Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Show off your greatest kill

Happy Thanksgiving all. What a good day for this thread. Some of these photos really conjure up images of the hunt and how the buck got outsmarted.


My "best" aren't always the biggest, but the ones that took the most effort to outsmart really get me horned up. For mule deer archery, the best ones are some of the ones I didn't get. I've had some amazing hunts that in the end left me holding an unpunched tag. I cherish those hunts as much or even more than any I've been successful at. My biggest killed mule deer with a bow is this deer flanked by two blacktail my grandfather killed in 1924. Coming up on 100 years ago on the blacktail.

Walter, the big sunuvabitch deer! (Think Norman, On Golden Pond.)






Walter was a big boy, scored #7 biggest mule deer killed with a bow in Oregon at the time, but my best blacktail outweighed him. I rattled this blacktail in to 20 yards where he busted me and took off like a shot. I rolled him as he reached the trees 75 yards away and I'll always remember him rolling into the hemlocks as he reached the edge of the timber going mach 2. He wasn't dead when I got there and I put two more 7mm-08 in his chest at point blank range and just waited for what seemed like an eternity for him to die.





When I reached the road with the first load of meat and horns I ran into a father and son hunting. I'll never forget the father looking at the deer, then looking at his son and saying, "That's what we're looking for". I asked the boy how long he'd been hunting and if he had gotten a deer yet. He said it was his first year and he hadn't seen one yet. I asked him and his dad if they wanted to see where I got it and they both said "Yes!".

I took them both down there and relived the entire rattling sequence and showed them where I had been sitting and where he had come from and how it all happened. The boys eyes were huge as he imagined it all happening in real time, but with him instead of me I'm sure! LOL They thanked me and the dad was especially thankful that a stranger would take the time to do this for his boy. They offered to help me pack the rest of the meat out and I accepted. The deer is awesome and this mount represents just one of so many incredible hunting memories I have hunting blacktails. Getting to impact that young man at such an impressionable time was super, super special for me.

All of you know what I mean, hunting is so much more than the mount on the wall. I feel sorry for the haters that don't understand what hunting is about. Honestly, even some hunters don't understand what hunting is about. For me it's the memories.