Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting 2nd chance to do things right...

Saturday morning, my hunting partner called to tell me about his hunt that morning ( I had a run in with some Grey Goose on Friday night, and over slept). He was telling me about the deer movement that lasted all morning, and seeing 6 different bucks, and all the new sign. Well the wife was taking the granddaughter to the Disney on ice show that afternoon, and I made plans to lay on the couch watching football all afternoon.
Well, the hunting bug finally got the best of me, and I loaded up and headed to the farm.

I got in the stand around 5:15, and settled in. I must have dozed off, cuz a rifle shot woke me out of my daze. I cleared my head and looked across the field to see antlers slipping along the back edge of the cotton. It was 6:00 on my phone.
Something was very strange about the way his head kept bobbing up and down, over the cotton. It remined me of one of those old arcade rifle games where a target popped up from behind a screen for a few seconds, and then disappeared. after nearly 10 minutes, the buck finally made it to a small opening along the edge of the field. He was a pretty small 8pt, with not much body size at all. That's when I could clearly see he was crippled on the right side, and limping badly on his left leg also.
I picked up my rifle and started to shoot him, but held off, thinking it's still early, and I had plenty of time to shoot this deer and put him out of his misery. He's not even close to the size of deer I would shoot, and I've passed on HUNDREDS that were bigger than him. Lets wait to see if one of those big boys come out looking for some does. I started watching the side of the field that usually has the most activity. I kept glancing back to see where the cripple was, and he had not moved much, so I started concentrating more and more on the hot side.

No other deer showed up between then and 7:00, so I turned my attention back to the cripple. I wanted to go ahead and finish him off before it got late, but he was gone.
The 1 hr, 15 min ride back home had me thinking about the whole thing, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about not shooting that deer when I had the chance. Was I being a bit greedy waiting on a "Trophy" and not being a good steward by failing to shoot a deer that certainly wasn't going to last the winter? I mean, the darn thing was feeding on dead cotton leaves, because he could not reach the acorns on the ground around the oaks the ring the field.
So Sunday, I'm still thinking about this, and finally around 1:00 I tell my wife lets get ready and go to the farm, I'm going to try to shoot that cripple.

We get to the farm and I drop my wife off at her stand, and I head off to the back field.
Right on que, the cripple steps out at 6:00 but much farther down the field than the day before. He heads straight into the cotton and starts feeding on the dead leaves, and the cotton bushes. Finally after 10 mins, he hobbles to the edge, and turns broadside. My .260 barks, and he falls dead in his tracks.

I head to my wifes stand, and the first thing she asks is, did you get the cripple? I smile and said yes, he's laying in the field.

We load him up and take him to the processor. I wanted to check him out and make sure he didn't have any type of infection, sickness, etc.

He had a large club foot on the left front leg, about the size of a softball. The right shoulder was broken. Split from down the middle from top to bottom, but healed over. We also found a grizzled over broadhead in his right front leg, just above the joint.
We put him on the scales, and he only weighed 108Lbs. Dave, the processor said, man, that deer looks old in the face, so we checked his teeth. Most of his front teeth were gone. His upper and lower back teeth were well worn and rounded off. Looking at a jaw bone chart, we guessed him to be between 4.5-5.5 yrs old.

He's probably the smallest buck weight wise, and one of the smallest 8pts I've ever shot, but I'm sure glad that I got a 2nd chance to do it right.

Glad to hear you put the buck down, you did the right thing.

I've done the same thing,I can't stand to see any animal suffer.

That was the right thing to do.

4.5 to 5.5 year old teeth are not well rounded and almost worn off.....

I would not wait on something else if I saw what I thought was an animal that was suffering.

You did right in the end though!

Jeff

Kudos.

Glad to see you were able to do the right thing. Good on ya!

Hate that you had to use your buck tag on someone else's mistake but you did good.