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Buckshot's Article
Catch The Thrill
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Buckshot's Article
Catch The Thrill
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The thrill of the hunt. Understanding the work that goes into hunting a whitetail deer is a lifelong tradition. What better way to honor the earth then be rewarded from her bounty. A true sustainable meat, good for the environment, tradition based in a long standing culture of the American hunter. Organically grown venison, free of growth hormones, fast feeding. Mother earth has blessed you with this reward. I have always hunted for the food. Why? Because I love the taste. My best year was 6 deer. Two deer on a regular hunting license and 4 doe's on a block permit to remove the excess deer off a farmer's property. You know what? The following year the meat was gone. I can remember all the deer that I have shot. The time, the distance of the shot, if the deer had to tracked, how I found the deer. Reliving the story is part of the tradition. Hunting deer is part luck, part skill and all about good shooting. A very hard lesson to learn in my life was to spend the money on a good scope and a good bolt gun. The memory of time in history is right now. That one chance a year at a good buck is a good hunting season. My father taught me you will have one good chance at a buck during gun season so make it count. Over 30 years hunting the wily, cleaver whitetail has taught me a lot. Trust me deer hunting is boring, cold, long days until your one chance comes along. When the chance comes you forget about everything expect this is why you hunt. Your heart is beating like mad, your breathing is fast and quick. Here is your chance. This year was like many past hunting seasons. Cold, long, boring days until the last day. In the very last hour of the last day of the season. Walking down to a cattail slough the overcast sky looked like snow. The temp was in the 30's, not bad for a North Dakota hunt. Not really expecting the doe to be where she was standing broke my walk in mid stride. I was carrying both a buck and doe license. I scoped her on the edge of the slough. 300 yards with no rest in sight was too far a shot for me. She spooked but not bad. I quickly ducked down in a draw out of her sight. Now I slowly climbed the hill so I would be able to see the whole cattail slough. Not wanting to be a silhouette against the sky when I neared the top I crawled the last few feet to the top. The snow was only a few inches deep. I laid out prone on top. Feeding in the field was 2 deer at 500 yards. 2 more deer were trotting up to them. Must have been the ones I spooked I thought. Just my luck the two joined the other two and they started to trot off. One was larger then the rest. I focused on that deer in the scope. Too far of shot for the 22-250 I thought. No way to approach to get a closer shot it was all open down to the slough below me. Just then in the bottom of the scope I saw a doe run past at 150 yards. Close enough to shoot, I smiled. Then right behind her came a buck. I just saw a nice rack. Shot at him, he was still running, shot again at 200 yards, still running but slowing down. Sneaking into the cattails. The buck stopped and looked back. He must have done this trick before I thought. Hide out in the thick cattails. Lucky for me I bought the VX-1 with the varmint sight. The main cross hair set at 100 yards, the next dot down 200 yards and the last dot 300 yards. I guessed the deer was at 300 yards.
Calm down, relax, take your time. Squeeze the shot off. Boom where did the deer go? I saw the doe running and almost through the cattails I watched her enter the field. No other deer came out. I must of put him down with that last shot. Man, that was the best shot of my life I thought. I picked up my empty brass. Walking down I counted the distance, 280 yards. There laid a nice 4 x 4 buck. I missed both running shots, but my last shot put him down one shot to the spine. He was still alive. I finally shot to the base of the neck and finished the job. I filled out the tag and gutted my prize. That is what I live for. The thrill of that 5 seconds of very intense moments. What made it even better was I was using a handload. 50 grain Nosler silver tip. Wow, is that an awesome bullet. I used to call the 22-250 a mouse gun. Wow, was I wrong. One of the best guns I ever owned.
Catch the thrill. Take a kid deer hunting. Buckshot Bruce
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