Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

After getting the buck hung up and having a quick bite for lunch. We headed back out, grabbing my Kimber Montana, .223 Rem this time. I picked another spot that we've not sat in before but did have a trail cam in. Hunting about 1/4 mile my buddy and his son that were with us and about 2 miles from where I was in the morning.

It was kind of a pinch between 2 logging roads, that dropped down into a bottom, below the roads. Just old overgrown sand roads. I was sitting on the ground this time on a folding stool, tucked up against a spruce in a spot I could see/shoot 75 yards or so. Kind of a pine/popple/tag mix. Good looking stuff. One of those spots you can see better from the ground than you can a treestand. I sat for about 3 hours without any action at all. Hell, not even squirrels. About 4:10 I heard it....crunch, crunch, crunch. Yep, no mistaking the cadence. It was a deer. It stopped for a bit but I had the wind on my side again, so I sat still.

I saw the rack move before I saw or heard anything else. Looked tall and decent beams. He then started stomping. But not stomping like he saw me. More like marching through the tags. He looked huge through the scope. I dropped it down to the heart and shot. He mule kicked, took 2 hops and down he went. Didn't go 20.

I gave him a few minutes to do his thing, walked over and had the shrinkage. Not the kind I usually get because it was cold. The kind when your deer is smaller on the ground than when you thought. While I was gutting him, I heard a crashing behind where my stool was set up. Saw a tail and a big body go up the hill and an orange guy coming down. It was my buddy, who heard me shoot. His eyes were big and said "well I know you didn't shoot one bigger than what I just saw run up the hill."

The shot was a perfect heart shot. The heart was literally detached for the rest of the gooey parts when we gutted it.

That made some sense as to why this guy was "marching" and was all postured up, making him look big. Anyway, we got him tagged and dragged to the truck and back to camp. It was a heckova fun opening day.