My first buck Oct 1999. Killed it an hour or so into the first day of my first big game season. Had it dressed out and was back in time for church that morning. 6x7 Mulie. 350 yard shot with my Mawmaw's 700 ADL 270 Win, 3-9x40 Vari-x II, 130gr Nosler Partition that my Dad helped me load myself.
Dad and me
Proverbs 12:27 The lazy do not roast any game, but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt.
1959, Absorkas, south of Big Timber Montana, Independence mine area. Forkhorn, 50 yds shot, model 71 Winchester, 348W, 250gr silver tip. Were hunting elk. Don't know how to get picture posted.
East of Denio NV at about 6,500 feet, five years ago. Mr. Tasty (aka lumber as he was a 2x4). Packed out 75 lbs of field butchered and boned meat. Ranger Arms (Damn fine rifle) 25-06, Federal Blue box ammo.
No pics, it was in 1960 up Browse Creek in southern Utah, I will never shoot a bigger one. But at that time and place there were many much nicer looking racks taken but few deer were much larger in body.
My friend and I had a wager with a fellow student in High School that whoever shot the smallest deer (measured by outside spread) had to buy the others a milk shake. My friend and I with my dad shot two very large bucks; his rack was a little wider than mine because of a cheater. Mine was a 6X8 and about 31" wide (as I recall), our friends' was just slightly (about 1/2") smaller than mine so he had to buy!
My rack was sort of flat and not nearly as nice looking as the ones in the local hardware store so we didn't think much about it.
The two deer were together and headed for the top of Pine Valley Mountain when we got them. I was using a pre-64 M 70 270 bought earlier in the year. It was used, barrel had been cut to 20" and a different stock put on it and the trigger guard and floor plate had been chrome plated. I was too poor to buy a scope so had a Redfield peep sight on it. My fried was using a used Model 99 Savage in 243 he'd just bought also. My dad used his 760 Remington 270. My friend and I made the final killing shots on the individual deer so we claimed them.
It was all we could do to put them on my friend's horses to pack them out. Skinned, with much of the neck gone they weighed over 170 lbs in the butcher shop.
That was about the last year when large southern Utah bucks were relatively common; so much so that wholly inept, bumbling 16 year old amateurs expected to get a deer with a 30" rack! Oh! the ignorance of youth!
In 1968 I hunted with dad in the same general area and shot a 5 point about 25" wide and that was considered a nice deer for the time but in 1960 it would not have won a milk shake! That was the last year I hunted in southern Utah with grad school demands.
"It is wise, though, to remember above all else: rifle, caliber, scope, and even bullets notwithstanding, the most important feature of successful big game hunting is to put that bullet in the correct place, the first time!" John Jobson
No pics, it was in 1960 up Browse Creek in southern Utah, I will never shoot a bigger one. But at that time and place there were many much nicer looking racks taken but few deer were much larger in body.
My friend and I had a wager with a fellow student in High School that whoever shot the smallest deer (measured by outside spread) had to buy the others a milk shake. My friend and I with my dad shot two very large bucks; his rack was a little wider than mine because of a cheater. Mine was a 6X8 and about 31" wide (as I recall), our friends' was just slightly (about 1/2") smaller than mine so he had to buy!
My rack was sort of flat and not nearly as nice looking as the ones in the local hardware store so we didn't think much about it.
The two deer were together and headed for the top of Pine Valley Mountain when we got them. I was using a pre-64 M 70 270 bought earlier in the year. It was used, barrel had been cut to 20" and a different stock put on it and the trigger guard and floor plate had been chrome plated. I was too poor to buy a scope so had a Redfield peep sight on it. My fried was using a used Model 99 Savage in 243 he'd just bought also. My dad used his 760 Remington 270. My friend and I made the final killing shots on the individual deer so we claimed them.
It was all we could do to put them on my friend's horses to pack them out. Skinned, with much of the neck gone they weighed over 170 lbs in the butcher shop.
That was about the last year when large southern Utah bucks were relatively common; so much so that wholly inept, bumbling 16 year old amateurs expected to get a deer with a 30" rack! Oh! the ignorance of youth!
In 1968 I hunted with dad in the same general area and shot a 5 point about 25" wide and that was considered a nice deer for the time but in 1960 it would not have won a milk shake! That was the last year I hunted in southern Utah with grad school demands.
Every time I pass through Kanab I always stop and eat at the little cafe downtown that has all those giant bucks on display that were killed in the surrounding area. Still a helluva lot of big bucks roaming around in that area.
This is the first deer I killed after I got out of college, had a job, and could afford a camera. I never got any photos of the first few deer I killed. The rifle is a Ruger tang safety 270 with a Leupold 3X9 loaded with 130 grain partitions. The camera was a Pentax 35mm. I was young and just starting out but I knew enough to save up and buy decent gear the first time.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke 1795
"Give me liberty or give me death" Patrick Henry 1775
It was back in 1982, youth hunt. I got a 10 pt and a buddy and his dad camped with us that weekend and he got a 7pt. Can remember that weekend like it was yesterday,even though it was 30 years ago.
