Blitz-en: A Christmas Gift from the Protégé

With the beginning of late muzzle-loader being days before the holiday, Michael and I coordinated a hunt down south at his uncle's property where we bow hunted during the bow season. We left Sunday night so we could hunt every moment possible for the next two days. We had the camp to ourselves this time as his uncle was not going down until later in the week. When we arrived at camp I realized that I had completely dropped the ball and neglected to bring any food. Well, Michael has come a long way and he had everything covered from square one. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. The padawan has become the master...
We decided that getting up early during late muzzle was dumb and we get up dawn instead. We grabbed a quick granola bar and headed out to walk a big public section just down the road. The weather was that of a standard mid to late November. Foggy, misty, drippy and surprisingly warm. Mid 40s already. We slow walked as much as we could before a real breakfast started to sound good. We pulled a loop and headed back while walking timber edge and what looked like dense smartweed. It was pretty much expected that we would see nothing. With that attitude I got burned. Watching Michael to my left something big busted to my right. With a fogged scope and a deer running at Mach-4, I took a pop shot at a do-able 75 yards. Swing and a miss... As he rounded the corner of the treeline he was in, he would loop around and stop broadside at 90 yards and stand there. Even I could not load that gun fast enough before the 130 class 8 point vanished.
I knew when I pulled that trigger I missed. I had basically been caught with my pants around my ankles so to speak.
Oh well.
We looked for blood in the adjacent area for 20 minutes but I knew when he stopped he was not hit. Of course when I reloaded, I rammed so much water down the barrel of my gun I honestly did not expect it to go bang. I unloaded on a fencepost as we exited the property. I couldn't even hit that damn thing at 60 yards...

Michael was bordering on hangry so we slopped our way out of the public and back to camp. It had basically rained the entire time we were out and if it was not downhill the entire way, 4WD or not we would have gotten stuck. Really stuck.

Back at camp, Michael was a fury trying to throw food together so fast I thought he was going to eat the sausage raw. French toast, eggs, and sausage would prove a GREAT breakfast! We hung out and tried the nap thing until our evening sit, but we were both too jacked so we bickered about what to do for about 2 hours. We ended up settling on sitting together in a box blind as the wind was not right for where I wanted to sit for the evening.

EVENING SIT:

We got in early but it didn't seem to matter. It was still raining and the deer were moving. There were turkeys in the field when we arrived and not 20 minutes after getting settled we had deer in the field. Within the next half hour we had over 30 deer behind us, and at one point a group of does at 20 yards. There was only one buck I considered shooting and it was a 3.5 year old with 8-10 inch spikes. I don't care what deer managers think, that thing is the bane of a gene pool. No shots fired, but it was a crazy night in which we got to share each others company while not having to gut or drag a deer at the end of the hunt. 

Back at camp Michael was again at hangry. He pre-made some chili but it needed to be thawed from its current condition. His patience lost and end with him cutting up the ice block while in the pan.

We ate ourselves into a stooper while watching SNL's holiday special. I thought it was a night well spent!

Again, we did not jump into anything in the morning but after a few donuts for breakfast, we walked another public property. I never saw a deer, but it was pounded, and Michael was busting them left and right. It was a property with expansive bottom/swampland leading into some prime oak/cedar upland. It was dense bugaloo, and quite frankly some ideal ground to manage. No shots, but it was no longer a sloppy, drippy, morning walk.

We found ourselves back at camp cooking some good food! Fried eggs, sausage, and some lead-bread from Dad. After a quick bite we decided to clean up camp for a quick exit when we were done after our evening hunt. After clean up Michael went to talk to a neighboring landowner and I stayed back to work on some of my own stuff. It was a little past 1pm and we were both antzy and ready to get back out. The wind was right for both of our original game plans from yesterday. At 2pm we were driving out to our spots. Michael dropped me off on the road and I walked into the wind on the far east side of the property.

