Round 2 With Deer
It was the 1st day of buck season in PA, and I was excited as the year before. I put my head down on the pillow the night before, but I never fell into the opiate of sleep that I was hoping to. I tossed and turned, but the only thing I could think of was sitting in my stand, overlooking some of the best deer woods in the state. My memories raced back to last year, when I got my 1st deer, and I would be sitting in the same exact spot this year. I finally rolled over and saw it was about 4:45 AM, and my dad started walking down the hall to my room to wake me up. I jumped out of bed, and threw my camo BDU pants on. Dad just looked in my room, saw I was already up, smiled, and walked back to his room to get dressed. It took no time at all for me to run down the steps and put my Rocky boots on, which normally takes me twice as long on a normal day. But, there was nothing normal about today, as it was the 1st day of deer season. My dad came down the stairs, and put his boots on, as I looked out the window. It wasn�t snowing, and it wasn�t raining, like it normally is when we went hunting. Dad finally got his boots on, and we got in the truck and drove about 20 minutes to where we were hunting, on my friend Charlie�s property.
We got there a little early, so we sat in the truck, waiting for Charlie to come up to meet us. After a few minutes, Charlie stepped out of the house, his head barely fitting under the ceiling of the doorway. He took his long strides up the hill to us, as Dad and I got our rifles out of their cases and Dad put his pack on. Charlie had a smile on his face, and said, �I think we�ll get something today, it�s pretty cold, though.� I just smiled, and my dad agreed with him. We walked up the hill, I fell a little behind as both my dad and Charlie were bigger than I was. I ran every once in a while to keep up, though, so I couldn�t be left behind (as if I would let them!). As we came to the woods, Dad and I said our good-byes to Charlie, and we parted, us walking to the right and Charlie to the left. It was an easy walk through the cut and plowed cornfield, even though it was a bit muddy from last night�s rain. I saw the holly bushes up ahead of us, and knew we would turn into the woods soon. We got to them, and we walked up in-between them, as they were our landmark to know when we should start looking for our stand (in the dark it was surprisingly hard to find it, even though we went there every year in deer season). I got on a well-worked deer trail, and walked a few steps to my left. There it was, looking the same as last year. I climbed up 1st, and Dad handed me my own rifle and his own as he stood on the ground, and he climbed up as soon as I got a hold of his rifle. He told me in a few minutes we would load up, but until then we would just sit. I was looking out in front of us, as I heard something running around, and I got ready to drop a cartridge into the chamber if a deer did come running out. It was pretty dark, but if the deer came out in front of us, it would be a barn-door range shot. I left out a sigh of relief as a fox squirrel ran out in front of us (that stupid thing does this to me every year). My heartbeat went back to normal from about 2000 beats a minute. Dad leaned over and said it was time to load up, and he would hold the light for me. I reached in my pocket and pulled 4 .30-06 shells out and I pushed them into the magazine of my favorite rifle, a Remington 700 BDL SS. Dad then turned his rifle over, and put 3 .30-06 shells into the magazine of his favorite rifle, a Remington 700 BDL. Everything was quiet for a while; no birds were even making any noise. I leaned back into my seat, relaxing; as I could even got a shot off from that position in this stand.
I just started to look up in the trees at some quiet sparrows, when I just about fell out of the tree stand. BOOM! A shot erupted from my right, about 400 yards away from us, where our friend Charlie was sitting. Dad said get ready in case he had missed, but I knew Charlie was a great shot with a rifle, and knew he got a deer. BOOM! BOOM! Two more shots came from the same area, and I was beginning to doubt old Charlie. Dad and I sat there for about 3 more minutes, but he said he better go check on Charlie, because if he did get his deer, and needed to drag it out of the woods, Dad wanted to help, because Charlie had some heart trouble in the past month. I watched Dad disappear through some trees into the woods, and I started watching again, knowing he could push a deer out to me at anytime. Nothing came out, so I began to close my eyes a bit, because it would be a while before the woods settled down after all the shooting and people walking through the woods. I looked back into the field as I saw my 2 hunting buddies dragging a deer behind them to Charlie�s house. I couldn�t see antlers on it, but they were dragging it through some high grass and it was a couple hundred yards away, too. After about 10 minutes, Dad was back, and he handed me his rifle as he climbed back into the stand. �How big was it?� I asked him. �It was a decent 8-point, not too wide, but still nice,� he told me. I sat for about another 5 minutes, and decided that I should go down and see if Charlie needed help loading the deer into the truck, because he wanted to take some pictures before he did it, and Dad wanted to get back to me, so he didn�t have time to help him. I walked down through the field, it being much easier now, because it was now light (it was day, in fact). I walked down into Charlie�s driveway, and saw his truck was already gone. I thought, �Oh well, at least I got to stretch my legs a little since 5:00 this morning.� I walked back up the hill (it wasn�t much of a walk, the hill is only about 350-400 yards wide), and sat down next to my dad in the tree stand.
�Boy, did you mess up�� Dad said. �Why, what happened?� I asked him. �3 does walked right in front of me as soon as you left, only 20 yards away.� I put my head down, knowing dad couldn�t have shot them, because only junior hunters could shoot does this buck season. �Oh well, we�ll see some more before the day is over, hopefully,� Dad said to me. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, but it still worked. I remembered last year when I couldn�t shoot does, we saw 20 a day, easily. All of a sudden, I heard some leaves rustling on the tram road that ran off to my left, and 2 deer walked out onto the trail. I shouldered my rifle, and told my dad that there were 2 deer there. He said the same thing as last year when I saw my buck, �When you get a shot, take it.� I found the 1st one�s rear end getting off the trail into a thicket, where it was too thick to shoot. I knew it was the bigger deer, but I wouldn�t get a shot at it now, so I had to take the 2nd deer. It came out, and I put the cross hairs right behind its shoulder. I squeezed the trigger, and the recoil knocked the riflescope out of my view, and I looked right at the deer. The front deer bounded away through the thicket (it�s always amazed me that they can go that fast through something so thick), and the one I shot at dropped to the shot. It kicked with its back legs, though, and started to try to get away. I worked the action of my rifle quickly, as if it was second nature (I think it is now), and put the cross hairs in front of the speeding deer. I shot again, and the deer stopped as if it ran into a brick wall, and its head fell to the ground.
My dad smiled, and patted me on the back, grabbed my rifle, and told me to get out and he�d be right there. I did, and he handed me both rifles again, and climbed down the ladder. I walked cautiously up to my deer, and tapped the base if its tail, just to make sure it was dead. It was as dead as we thought it was, and dad pulled his knife out and started to gut it as I filled my tag out. I drug the deer down into Charlie�s driveway, just as he pulled back into it. He smiled and said, �I�ll get the camera.� We took some more pictures, told each other about our deer that we had gotten, and I eventually went back up in the woods with my dad for a few more hours, but we didn�t see anything else. After we were satisfied that we wouldn�t see anything else (although I�m sure the deer had a party right in front of our stand as soon as we got out of the woods), we drove home, and took some pictures there. Well, another successful deer season, and another season to look forward to...
