For some reason, I lost interest in deer hunting as an early teenager. I apparently determined after harvesting a few, that it was far too easy, and I'd rather stay warm than brave the chilly outdoors. Trust me, this was one of the milder bad decisions I made during those years. When I renewed my interest in hunting, I sought elk, moose, bear, sheep, goats, hogs - everything but whitetails. I still didn't see the challenge.

Enter the Shaman. Having connected a few years ago through the 'Fire, we meet every couple of months to quaff beverages & swap stories. We even went on a hog hunt back in '19. This summer he invited me to dip my toes back into the whitetail waters at his farm south of the river. Not being one to turn down such a hospitable offer, I accepted.

Knowing the severe limits of my social graces, I figured that if I showed up with food, my hosts might be more forgiving of my unavoidable breaches of camp etiquette. Brisket would be just the thing to grease the skids here:





Propriety called for a special rifle for the occasion, so I selected the one Dad bought me when I was 12. This 788 began life as a .243 Win, and it accounted for all the whitetails I'd ever taken. After I began hanging around here, however, I learned that its accuracy was sorely lacking, so I sent it off to be breathed-upon by the late, great Mickey Coleman. He turned it into such a shooter that I subsequently sent the stock to Karnis for some liposuction & beautification.





After a couple sessions on-stand, a dink presented himself for collection:








Not a bad way to ease myself back into things. 120 NBT at 2,930 fps liquified the lungs, but had no exit. Also, a shout-out here to MichiganRoadKill, whose Michigan Slim is featured in the first photo. A wonderful li'l knife, that one.


Having re-bloodied that rifle, I took Great Grandad's 7x57 afield for what would be its first whitetail since at least 1980. 160 yards was no problem for the 2x Lyman scope:





The 160 NPT definitely had an exit: Partitions gonna partition.

The Shaman knows his stuff, & treats his guests like royalty. I'd have been happy with the dinkiest of dinks, but I ended up with a nice bag for the trip.





It's almost enough to restore a guy's faith in the 24HCF.

FC

Nice!

Holy smokes! Congrats on that buck! He's a hammer I'd be extremely proud of!

Cool rifles but that 7x57 is some kinda nice!

Man, what a way to jump back in! Way to go!

Well done o bald one !



Great mass on that buck !

That's a nice buck! Great grandpa had good taste in rifles, that 7x57 is pretty sharp.

Just watch yer nuts!
Sha libel to steal one!

Dandy, dandy buck!! Congrats!

Very cool, congrats on a great hunt.

Nice! After taking a dink like that, it may be 39 years before you get invited back...

Very nice. I'd be really lucky to get a "dink" like that on my lease.

BTW, what was the shot presentation such that the 120 BT didn't exit?

65 yards, broadside. Entire chest cavity was filled with blood.

FC

Sounds like it was perfect!

Great story! Thank you so much for sharing it.

Congrats plebe Foxtrot Charlie! Nice way to get back into it!

Great job Shaman too! 😎👍

That buck a good un.

Mighty fine!

Hope to see you in march with the proper chapeau.

Best,

GWB

Great story, buck and rifles!
Didn't know they made 120 gr. bullets in .243, how about that.

Sorry for the confusion. I made you have to click the link to see that Micky turned it into a 7–08.

FC

Way to jump back in, Joe.

Congrads, great buck! Thanks for the story!

Congrats!

I'm still .000 for the season. I've just been picking the wrong stand at the wrong time. I was at the stand where FC got his big one the night before and drew a zilch. I'm about 400 yards away and overlooking 400 yards of pasture and . . .

Tomorrow's the day! I keep telling myself.

It's okay. I'm happy that FC got the #2 camp record yesterday. He's already been okayed as the new member of Shamanic Dream Team. But don't tell him, I'm gonna make him sweat a bit more.

Sorry for not keeping up with my posts. I'm still a bit wan from the chemo and getting out to the blind every morning and afternoon takes it out of me. FC was nice enough to come out and give me a ride back in.

In payment, I agreed to waive the requirement that he drink Scoresby tonight.



Quick story: I was out in the blind this PM and a squirrel fell out of the nearby oak tree and landed on the metal roof of the blind. I've weathered rain, sleet, and graupel , but not a 2 lb squirrel. Yikes! I thought I was gonna die.

I think you owe shawman some more brisket!

A fine buck with beer can mass. Wow that mass!!

Yeah... the Shaman found some Halloween leftovers: behold, the Fun Sized bottle o' Scoresby:





I stuck with the stuff on the left.


FC

For sure! I made sure he got plenty o' brisket this evening. I gotta stay in his good graces.

FC

Nice job Joe.

Tell us about great grandads 7x57! Looks like a beautiful rifle

Nice Job

Wow! Just great stuff, all of it.

.
Nice comeback FC !

I see, Campfire ediquette is slipping, so let me be the first to offer a public "you suck"!

Dink, my soggy, white, pasty behind.

That rifle and that knife are a fantastic combination and that dink is a whopper.

This could take us far, far afield from this thread. It's probably best addressed separately, but I have posted about it here in the past.

If memory serves, I first mentioned it here in a thread re: 160 grain Partitions in the 7x57..

Then there was a tongue-in-cheek thread wondering about .285 bullets for it, seeing that it was described in one of his hunting journals as a, ".285 special Mauser".