EVENING SIT 2:

It was still really early, especially for late muzzle, but I took my sweet time getting to my spot. I got to the standing bean field and positioned myself at the absolute crest of the field. If I could see it, I could shoot it. At the fenceline there was a chunk of hog fence buried in the brome-grass and it was my ideal make-shift ground blind. Fence line and tree behind me to breakup my outline, and plenty of cover in front to keep from being picked off. I knew it was a juice spot before I even settled in. It started raining again just as I sat down. Not a half hour in a group of hens came out at about 120 yards. After they worked to about 60 yards I knew I was concealed well as they never picked me off even with blaze orange. At 3pm I watched one doe slip the gap in front of me on the mowed lane, and head down into the beans. I could not believe there were deer moving two hours before legal light. Ten minutes later a group of does were at the crest at 140 yards. They did the same as the first doe, and filed down into the beans out of my line of sight. I looked up through a finger of woods and saw bone.

 I counted tines and could not believe my eyes. It was the big 7pt Michael and I had a close encounter with during our rut camp!
I adjusted the zoom on my scope and checked him out more as he came into the clearing. He was on high alert, but he didn't slip right to the beans like the does. It was at that moment I realized I should probably shoot. Hammer back and steadied the shot. He was still walking and quartering too me when I squeezed off the shot.
 BOOM!!
At 128 yards I watched him tail tucked and head down, plow his way through the bean field. I lost sight of him as he dropped down in the valley below me. Smoked him!

At 3:12pm on the 23rd of December, I had a buck on the ground. I slowly reloaded my gun, and sat in my spot and reveled in it's magnificence. The half hour rule applied here because I lost sight of him and never actually watched him go down, but I was losing all the composure I never had. I collected my necessary things and made my way to the swale I saw him go into.

 He made it a grand total of 80 yards from where I hit him before he piled up in front of a Honey locust.
Michael was buried in a fenceline on a different property and was covered in deer so I managed pics on my own.

Upon further inspection I discovered that this buck was not in fact the big 7pt from the bow season but rather a large mature 8pt with a busted G2 on the right side. What I also discovered was my shot was not even close to as ideal as I had thought. My shot was high and back. When I field dressed him I discovered that I hit basically nothing except the kidneys. I would not have known this was the case had it not been for my beloved wife's tutorials during gut jobs of the past. Also further research has taught me that kidney hits will bleed out faster that a double lung hit. This is probably why he acted like he was hit as hard as he was leading me to believe it was a better shot.

With Michael hunting I was on my own until dark. While taking pics the deer and even turkeys were filing into the field at an alarming rate. When I went up to my hiding spot there were about 30-40 deer on the logging road mere yards from my set-up. During my field dressing there were four buck in the field above me. I knew I was not going to be able to sit there and wait for Michael to help me drag this buck out. I spent the next two hours dragging him 50 yards at a time. I would stage my gear ahead as my breaks and then double back and drag him to my gear and so on. SO TIRED. I stopped a few times and took more pics.

Eventually I made it all the way back to the road and at that point I was spent. When Michael showed up we finagled a way to get the buck back to the house for a few more pics with Michael's turbo camera. 

We ended up butchering him on the ground in front of the porch light. We had nowhere to put him and Michael's Dad would have had our heads on a platter if we put that thing in the back the new Tahoe. We packed the rest of our stuff and headed to Ames to pick up the last of the things we could not fit in the Tuarus for Christmas break. Of course we hit snow on the way in my by Michael's will to not piss off my wife more than we have to, we made it hope by a little after 1am. Michael did everything in his power to get me a buck at this farm during the bow season, and it just never materialized. He vowed to get me one during late muzzle as well but the same rules of only harvesting mature bucks still applied. I was worried that this buck was on a non-hit list but a phone call to the landowner indicated that there was some history with deer and it was indeed one he was even going to shoot if given the chance. A mature buck that will not likely explode into a giant booner. That is my kind of buck!



Stay Tuned; 2015 is just getting started.