Busting My Cherry: The Moment Comes
You never know how you’re going to handle killing of a large game animal until the moment comes. Even though you’re no stranger to killing things, the deliberate killing of a deer is an altogether different proposition than busting up a bunch of rats or birds. You think you’ve practiced and prepared for this moment. You’ve been to the range over and again making sure that you’re rifle is right and your aim true. You’ve researched the ammo and which one is right for your particular application. You’ve played the scenario in your head over and over, imagining exactly where the reticle will lay on the animal in your sight picture. You’ve imagined holding those horns in your hands until you can no longer stand it being just your imagination. But you still don’t know exactly how things will play out when the moment comes and it’s time to pull the trigger or release your arrow. Can you do it? Will you? And even if you can and you will, what you don’t know is that’s the easy part. The shot may well be the apex moment in any hunt, but it’s a moment flanked by work that’s far more arduous and consequential than the shot.
It was the middle of October and we were hunting both mule deer and pronghorn antelope in the northeast corner of Wyoming just northwest of Newcastle, a couple of dozen miles from the border with South Dakota at the very edge of the Black Hills.* In the three days we’d been hunting, we would look for deer in the morning, antelope during the middle of the day, then deer again in the evening. We’d walked miles and miles still hunting the sagebrush flats hoping a buck would pop up from his bed and sat over alfalfa fields for hour after hour where two trails from their bedding opened up. We’d seen a handful of young whitetail bucks and a gob of both mule deer and whitetail does and fawns well within shooting range on a number of occasions, though nothing more mature than a small two year old 3×3 basket buck who still needed a couple of years in order to mature. I didn’t have any experience hunting but even I knew that shooting a young buck wasn’t a good idea. It’s not about his little rack. A trophy would be nice, but it wasn’t the point. It was about pursuing a deer that is more rare than the first buck that pops out on to the field. One that isn’t going to make himself an easy target. After all, anyone can sit on a green forage plot and shoot the first deer that comes along. There may well be a place for that kind of hunt, but that place wasn’t my first hunt. I wanted to earn my quarry; work for it. I already knew how to kill. I wanted to learn to hunt. I didn’t want to shoot a buck that hadn’t had a chance.
I won’t pretend and say that I knew anything about Quality Deer Management, but it makes sense that you won’t see very many larger mature deer in a particular area if everyone’s shooting the young ones season after season. If you continuously shoot young bucks, after just a few years they will all be young, only having had a chance to live a season or two before being shot and replaced by the next crop of two year old bucks who will then get shot the following season ad infinitum. You’ve cut the circle way short. It’s not an efficient way to maintain a local herd, and makes for bad hunting. That big buck you really want, the wily one that’s playing coy and will represent the hard work you’ve put in to the hunt, will never be there because by shooting all of the young bucks year after year, you never let him grow. You’re hunting on credit, killing the deer that would have been a beautiful buck in two years, perhaps a magnificent one, for the sake of getting a kill this season. Hunting tomorrow’s trophies today just isn’t sustainable, and it seems that too many hunters value the kill more than the hunt and see a trip as a failure if they haven’t downed some deer at the end of it all. It’s understandable that one might want to have something to show for the money and effort expended, but it’s an objectively better idea to take a doe and fill the freezer than a small buck ensuring that he will never have the opportunity to mature. The local herd will be healthier, larger, and will make for better hunting season after season which is a benefit for everyone involved.
On the fourth day, after hunting in all manner of conditions ranging from nice and sunny still hunting through mind-blowingly beautiful canyons for mule deer, to weathering a day-long epic rainstorm and 30 mph winds spot-and-stalk hunting antelope, we decided to try a different spot for our early morning hunt. It was the same ranch that we had been hunting at sunrise, but on a different alfalfa plot about three quarters of a mile away that was easily a mile long by half a mile wide. We settled in by a huge stack of rolled hay bales about thirty minutes before shooting light and started glassing the fields and known trails that led from the surrounding sage flats hoping that we’d finally see a shooter buck pop out before first light to try and sneak a last minute snack before heading to bed for the day. We saw a handful of does make their way out, and a coyote trying to score a Canadian goose or rabbit, but no bucks. Then as shooting light was upon us we noticed the first muley buck we’d seen all trip step out on to the fields about 500 yards west of us, following shortly behind two does. He was a buck, and that was a good sign that other bucks would be nearby, but he wasn’t the one we were after. Just a handful of seconds later a bigger, more mature buck stepped out. He wasn’t massive, but he was noticeably larger than his predecessor. We didn’t yet know if he was a shooter, but we were definitely going to give him a second look from a different angle and with more light. After a few minutes sizing him up we decided that he was most likely a three year old (three and a half, actually) based on how much larger he was than the obvious two year old buck with him. He wasn’t necessarily the big dog of the herd, that one would likely remain mostly nocturnal for another month, but he was mature enough to shoot.
