What is your Best Hunting Story?

marksman1941 said:

All of my deer have been memorable, due to sheer ridulousness, great family time, or insane luck. I would love to write them all out, and I will probably give an accounting of them when I'm not typing on a cell phone. But my most memorable that comes to mind is my first buck.

I was hunting with my uncle and cousin, whom really taught me to hunt. My dad rarely hunted and wasn't very good at it when he did make it to the woods.

So in oregon the rifle season is extended two extra days for youth hunters. My cousin and I are both youth (he was 14 and I was 17), so it's late late November and the last weekend of season for us. I've never killed a deer, my cousin had killed a stack already by this point.

We made a walk out through a logging skid road, and were on our way back to the truck just before last shooting light when my uncle says "there's a buck!! Just across the draw!"

Being fairly new to hunting, I couldn't spot the buck with my naked eye. It was dim light, rainy, and blacktail deer are fairly dark haired and blend in well with the ground especially when they're wet. I tried scanning with my rifle scope for the buck, but it was so fogged up I just had a little center portion of the scope that was clear, showing the very center of the reticle. Finally after a couple of minutes my uncle verbally walked me into the buck and I could see the white patch on its throat.

The problem was, we couldn't see antlers. My uncle knew it was big based on the white throat patches (it had 2) but we just couldn't spot antlers. So we're passing my rifle around, each of us trying to put antlers on this critter, for several more minutes. The buck is standing stock still this whole time. Eventually I remembered I had some Kleenex tissues in my backpack and I told my uncle to grab them so we could clean the scope lens off and maybe see the deer better to verify it was a legal buck.

My uncle unzipped my packs front pocket (which was my brothers pack that I borrowed and just threw my own stuff in on top of his) and found not only my Kleenex but a set of binoculars! So he pulled those out and started looking at the buck and forgot to give me the tissues.

After just a few moments of watching with the binoculars, my uncle exclaimed "it's a buck!!" I'm aiming at it through my limited field of view in the old Leupold 3-9, and I ask "cool, is it legal?" And my uncle halfway yelled "FREAKING SHOOT!!" So I did.

A 200gr Sierra game king from my dads old Remington 721 in 30-06 did the job, and we heard the buck run uphill for about 10 seconds before crashing and tumbling back down the hill. It was wild to hear just how much noise he made tumbling down the hill.

We knew he was dead so we ran back up the skid road to get close to him. Walking down in on him in the dregs of last light, I didn't have enough knowledge of deer to understand just how big he was. My uncle and cousins started losing their gourd while I just sat there looking at this big old fella. We expect he weighed 230 on the hoof, and measured 25.5" wide which is huge for a blacktail.

My cousin gutted him out in about 3 minutes flat and we started dragging him downhill while my uncle took the packs and guns to go grab the truck. We hit a couple of blind drop offs while heading down the hill where the deer took off, dragging my cousin and I downhill for ~30 feet before hitting a plateau. The second drop off my cousin took an antler tine in one butt cheek which bruised the heck out of him.

After a short, brutal drag we got him to the truck and it took 4 of us to get him up and in. Then the cold work of skinning him began at the house. It was a party, as the whole family came over to see my first buck, and we took turns warming up inside with pizza and hot chocolate while other people would work on skinning for a few minutes.

Every aspect of that night is printed in my brain, and is nothing but joyous.

The only bad part is the next day I papered that rifle just to have some bench time, and it was shooting an 8" group. Proper to the hunt it was shooting about 1". Somewhere along the line the scope took a hit. I'm extremely glad I still hit the deer where I planned to, even with the scope being out of whack.

Picture of the blacktail attached

Click to expand...

memtb said:

Quite a buck and quite a memory for you and your family!
Congratulations! memtb

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marksman1941 said:

Thanks! It was a good day. That buck, and the following, sorta spoiled me though. I killed the buck pictured here as my second one, and it took me a couple years of killing little ones to accept that meat hunting was more my style and the antlers were secondary. But, starting on bit antlers can ruin a kid for a short time lol.

Click to expand...

marksman1941 said:

All of my deer have been memorable, due to sheer ridulousness, great family time, or insane luck. I would love to write them all out, and I will probably give an accounting of them when I'm not typing on a cell phone. But my most memorable that comes to mind is my first buck.

I was hunting with my uncle and cousin, whom really taught me to hunt. My dad rarely hunted and wasn't very good at it when he did make it to the woods.

So in oregon the rifle season is extended two extra days for youth hunters. My cousin and I are both youth (he was 14 and I was 17), so it's late late November and the last weekend of season for us. I've never killed a deer, my cousin had killed a stack already by this point.

We made a walk out through a logging skid road, and were on our way back to the truck just before last shooting light when my uncle says "there's a buck!! Just across the draw!"

