Took Friday off work to sight the little Marlin 1894-S in with the 300 grain .45 Colt +P loads, which didn't take but 4 shots. Figured since it was half way decent, I'd clean the leaves up out of the front yard. When I was dumping a load of leaves, I twisted wrong and tweeked my back a little.
Not good since Saturday was our opening day of gun season. Even though my back was hurting pretty bad, I went ahead and got up a 4:00 AM, got dressed and drove down to the farm.
My brother was "supposed to" come in but apparently he's soft up there in Wisconsin and decided not to.
Since he wasn't going to come in, I decided to hunt where he normally hunts. I hadn't hunted it this year so I figured I'd give it a try. Sat there until about 10:30 this morning and all I saw was about 8 turkeys.
There was 6 longbeards and 2 jakes in the bunch. The longbeards were just that. They had about 8-10" beards.
The pictures aren't that great because my little camera is a POS and the turkeys were around 50 yards away.
Anyway, after sitting there until about 10:30 and not seeing anything, I said the heck with that spot and walked on over to where I normally hunt at. Got to my little blind around 11 AM and sat for the rest of the day.
The scent wafers you see hanging are because the wind was swirling today. It's best to have a North or NW wind when hunting the area, but there was a SW wind today about half the time. The other time, it was mainly comng from the NW, but was swirling around quite a bit. I had several scent wafers at the bind hoping that the scent would help cover my scent (even though I had sprayed down with some Silver XP to help cover the scent).
I sat there all afternoon and didn't see jack until about 5:10 PM this afternoon. I had a little deer come in different than they normally come. I kept hoping that one would come in from one of the other directions, because the wind kept messing with me in the direction he came in from. Anyway, the deer started coming in, but would throw it's head up and smell every now and then. I could tell the thing had gotten my wind, but with ithe way it was swirling, it couldn't tell exactly where i was. I should have known that since the thing didn't bolt and start blowing that it was a stupid little button buck.
Anyway, with the little 2.5X scope, I couldn't see the buttons and it kept it's head tilted back smelling as it came it. Finally he got in a spot where I could get a shot, but I had to move the gun around a little to get it past some of the stuff I had around the blind. The little .45 Colt +P load was sent on it's way. The deer ran back the way it came, but stopped and dropped after about 80 yds. The deer was quarting toward me, so to save the meat on the shoulder, I aimed a little further back to stay away from it. Took out the lungs and the liver.
Nothing like a good blood trail, that you don't really need.
After the shot, he ran off and I watched him fall.
Got my stuff together, walked over to the deer, grabbed him, and pulled him on down about 50 yds to the food plot.
Not quite as big as I had hoped, and a button buck, but I'm tickled that I got him.
That one filled out my State-Wide tag so I guess I'm done. I could get another tag, good for 2 antlerless deer, but I don't know if the herd can stand the extra harvest down there. The poplulation pretty much crashed 2-3 years ago and is still in the process of coming back up. I "may" still get another tag (and a turkey tag) and go back up there with the crossbow to see what I can get. Still haven't decided.
I had hoped that I could leave him hanging overnight and skin him out tomorrow, but I checked the weather on my phone and it wasn't supposed to get out of the 50's overnight.
Got him skinned, quartered, deboned, and in the cooler soaking out.
