Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Son's 2010 Missouri Deer

My son killed a very respectable Missouri hill deer on opening morning.

We started the day out by climbing in to a two man metal stand at around 5:30 AM, roughly 40 minutes before legal shooting hours.

Those first minutes were more than a little interesting, we had winds gusting up to 40 mph and the 18� hackberry that we were tied on to was a lot more flexible than I preferred. We toughed it out, though. We were set up in an ideal spot, and the wind was favorable, at least from a direction standpoint.

We had dodged a rainstorm but the clouds were still extremely black and heavy. Legal shooting hours approached and visibility was still pretty well non-existent. A small deer crossed by a couple of minutes before legal hours but was barely visible with the naked eye at a distance of about 40 yards with it standing in light colored bean stubble.

At one point the tag end of one of our ratchet straps came loose and was flapping in the breeze. It was so windy that the 8 foot tag end spent most of its� time parallel to the ground.

We saw a coyote around 6:30 but nothing else until about 7:10. The buck pictured below appeared in the bean field slightly behind us and about 150 yards away. He was nose down and tracking what must have been a doe from some time during the night. The deer never paused and in the poor light and with a slight roll in the field I could never get a good enough look at his antlers to say for a fact that he met the horribly misguided 4 point rule recently implemented in Mo. I won�t foul a good story any more by saying exactly what I think of that rule.
The deer obviously had the main beam points, but picking out brow tines under the circumstances was almost impossible. Deer w/o brow tines are fairly common in this location.

My son could not tell, either, so the deer walked. I was pretty sure that he was probably legal so I fished out a grunt call and made a little racket a minute or two after he disappeared in the brush.

My son spotted him coming back in to the field a couple of minutes later, slightly uphill from the point where he had previously disappeared. He came in to about 125 yards and turned sideways. As he turned I got a good look and was about to whisper, �he�s good� when my son whispered, �he�s good.�

A very slight pause and BLAM! At the shot the deer did an extremely high double-barreled mule kick. I have never seen a deer kick as high he did. The deer then headed up hill at a fast run. There was nothing in its body language to give any clues as to where or how it was hit, though I could see a light colored patch that I correctly assumed was the point of impact. At the time, I read it as mid-body (top to bottom) and just a little far back, still through the ribs, but probably missing the heart.
My son took a follow-up shot just a tad before the deer disappeared in to very thick brush in the �draw from hell�. There was no sign of a hit from the deer.

We sat tight for about 20-30 minutes, me telling my son that I felt like the first shot was a good one. As we sat there, I noticed that I had an ever so slight shake in my left arm. This was my son�s third deer, and the second that I had watched him shoot, but I�m proud to say that it still got my blood going. I mentioned the shake to my son and he said �me too, dad.�

We walked out to where the deer was standing when shot. As we approached there was red and purple �stuff� all over the ground. Not blood, it was poke berries. Evidently, there must have been a � acre of the things there before the beans were picked.

I could not find any sign of blood in that sea of red and purple. The ground was absolutely hard-packed so there were no tracks to be seen.

That was the start of my first concerns about what we had ahead of us. We continued on in the deer�s direction of travel, roughly 60 yards through the bean stubble and up to the point where he had entered the woods. I had this spot mentally marked and we still did not find any sign of blood.

At this point I postponed the tracking job. I�m a firm believer that if there are not obvious signs of significant blood loss then the prudent thing to do is back off and give the deer time to die.

We sat the stand for another hour or two and watched several more deer come by, though nothing that I was interested in. We then returned to the house to kill some time.
I was proud of my son and the way he handled this delay. Not a peep or a bother, though I must admit that he probably set a land speed record or two when I suggested that we had waited long enough.

We returned directly to where the deer had entered the brush, I did not even bother trying to find any sign out in the sea of red and purple.

We tracked probably 15 yards in the heavy brush and thick fallen leaves when I started getting a bad feeling about what we were up against. Blood on oak leaves is usually fairly easy to spot and there was none to be seen. Without an obvious trail of blood you can walk within feet of a dead deer in that cover and never see it.

A few yards more and we came upon a probable skid mark in the trail when it first headed down hill. I felt that it could have been a turkey scratching around, but was likely from the deer.
10 yards or so later we found the first blood drop � a pencil diameter little thin dried speck on a brush stem about 18� off the ground. No way to read anything about the hit from that small drop.

The trail continued on, a small speck maybe every 5 or 10 yards. Then there were two skid marks in the leaves fairly closely spaced. At this point we are almost at the bottom of the draw and I could see an additional skid mark where the deer hit the level ground at the bottom. At that point I got down nearly parallel with the ground and could see the deer laying up the far side of the draw. I was surprised I could see that far away but I picked up on some of the white hair visible around his tail.
I let my son continue the tracking job without telling him what I saw, this being excellent training for him and I wanted the discovery to be his after all of the wait and the careful tracking we had done.

He tracked on across the narrow flat at the bottom of the draw and had just announced that the trail was getting heavier when he looked ahead and spotted the deer.

We got up to the deer and I could not believe the shot placement, given the lack of blood.
The first shot - obvious from the angle of the bullet path through the deer - had struck mid-body; like I thought, though farther forward. Its exit is visible in the photo that follows, right behind the leg, a couple of inches above the white belly hair.
The second shot was taken after the deer had ran up the hill and was nearly level with us. Its entry was within an inch or two of the first bullet and then exited through the muscle of the off-side shoulder.

Both wounds were fatal; the first actually did significant damage to the back end of the heart.

We sent my young nephew back for cameras and the rest of the hunting party to help drag the deer out of the hole he was in.

To say that my son was a pleased young man is an understatement. He had made two excellent shots, one of those being on a running deer.

My son and his deer. The slope of the terrain and the density of the brush do not show in the photo at all:



A group of guys happy that someone was successful, though dreading the drag ahead:

Nice deer! Congrats to your son. What are the details on the gun/load?

The rifle is a Remington 788 in 243. Handy little carbine length job that I bought for an older boy to use for his first deer many years ago.

As an avid handloader, I am almost embarrassed to mention the load, especially being as this rifle loves 95 grain Partitions.

Long story short: I was caught by a set of unusual circumstances several years ago and the only thing available on short notice was Federal blue box 100 grain soft points.

I really hate to place blame on the bullets for the lack of blood trail mentioned above. There was a tremendous amount of internal damage and exits for each round. I suspect the problem or blame lies more with the deer no longer having a pump after the first shot. The chest cavity was blood filled.

Congratulations on a fine hunt.

What a great story, and a successful ending. My 13-year old boy shot a doe all by himself, his first time, at our farm in central Missouri. By the time I could get to him, though, all he could talk about was the idiot neighbor guy looking at my son through the scope of his rifle. My son was pretty shook up about that.

The more I think about that, the angrier I become. How stupid can some people be?

way to go on sons 1st buck .thats fantastic.

Congrats from me and mine on a fine animal....

Nice deer congrats.....I also think the 4 point rule is a crock of chit.

Dink

Hugh, this was actually my son's third deer in three years of hunting. I just act like it was his first!!!!
I think he was slightly more composed than I!


Congrat's to all of you guys getting your (and other's) kids and first timers out there. That has been the real thrill to me since probably the mid-80's.