning and babying the guns I was planning to tote, which were Little Lotta (a Savage 110 I had rebarreled to 338-06) and Brün Hilda (Dad's old long-barreled flat-top Ruger Blackhawk 44 magnum revolver).

Then I gathered my goodies and headed to the stand.

The wind rocked me in the limber little pine tree from time to time and as evening approached, the air cooled due to the previous night's cold front. Anticipation was high, but activity was low, and I spent hours on the edge of my seat, hoping that each sound I heard in the thick brush was a deer about to step out into view.

I could see in two directions down a dirt road. To my left was the hog waller in the road, 100 yards distant. Ahead and slightly to the right was the other part of the road, allowing me to see more than 100 yards. The woods were so thick that there was no use trying to see into them - if the game didn't come out in the road, I wasn't going to see it.

Finally, as dusk closed in, I looked to my left for the millionth time, and there was a big black blob standing there! I hurriedly grabbed my rifle, gave the scope magnification adjustment a quick twist (I later noticed that it ended up at 8x), and scoped the critter. It was a good-sized hog, just standing in the tan-gray water of the waller.

Bringing Home the Bacon

I propped on a nearby tree - no good. It was too limber and shaky. I quickly hunkered differently and used the elevated gun rest built onto my Summit climber to steady up. My mind whirred as I made decisions, steadied the rifle, and aimed - and the big critter took a couple of steps while this was happening.

I decided that I did want to kill the hog, and almost rushed and shot it in the shoulder due to force of habit imposed by decades of deer hunting.

But then I thought, "Why?" and shifted my aim to the head. I was very steady, my target was still, my rifle was accurate, and I knew I could do it.

I fired, it fell. The big porker kicked some, but I could tell it was down for the count and wasn't trying to get up - the kicking was all reflexes. The hand-loaded 200 grain Nosler bullet had done its work well.

After examining my prize, I backed my truck down the road to the boar and loaded it - with much grunting and a tad of naughty language. Back at camp, we hung the swine and decided that the cold weather would keep him well if we left him hanging overnight rather than shucking him in the dark.

I was the hero of the hour, and you know that always feels good. I enjoyed some brews and a fine supper of venison backstrap prepared by Aunt Dee, and finally sacked out, happy and exhausted after a wonderful day's hunt.

HogBuck Earns its Name

The next morning was a frosty one and I awoke late, having set my alarm clock but also having failed to turn on the alarm. I wasn't horribly late, but it was already good daylight out, and that is pretty late for a deer hunter. Thankfully, the hunting woods weren't far away and I was settled in the stand about 45 minutes after opening my eyes.

It was a frosty morning, and it felt right nice sitting there in the woods, still basking in the happy afterglow of my success at bringing home the bacon the day before.

But even so, there didn't seem to be much going on in my neck of the woods that morning - for a while.

I'd been settled in the stand for 45 minutes when I spotted deery movement ahead, quickly laid the scope on it, and beheld a doe slowly walking across my narrow viewing area, from left to right. Does being illegal to kill, I naturally held my fire and waited to see what would happen next.

What happened next was a whole lot of nothing - for almost an hour and a half. I'd had to relieve myself and was standing in my stand when I looked up and spotted a buck where the doe had been earlier.

I grabbed my rifle and scoped the deer, and saw that it had a rack - more than enough antlers to make it legal. I spoke to the buck to stop it, steadied the rifle (although I didn't have a rest) and felt good about the shot, and fired.

The buck's reaction was to leap straight upward and hit the ground running. It ran to my right, the way it had been walking previously, and was immediately out of sight.

This was my 43rd deer.

It was my 30th deer season. I was a seasoned veteran. But you know what? My heart was pounding, my body was flooded with adrenaline, my breath came in soggy, ragged chunks, and my hands shook uncontrollably.

What a delicious feeling.

I had planned to get down and head back to camp at 9:00 so I could go ahead and deal with the hog we'd left hanging. I shot the buck at 8:52.

By 8:58 I was on the ground and walking towards where the buck had been. And at 9:06 I had found the spot where the buck had been standing when I'd shot it.

There was a large amount of blood on the ground, and a good blood trail led into the thicket where he'd run.

I began trailing the buck, picking my way through the brush and often scanning the woods ahead, stopping frequently to look and listen ahead for the buck.

I remembered my I-Kam Xtreme video glasses and turned them on so that, even though I'd had no time to turn them on prior to making the shot (and they probably wouldn't have captured much at 100+ yards), I could record the trailing and hopefully the recovery of the buck.

When blood-trailing a deer, my confidence has to stay high. This can be a challenge because I tend to become a worrying machine until I finally lay eyes on my deer and know that it's dead. I have never lost a deer that I hit, but there is always a voice in the back of my mind acting as a constant reminder that it can happen to me. Every blood trail is a new and unique challenge, and I thank God that I've been able to recover every critter that made them.

I continued trailing the buck, and it wasn't difficult. I did have to scan the brush and the forest floor pretty thoroughly a number of times to find the next blood, but this was far from being the most difficult blood trail I'd ever followed.

Finally, I looked ahead and spotted the buck - lying in a clearing, perfectly exposed and in the open.

I approached it without hesitation. The buck was good and dead, and obviously had died mere seconds after being shot. His modest antlers had eight points, and although the spread was less than nine inches, we later determined that he was 3.5 years old. He was a fine, sleek buck, and I thanked God for the buck and that I had made a good shot and recovered it. I took a couple photos with my iPod touch, then commenced to drag him to the road so I could get him field dressed and loaded up.

My shot had been true and textbook perfect, at a range of 122 yards. The 200 grain Nosler bullet destroyed the top of the heart and the front of the lungs and did one hell of a number on the offside shoulder. It produced a truly impressive exit wound of approximately 3.5 inches. In my experience, massive exit wounds like this are unusual, and it was very likely caused by the fact that the bullet struck bone so soon before exiting.

Back at camp, I basked in my glory. Great white hunter! Slayer of hog and buck in two consecutive hunts at the same stand! Both were one-shot kills at ranges of 100 yards and beyond! Very accurate shooting, and all that!

Oh my. Life is so wonderful sometimes.

Back at camp, it was time for photos, weighing, and shucking. The porker weighed 143 pounds whole, and 118 pounds without his insides. The buck weighed 96 pounds gutted. We finished the job and I decided not to hunt that afternoon in order to let the place rest. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake because by the time I did return the weather had gotten warmer and more aggravating, and there were many deer tracks that had been made since I'd left with my buck the previous morning. Ah well, can't win 'em all.

On Friday morning, I was back on the stand and shortly before 7:00 a young buck with less-than-legal antlers arrived, down where I'd shot the eight-point. It did a lot of sniffing and then went the way the other buck had run. About ten minutes later, he was back - nose to the ground, and apparently following the scent trail my buck had left when I'd dragged it out about 22 hours earlier.

An hour later, the rain arrived and I departed.

I came back to hunt in the off-and-on rain that afternoon, and jumped a deer just down from the truck. That was the only critter I saw.

The next morning, I decided to let the woods rest, so I stayed at camp and while there I trimmed my beard, which had been on-the-grow since early November. Sadly, that may have been my undoing, because I didn't see another deer in the woods on that trip, which lasted another four days. Me and Samson, I reckon. Ah well.

But we had a lot of fun, Uncle and Aunt and I - and I got some writing done, which is always nice.

Hunting with family, sharing lots of joy and laughs, watching wildlife out there where they live, and bringing some nice fresh meat home to camp. Folks, it just doesn't get much better than that.

- Russ Chastain