To go still further in the weeds, I found the following in Elmer Keith's Big Game Hunting:





No one in the family has any recollection of the arsenal ever including a .285 OKH. Given that this rifle is the only 7mm ever spoken of, perhaps it's the one that accounted for the pictured ram. The only bullets mentioned being used in it in recent times were 160 and 175 Noslers. I've not looked into who might've made a 180 grain, .285 bullet, but I'm sure it would have over penetrated.

In any event, the bigger mystery is that Great Grandad must have been in correspondence with Elmer Keith, and none of us were aware of it.

FC

Very well done and well told!!

Look what the cat dragged in.

How ya been?

From 1 bald guy to another, congrats! Hoping to see a nice buck through the Zeiss, thanks again for that. Enjoy those backstraps! Lol!

Wow that's a tailgate full. The .275 rigby!!! Big fan over here

That's a damn good way to get back in the game. Good on Shaman for extending the invite.

Good form chaps!

Great thread!

Skane, I am rolling. PM sent.

And guys, please join me in asking some pointed question towards FC regarding head gear.

Hunter safety being one thing - where is the Forstdiensthut for trophy shots?

Dink? My hairy white azz...

Congrats my friend. that 7x57 is awesome. If i wasn't on my death bed in August i would have masterminded a way to cheat you out of it...

Nice Buck!!!

Ive got a 700ti I picked up here MC rebarreled in 7mm08

Great Buck, story and rifles. Thanks for sharing. Congrats.

It's been raining and the wind has been fairly brisk. SuperCore and I opted to stay in and get caught up on sleep and chores. I also managed to get everything together for a post detailing our hunt so far.

Report From Deer Camp, 2023

I bet you won’t go on a hiatus again 😂 nice buck dude

Congrats, Folically_Challenged, on a fine "dink"!

Beautiful buck! Buck of a lifetime! I count myself blessed anytime I can fill a tag, no matter the size of the rack, but I'd love to get one like that someday!

VERY cool Joe!

+1

Shaman - good to know that you are enjoying the finer things of life. Keep at it.

Excellent! Congrats!

Folically Challenged, congrats on a great hunt! And kudos to Shaman for being a good friend. My first centerfire was a 788 .243 Winchester that
My Dad bought me when I was 14-15. Killed a ton of groundhogs with it, but no deer. I hunted in Ky with it once near Falmouth. No deer that hunt. I still have my 788. Refinished the stock a while back.

Ron

Outstanding!

Wow!

I was adding FC's info into the official camp deer log. FC managed to pull off a few records.

First off, FC's rack is probably the #2 camp record and is the first time we've actually harvested an 11-point buck. Furthermore, his buck only weighed 165 lbs liveweight. That is by far the leanest buck with a big rack we've recorded. The #1 rack, the one I took in 2007, went 270lbs. The antler growth versus body weight indicates a major change. My guess is that overall nutrition of the herd is up and promoting accelerated antler growth. FC's buck is probably a year younger than mine.

He's also the first fellow to take a deer at our camp with the mythical .285 OKH round. Given the provenance of the rifle, I am not going to argue with the likes of Elmer Keith. Heck if I can hunt with a .275 Short Rigby (7mm-08) and the .30 Briar Light Magnum ( 30-06). FC can have his .285 OKH.

By hunting on the cusp of the new moon, He shot his buck on one of the youngest moon in the records, .55 days. I track moon age for each kill. There is a huge preponderance of deer taken in the waxing moon, and nearly no deer taken in the last quarter. The average moon age for a kill is 12.41.

Our SuperCore, the day before, shot a doe under the oldest moon on record, 28.71 days.

FC also managed to take a buck at 65.5 F, the warmest we've ever harvested a buck. The average is around 45F.

I wasn't aware that all such parameters were recorded on the hunt. It lays bare your Teutonic heritage... and database mgmt background...

FC

Mining the Deer Log

I started a Lotus 123 worksheet way, way back and then lost it in the divorce. After we got the farm, I started keeping it again in Excel, but struggled to get back the original data. Eventually, I was able to find a source of historical weather data and got a pretty good estimation of the conditions for the previous 20 years of data.

Nowadays, I've got the weather station. As long as I get on it within a day or so, I have pinpoint information of what was going on when deer are taken.

When I started to write, I saw all sorts of claims about weather, moon phase, etc. The only way to be sure what was bunk was to keep my own records. Your two deer are the 93rd and 94th records in the log. I have to admit to all sorts of biases. For instance, everyone at camp tries for a time to take a buck before filling a doe tag. As a result, the majority of doe in the log are taken in the afternoon after Friday of the first week. Also, the log shows that your best bet for taking a buck is before 1000 ET of the Rifle Opener. That's because we often see a decent buck on the first morning and then take it without waiting for something bigger to come along. Of course, your monster belies that trend. However, I can say unequivocally that the chances of sighting a buck with a good rack goes down as the season wears on.

What you shot was the epitome of our large bucks. They're very mobile during November and cover a very large range. I doubt we ever saw him prior to your encounter. We tend to only have 1-2 mature bucks on the farm at any given time. Our happy little doe herd keeps them coming. You were as much of a surprise to him as he to you.

I also started keeping a turkey harvest log. This has been far less revealing. Bottom line: turkeys are about as random as you can get. Identical conditions on the same day in different years produce nearly opposite results.