My wife and I have been trying to take an axis or two for the last couple of weeks without much success. We were after a couple of really nice bucks that were travelling together with some does. One buck is huge. He's darker horned than any axis I've eve seen, very wide and tall with deep forks. When we finally go the opportunity two weeks ago, my wife didn't have a shot due to the brush and I missed the HUGE buck at 367 yards with my 6.5 Swede.
The next time we went, that HUGE buck came out and walked away from me at about 400 yards. I bailed out of the blind and got within 50 yards of him before he figured me out an hauled arse outta there.
We went back Friday morning, and this time I had my 1885 Single Shot in 7 mag in the event a longer shot happened again. About 7:30 AM two does came out of the brush and milled around before eventually giving me a shot. The 145 grain Speer Grand Slam rolled that doe at 190 yards.
Friday evening my wife decided she wanted to try another stand. Previously she and I were in stands that were a little over 500 yards apart and we could watch a lot of territory. Well, since she decided to move to different stand I decided I'd move to her blind.
It was miserably hot Friday afternoon. 95 degrees and I could not get enough air in the blind. And what I did get was hot air out of the west. I felt like Steve McQueen being sent to the "the cooler". Then the wind stopped. I was afraid I was going to sweat out when the good Lord provided a stiff northwest wind and everything got better.
It was getting near time to get out of the blind and the only thing that had come to the feeder was a porcupine. We had not been seeing deer at the feeders and chose to sit in blinds that had feeders, but also overlooked a couple of large canyons on the property.
Before getting down I decided I'd take one more look at the area where the axis had been coming out of the canyon. To my surprise I saw spots through the brush and fairly long antlers, but it was getting hard to tell. I poked my 7 mag out the window and turned the scope back down to 3. He finally moved through and out into the open and I saw another one behind him. A doe. The buck wasn't wasting any time and kept moving left to right at about 160 yards. I leveled the crosshairs on him and squeezed of another handload. I saw him drop, then get up and took about two steps before collapsing.
I knew he was the HUGE one, but recognized this one as one of his running buddies. I didn't measure him, but figure hes around 30", maybe a tad more. The HUGE one is pushing 34" for sure. The body on this buck was the largest I've ever seen.
All in all, it was a good day. Got to spend time outdoors with my sweety, doing one of the things we like to do and got some great venison for the freezer.
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