When I had my reticle sitting at the shoulder of this beautiful 3×4 muley buck what had previously been very clear, the situation I had been imagining for almost a year before my trip, suddenly turned to mush. These two deer were the first muley bucks we’d seen in four days of hunting, so I was jumpy just at the reality of finally seeing one of these majestic animals after days of searching. My scope was initially fogged all to hell on what was a chilly morning saturated with dew and I was breathing heavily from moving quickly through the massive alfalfa field towards that small hill in the middle that we used as an observation point. Once I got there, I realized that the shooting sticks I was carrying would be useless. But despite my initial problems I was ready. This is what we had been hunting hard for for three days, and the reason I’d been practicing hard at the range. I was gonna do it. As I settled in behind my half-fogged scope I took a few deep breaths and studied him and gained my composure. I noticed how quickly he was feeding through the field. I noticed how long he’d have his head down before picking up and moving. I studied his angles and mentally prepared where I’d put the shot when the time came. I didn’t get the legendary buck fever (not yet anyways) which surprises me when I look back on it. I was calm and in a zone.
“When he clears, shoot ’em”, said John.
Not three seconds later the smaller 3×3 buck that was directly behind him moved. I placed the reticle where I wanted it, held my breath, and calmly squeezed the trigger on my first big game animal at a distance of 201 yards.
“Thwack!”
The report of the bullet hitting my deer startled me a bit. I had never heard the sound of a seven millimeter projectile hitting flesh before. The only things I had ever shot had either been too small for a report, or too close to be able to hear one. He kicked a bit, trotted forward about fifty yards at an angle to me and started to quiver some. “He’s going down”, John said.
Only he didn’t go down.
“Hit ’em again” he said as I already had the thought in mind and started cycling the bolt on my rifle. I didn’t want him to suffer any more than he was already going to, and I didn’t want to lose him. As I settled the reticle of my scope on his shoulder again is when the dreaded buck fever hit. My adrenaline was surging, heart racing, and I pulled the trigger again. Only I didn’t hit him. I’m not sure exactly what happened. I tried to blame my miss on my scope being fogged up, but I knew that wasn’t true. I missed him by a large margin even though he was still well within my comfort range. At that he stotted off as best as he could in an attempt to catch up with the two does and smaller buck he had arrived with. Despite his best effort, he never did catch up with them and within just a few seconds we saw exactly why: I had busted his front shoulder on the opposite side of where I had shot him. His leg flopped and flailed. He had absolutely no control over it. Laboriously he made it the rest of the way across the alfalfa field and started to climb the hill on the south side of it. He could have bounded up that hill in just a few seconds had he not been shot in the front shoulder, surely he had done it before under better circumstances, but this time it took him nearly forty-five minutes, stopping every few seconds to gather himself before taking another few steps.
It seemed like forever as we watched him from that small bump in the middle of the field. We knew he was hurt badly, and even though I would have liked nothing more than to put him down we didn’t want to spook him, and he was just too far away for me to shoot him again.
So we waited until he reached the top and disappeared over the crest of the hill. As quickly as we could make an out of shape on-again-off-again smoker who had already suffered a heart attack move without spooking the other game animals in the area (there were various pronghorn feeding that field too) we crossed the field and went up the hill right in his path. As soon as we crested that hill John realized that we had made a grave tracking error: my deer was bedded down right there not five yards in front of us. I raised my rifle in order to finish the deal but as soon as I clicked the safety he bounded out of his bed and up on to the vast sage brush flats. I took a half blind shot at him, but I doubt I hit him. We jumped him. He was gone.
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* The edge of the mountains in this area is stark. On the north side of the road it’s the bottom of mountains with varying topography and trees; on the south side it’s open plains with the tallest thing being sage brush.