In Greene County Alabama. .45-70 with Garrett 415 grain flat nose lead bullets. A family friend took me out a couple of times, and I screwed up a ton of shots before finally getting my act together and drilling this little one's shoulders.
"For some unfortunates, poisoned by city sidewalks ... the horn of the hunter never winds at all" Robert Ruark, The Horn of the Hunter
No pics, it was in 1960 up Browse Creek in southern Utah, I will never shoot a bigger one. But at that time and place there were many much nicer looking racks taken but few deer were much larger in body.
My friend and I had a wager with a fellow student in High School that whoever shot the smallest deer (measured by outside spread) had to buy the others a milk shake. My friend and I with my dad shot two very large bucks; his rack was a little wider than mine because of a cheater. Mine was a 6X8 and about 31" wide (as I recall), our friends' was just slightly (about 1/2") smaller than mine so he had to buy!
My rack was sort of flat and not nearly as nice looking as the ones in the local hardware store so we didn't think much about it.
The two deer were together and headed for the top of Pine Valley Mountain when we got them. I was using a pre-64 M 70 270 bought earlier in the year. It was used, barrel had been cut to 20" and a different stock put on it and the trigger guard and floor plate had been chrome plated. I was too poor to buy a scope so had a Redfield peep sight on it. My fried was using a used Model 99 Savage in 243 he'd just bought also. My dad used his 760 Remington 270. My friend and I made the final killing shots on the individual deer so we claimed them.
It was all we could do to put them on my friend's horses to pack them out. Skinned, with much of the neck gone they weighed over 170 lbs in the butcher shop.
That was about the last year when large southern Utah bucks were relatively common; so much so that wholly inept, bumbling 16 year old amateurs expected to get a deer with a 30" rack! Oh! the ignorance of youth!
In 1968 I hunted with dad in the same general area and shot a 5 point about 25" wide and that was considered a nice deer for the time but in 1960 it would not have won a milk shake! That was the last year I hunted in southern Utah with grad school demands.
Lord how I woulda loved to hunt muleys in southern Utah in the 60's. Wasnt of age to hunt till the mid 90's. Dont have a pic, but it was a little 3x2, and i was damn proud!
With any luck, some day I will pull a henries deer tag..That place is something special..I often wonder if its a throw back to what it was like throughout the state back in the 60's.
Dad and I didn't carry cameras afield when I started hunting. Not often anyway. No photos at all of my first few deer. Here's my son's first though, a mule deer buck taken at 275 yards with a single shot from "our" 1974 vintage 6mm Remington all dressed down in a Remington youth stock:
It was back in 1982, youth hunt. I got a 10 pt and a buddy and his dad camped with us that weekend and he got a 7pt. Can remember that weekend like it was yesterday,even though it was 30 years ago.
Cool! Didn't think any states had a youth hunt back then.
I don't have a picture of the first 3 or 4 deer I killed and only a few between then and mid 2000s when I received a digital camera as a gift. My Dad never took pictures and we never kept racks either.
My first buck I killed hunting with my buddy, though we separated out of the jeep hunting different drainages. I followed tracks around a mountain top into a bowl, the buck came running out from a cut under me and along the far ridge. At about 200 yds, as he turned to go over the ridge, I was following him in the 4X redfield, he was broadside before he was going over and I shot with my savage 99 in 308. He disappeared over the ridge at the same time. I was calm at the shot but knew I must have missed and was disappointed, I ran down and back up to the far ridge hoping to see the buck in the distance and about tripped over him... his momentum took him just over the ridge from where I shot him... it was a sliding DRT.
My buddy and I were so excited, it was a first deer for either of us. He was a big bodied 3X4 muley and we took hours dragging it out whole/gutted, we wanted to hang it in camp before our Dads came in to show off.
I don't have any pics of my first few deer, all does, but I decided to mount my first buck.
Got him while sitting in my shooting house on family land right behind my home Dec. of 2010.
Wish I could claim hunting prowess but it was just luck. I'd never seen anything but does and an occasional spike out of that spot. He just came walking out by himself about an hour before dark and I dropped him at about 150yds with my 300wsm.
Those who must raise their voice to get their point across are generally not intelligent enough to do so in any other way.
Took a few shots of my first one, but the glass plates got broken in one of my moves long ago (grin).
Actually, we never took pictures of dead deer. The first of mine that was "immortalized" on film was a really nice whitetail that I killed on the Norias Division of the King Ranch when I was in graduate school. That picture was taken by my friend John Roberts (the trapper) who guided me to that deer and rattled him up for a shot. If I can find the slide, I will scan and post it.
Ben
Some days it takes most of the day for me to do practically nothing...