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My hunting season was pretty short this year. I didn't hunt Saturday as I haven't seen many deer with the bountiful acorn crop on the ground. While working around the house on Sunday, I saw five bucks chasing one young doe. I even had a standoff with a young buck with a lot of promise trying to get to my hound dog in my driveway. I decided to go out to see what happened.
I had 27 bucks recorded on my cams, a lot of really nice bucks, but two were on my hit list. Two large eights; one three years old and one six. Both of them hang out on the header to a riparian area that eventually joins a creek system. Figuring that they might be hundreds of yards down that drainage, I walked a doe-in-heat drag parallel to the drainage about 250-yards abeam the drainage out in a native grass and brush flat where I could watch that line from a tower blind. The drag-line was about 250-yards in length. The tower sits at the header, so my hope was something good would surface close enough to shoot deer quitting time.
It happened about an hour before I expected. I heard something come up behind me and directly under the tower, I'm thinking a large hog. When it got far enough out in front of the blind to see downward, it was the three-year-old. He walked straight to the spot that I left the drag in the high grass as I knew once he saw it, he would spook.
The rifle is a 1964 Winchester M94 that dad purchased new, at Gibsons, on a clearance sale for $25. He has killed a bunch of critters with it over the years. He stopped hunting last year and gave me the rifle. I had it rebored and rechambered from 30-30 Win to a 35-30. I also found a period Redfield Jr. Scout mount and did the barrel work for the installation myself. The bullet I'm using is the Speer 180-grain Flat Point.
Base on several years, I don't expect the six-year-old eight to make a showing until after Christmas and if it does, I think it would make a grand deer for young fellows first that I have in mind. As far as an eight, it is this deer (I'm sure he is kin) on steroids. The older deer is exceptional.