Our flintlock season opened on 12/26. I've been hunting fairly hard since then, and have come close a few times. The first morning, about 15 minutes into shooting light, I had a 6pt buck at 20 yards broadside. I shot a buck earlier this year, so my one and only buck tag was gone, and Mr. 6pt got to go on his merry way unharmed.
That evening, I had three nice does slip through a shooting lane at 50 yards before I could get a shot. The next night, a doe came almost into a lane where I could shoot, then swapped ends and was gone.
A couple days ago, I went out in the frosty cold weather and was rewarded with a doe approaching to about 30 yards. I quietly eased the lock to full cock, only to find it wouldn't engage in that position, and thus my rifle was...well...useless. Talked to the rifle's maker, and he met me the next day and repaired it on the spot. Back in the game, I loaded her up and got out there on New Year's Eve. As I climbed my stand, I got to see out into the field behind it, and there stood a deer. She was at 190 yards, but the terrain would let me close pretty easily by 75 yards. 115 yards is doable with my rifle, if I can get into a supported position. So...I tried a stalk. I got to 110 yards just fine, but the terrain wouldn't give me line of sight from prone, and sitting wouldn't work, because the ground sloped too much to my back, making it very hard to get on target, and requiring too much muscle contraction to hold position, making it less steady. While trying to figure out my next move, the wind swirled and they decided they didn't want to stick around.
Last night I went out to sit a field stand again. The deer seemed to be feeding heavily on the grass in the field, so I figured I'd try it. Winds sustained in the 15mph range with gusts over 30 were not helping, but they slacked a bit toward dark.
Just past sunset, the wind was somewhat abated, and looking to my right, a small doe stepped out. I watched her feed for a minute or so, having no shot at the moment, but no others came out. She moved closer, so I twisted around in the stand and got my left hand over to the right side and on the shooting rail. Properly oriented, I waited for her to pass into an opening. I finally got my shot, let the pressure on the trigger gradually stack until the sear released....the rifle went off as fast as it's ever gone off, which is very quick. The remaining wind moved the smoke enough to let me watch the results of the ball strike on the deer. It was very, very dramatic.
When the ball hit, the deer was literally smacked down. That's not just a phrase, she was basically swatted straight down. She landed on her back, hooves in the air, and never twitched or kicked. When I went down to the deer, there was a big wad of deer hair 6-8 feet closer to my stand from the deer.
Here's the photo:
When I checked out the deer, I was very surprised to discover that neither the entrance nor exit wounds were visible! The blood in her nose said I shot her through the lungs, but no holes???
I had shot her quartered toward me. The ball entered at the base of the neck, slightly forward of the near side shoulder and high on the deer. I was in a 15' stand shooting down a slope, so I had a pretty steep down angle in addition to the deer being quartering toward me. The ball exited behind the far side shoulder, about midway top to bottom. With the hide off, I could see a LARGE hole in the muscle going in, and an equally large one going out. Apparently, the angle of the shot let the deer's hair lay down over the holes. The holes in the hide were about ball-size, and I'm shooting 0.600" projectiles from this rifle.
Also surprisingly, there appears to be almost no bloodshot meat around the wounds. I'm shooting 120gr of 2F powder, and the trajectory I have with it, checked against a roundball trajectory calculator, says I should be getting 1750fps, give or take. I had thought it might beat up the deer kinda badly, but it didn't.
So there we are....although I have a few more doe tags, so we'll see if I can whomp another one yet.