0327 this morning.....up with the dog barfing on the freshly cleaned carpets......seems a 2" hunk of carrot is indigestible....well, I'm up, coffee, cerial and grab Uncle Vic's Battle Trophy and on the deer stand at 0600.
Beautiful cold and clear with a light breeze. 0850 rolls around and I had an inkling that something was coming cause all the crows in the field blasted off at once.
A fine buck walks in from the right. Scraggly rack but an nice full body, 3 points on one side, spike on the other.....
The buck lines up full broadside at 80 yards and Uncle Vic's rifle lines up and barks. Buck drops like a sack of hammers. I reload and wait. No movement for 10 minutes. I safe the gun and put it down ready to get out of the stand.....look up and that buck is up and just a Hellin for the woods. I sit back down, hear him crash.....I wait 15 more minutes.
Good blood at the kill site, frothy and bright red, about a cup full, no lung on the ground though so I know I've hit just a bit too fare back. Tracking, I find decent blood in the woods for about 30 yards, all high. I see now, I've hit him just under the spine and aft toward the rear of the lungs. Probably two inches further forward and he wouldn't have got up to run.
4 hours and clear on the other side of the 50 acre wood lot I find a second, third and forth spot of blood.....tracking tracks in a pine thicket is a bear...but I tracked em all till I found more blood.....
Another hour and a half after that I see the buck has made it across the property line. I'm sure he's dead, no way he'll make it with both lungs damaged. But, accessing others land ain't on the list of etiquette items to be ignored. Its okay to fart in an elevator, belch in your office cubby, even pee in your own back yard but ya don't go on another mans land without permission and I don't know who owns it.
It was a good hunt and a good lesson, I shoulda stayed on the buck longer. I'm glad I got to hunt with Uncle Vic's rifle. I'll get some more practice with it and use it again.