This season has been racing by for me and we are just reaching one of my favorite times to hunt. For some reason I feel when it is nasty cold outside and it hurts to breathe the air that anyone who braves the elements and parks their butt in a tree stand deserves a little luck. We might not be there quite yet but we are close, one of my dream scenarios involves shooting a mature buck after seeing two big puffs of breath exiting his nostrils.
I have had several opportunities and made some new mistakes this year but had not yet sealed the deal to put some meat in the freezer. On Sunday the 25th a good friend and I decided it was time to put the boots down and scout a little bit with a pair of muzzle loaders in our hands. Two days before it had snowed about an inch and there were deer paths everywhere already. It did not take long to figure out where the deer were coming from in relation to a few different destination plots and that they were browsing heavily in the timber on their way to feed. The past few weekends had been spent sitting over food plots with very minimal deer movement during daylight hours and very few encounters. With this new insight I decided to sit on the southern edge of our primary ridge about 300 yards towards some heavy bedding from one of our corn and bean plots.
The deer were up on their feet back there a full hour before dark and this big old doe (145 lb. / 3 year old) was working her way across the ridge browsing on everything within reach. She was heading towards a nice shooting lane that would put her broadside at 75 yards and she followed the script. I shot, she kicked, ran 50 yards hunched over, bucked up and tipped over backwards all within sight. This was my first MZ harvest and it has been years since I have followed a blood trail in the snow. Unfortunately it started to snow pretty heavy on my way to get the wheeler and we could not find any blood when we returned. I knew where she was but just wanted to see what that 50 caliber hole would leave to follow. There was no exit hole and fortunately she did not go far. It does concern me that she would have only been found with a blind search if she did not go down that quick. High shoulder shot from now on every time with a MZ for me!
One last element of Sunday that needs to be mentioned is how amazing the walk was. The weather was perfect, it was like being a ninja with the fresh snow and it was much needed to check out some of the back corners of our property that don’t get seen all that often. Unfortunately we found a pretty good buck on one of those corners that has been dead for several weeks. I have left messages with our two closest neighbors to where he was found but have not heard back. He might only go 115” but if it was an important or memorable buck to somebody I would give him up. It is never good to find this but I would much rather be lucky enough to pick him up than to let the squirrels nibble him to nothing.
5 points for team 3…finally!
This weekend will be even better 
Put a big one down 
