Okay so this entry has nothing to do with cheesy '80's break dancing, as hinted at in the above title. (I just like saying electric boogaloo)
But much like that groundbreaking 1984 film, this entry is a sequel- a sequel to the best deer-hunting day of my life. And following the rules of all sequels, this one will feature more action, bigger explosions, more drama, and of course, a bigger, meaner villain. But in the case of this story, replace a bigger meaner villain, with a bigger, meaner whitetail buck. I'm about to go up against the Clubber Lang of whitetail bucks.
Much like Halloween 2, this sequel picks up directly where the original story left off. After field dressing the 8-pointer that I killed Opening Morning, which by the way was the biggest buck I'd ever killed, I dragged his body up the hill to the edge of the cow pasture. (Now that's how you give your legs and calves an early morning workout) I made sure he was tucked away in the shade, since the temps were already on the rise and were expected to top out in the mid 6o's by afternoon) I then took a couple of snap shots and ate a few pieces of beef jerky from my fanny pack. I glanced at my watch. It was only 9:30. I was supposed to meet Dad up on top of the rock cliff at noon. So what do I do for the next two and a half hours? No use hunting my same stand, since it was highly unlikely that another buck of this caliber would come along, plus I'd already tagged out for the day. Nothing to shoot now but does, and I thought I'd hold on to my doe tag for a couple more days just do I can legally hunt the rest of our trip.
So I figured I'd just have a look around the property and see what there was to see. Directly behind my stand was a steep ridge that leads to the power line, where I was to eventually meet Dad. I figured I would I just work my way up the ridge and see if I jumped any late rising whitetails. About halfway up the slope, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I immediately froze in my tracks and scanned the hillside. About a hundred yards away on the opposite side of small cove I could make out the distinct shapes of several deer. They looked as though they were feeding and completely oblivious to my presence. I brought my rifle up to my shoulder and slowly crept forward as I continued to watch the deer, which seemed to by a group of three to four does. Suddenly a large buck appeared on the hillside and I threw up my rifle. The morning sun was shining through he trees at an odd angle causing a horrible glare in my scope. But even through the glint of light I could make out this buck’s massive rack. Instead of the wide rack on the buck I had just shot, this deer had an extremely tall and high rack; absolutely stunning in shape. The buck suddenly became aware that he was being watched and threw up his head in my direction. The two of us simply stood there staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity.
“Do I shoot him?” I thought to myself. Legally, of course I couldn’t. I had just killed my one and only buck of the season. But Good Grief, this was a nice buck; much nicer than the one I had just sent to the Big Bait Pile In The Sky. It was then I asked myself, “What would Ray do in this situation?” Of course I already knew the answer to that question, Ray would have immediately put a bullet through his chest cavity and dealt with the legal consequences later.
In the end, the ethical hunter in me (I sometimes really hate that guy, by the way) won out, and I took my finger off the trigger and lowered my rifle. When I did, the buck scampered up the hillside and disappeared. My thought was that Dad or Joe could have chance at him this evening or in the following days. It was obvious that I had picked the right spot to hunt.; I was located in what we hunters refer to as Buck City.
Of course when I met Dad for lunch, he read me the riot act over my actions. “You should have shot that deer,” he bellowed while munching on his ham sandwich. “You see that buck again, don’t hesitate. You put him on the ground. I’ll tag him for you.”
But the odds of me running into that same buck a second time were pretty slim. Or so I thought.
We spent that afternoon lounging on the porch of our hunting cabin and making plans for the evening hunt. We decided that the three of us would sit different stands in the same general area where I saw the massive buck from earlier in the day. Joe would sit in the stand where I killed my 8-pointer, I would sit in Dad’s climber just under the power line and Dad would sit in Wyatt’s tripod. Those three positions would form a perfect triangle around the spot I last saw the big boy. If he was still in the area, the odds were in our favor that one of us would see him that night.
We left camp and got into our stands around 3PM. A cold front was quickly moving in and the warm temperatures of the afternoon were beginning to plummet. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t plan for such a rapid drop in the thermometer mercury and I spent the next several hours, freezing my tail off in Dad’s stand. Now I had to hand it to Dad, he had picked a beautiful spot to catch a rutting buck. His stand sat high in the branches of an old oak overlooking a pretty little cove about a hundred yards inside the tree line from a large cow pasture. It should have been a prime spot, but instead I sat in that stand for over four hours and didn’t see so much as a squirrel. Oh well, That’s deer hunting. Sometimes Lady Luck flirts with you and other times she’s nowhere to be found.
Just about dark, with my teeth chattering from the cold and my stomach rumbling with hunger, I climbed down out of the stand and headed for the tree line, where Dad was to pick me up in the Ranger. The wind was blowing hard by time I reached the barbed wire fence at the edge of the field. I could see the Ranger parked about 300 hundred yards away at the edge of the field. Obviously Dad wasn’t out of the woods yet, so I decided to cross the pasture and head in his direction. “The sooner we get out of here and into town for supper, the better,” I thought. But just as I stepped into the field, I saw several dark shapes of deer burst from the timber and run into the field in my general direction. Dad must have spooked them on his way out, I thought. There wasn’t enough light left and the deer were too far away for me to make out what they were. Probably just a couple f does. But I slipped my rifle up to my shoulder and crept slowly in their direction in the event a buck was among them. I crested a little rise in the field where I could see the deer more clearly. Just as I thought, four does, but standing in the middle of the field next to a small strand of trees was a much larger deer-a buck. I threw up my rifle and through the scope I could make out a huge, towering rack. He was a definite shooter!
The buck was completely unaware of me standing just fifty yards from him; he was too preoccupied with the does and he couldn’t hear or smell me over the booming wind. I knew this deer was at least as big as the one I had shot that morning. Dad’s words kept replaying over and over in my head like the ghost of Ben Kenobi talking to Luke Skywalker.
“Shooooooooot the buck Rick. Use the Force.”
So standing there in the middle of a darkened cow pasture, I placed the cross hairs of my Nikon scope in the general area of his vitals, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger of my Ruger for the third time in less than twelve hours.
Fire and gunpowder exploded from the end of my barrel, temporarily blinding me in the fading light. The buck jumped into the air, bucked once, and sprinted for the tree line too my left.
My immediate reaction was frustration. “Just great. I’ve now broken the law, shot a second buck, and from the looks of things, I’m going to be tracking a wounded deer all night by flashlight.”
I wasn’t even 100% sure I’d made a clean shot on the buck; it was just too dark. Cursing to myself and shaking my head in aggravation, I loaded a fresh round into my rifle and headed after the retreating buck.
I only took about twenty steps, until I saw what appeared to be the body of a deer lying at the edge of the field. “Holy Cow. I must have put one heck of a kill shot on him,” I thought as I raced over to the buck. “He didn’t run fifty yards.”
Sure enough, the buck was deader than a doornail, and lying in a heap at the edge of the field. And what a rack! He was a massive 9-point, with long, dagger-like tines. After closer inspection of the buck’s antlers, I realized that he was indeed the same buck I had seen on the hillside earlier in the day. His rack dwarfed my previous bucks. “Well, I guess he crossed my path one to many times. Now he’s going to be hanging form a meat pole back at camp.”
While I was crouched by the buck, trying to calm my nerves, I heard in the distance the sound of the Ranger crank up and headlights were soon racing in my direction. I left the deer and hustled over towards the oncoming Ranger.
“Did you shoot,” asked Dad? “Sounded like somebody shot.”
“Oh, I shot alright,” I said with a big grin on my face. “Remember when you said you’d tag that buck if I ever saw him again? I’m going to hold you to that.”
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