Being fairly new to hunting, I couldn't spot the buck with my naked eye. It was dim light, rainy, and blacktail deer are fairly dark haired and blend in well with the ground especially when they're wet. I tried scanning with my rifle scope for the buck, but it was so fogged up I just had a little center portion of the scope that was clear, showing the very center of the reticle. Finally after a couple of minutes my uncle verbally walked me into the buck and I could see the white patch on its throat.

The problem was, we couldn't see antlers. My uncle knew it was big based on the white throat patches (it had 2) but we just couldn't spot antlers. So we're passing my rifle around, each of us trying to put antlers on this critter, for several more minutes. The buck is standing stock still this whole time. Eventually I remembered I had some Kleenex tissues in my backpack and I told my uncle to grab them so we could clean the scope lens off and maybe see the deer better to verify it was a legal buck.

My uncle unzipped my packs front pocket (which was my brothers pack that I borrowed and just threw my own stuff in on top of his) and found not only my Kleenex but a set of binoculars! So he pulled those out and started looking at the buck and forgot to give me the tissues.

After just a few moments of watching with the binoculars, my uncle exclaimed "it's a buck!!" I'm aiming at it through my limited field of view in the old Leupold 3-9, and I ask "cool, is it legal?" And my uncle halfway yelled "FREAKING SHOOT!!" So I did.

A 200gr Sierra game king from my dads old Remington 721 in 30-06 did the job, and we heard the buck run uphill for about 10 seconds before crashing and tumbling back down the hill. It was wild to hear just how much noise he made tumbling down the hill.

We knew he was dead so we ran back up the skid road to get close to him. Walking down in on him in the dregs of last light, I didn't have enough knowledge of deer to understand just how big he was. My uncle and cousins started losing their gourd while I just sat there looking at this big old fella. We expect he weighed 230 on the hoof, and measured 25.5" wide which is huge for a blacktail.

My cousin gutted him out in about 3 minutes flat and we started dragging him downhill while my uncle took the packs and guns to go grab the truck. We hit a couple of blind drop offs while heading down the hill where the deer took off, dragging my cousin and I downhill for ~30 feet before hitting a plateau. The second drop off my cousin took an antler tine in one butt cheek which bruised the heck out of him.

After a short, brutal drag we got him to the truck and it took 4 of us to get him up and in. Then the cold work of skinning him began at the house. It was a party, as the whole family came over to see my first buck, and we took turns warming up inside with pizza and hot chocolate while other people would work on skinning for a few minutes.

Every aspect of that night is printed in my brain, and is nothing but joyous.

The only bad part is the next day I papered that rifle just to have some bench time, and it was shooting an 8" group. Proper to the hunt it was shooting about 1". Somewhere along the line the scope took a hit. I'm extremely glad I still hit the deer where I planned to, even with the scope being out of whack.

Picture of the blacktail attached

Click to expand...

memtb said:

I wouldn't know the bad side effects of "big antlers"! memtb

Click to expand...

marksman1941 said:

All of my deer have been memorable, due to sheer ridulousness, great family time, or insane luck. I would love to write them all out, and I will probably give an accounting of them when I'm not typing on a cell phone. But my most memorable that comes to mind is my first buck.

I was hunting with my uncle and cousin, whom really taught me to hunt. My dad rarely hunted and wasn't very good at it when he did make it to the woods.

So in oregon the rifle season is extended two extra days for youth hunters. My cousin and I are both youth (he was 14 and I was 17), so it's late late November and the last weekend of season for us. I've never killed a deer, my cousin had killed a stack already by this point.

We made a walk out through a logging skid road, and were on our way back to the truck just before last shooting light when my uncle says "there's a buck!! Just across the draw!"

Being fairly new to hunting, I couldn't spot the buck with my naked eye. It was dim light, rainy, and blacktail deer are fairly dark haired and blend in well with the ground especially when they're wet. I tried scanning with my rifle scope for the buck, but it was so fogged up I just had a little center portion of the scope that was clear, showing the very center of the reticle. Finally after a couple of minutes my uncle verbally walked me into the buck and I could see the white patch on its throat.

The problem was, we couldn't see antlers. My uncle knew it was big based on the white throat patches (it had 2) but we just couldn't spot antlers. So we're passing my rifle around, each of us trying to put antlers on this critter, for several more minutes. The buck is standing stock still this whole time. Eventually I remembered I had some Kleenex tissues in my backpack and I told my uncle to grab them so we could clean the scope lens off and maybe see the deer better to verify it was a legal buck.

My uncle unzipped my packs front pocket (which was my brothers pack that I borrowed and just threw my own stuff in on top of his) and found not only my Kleenex but a set of binoculars! So he pulled those out and started looking at the buck and forgot to give me the tissues.

After just a few moments of watching with the binoculars, my uncle exclaimed "it's a buck!!" I'm aiming at it through my limited field of view in the old Leupold 3-9, and I ask "cool, is it legal?" And my uncle halfway yelled "FREAKING SHOOT!!" So I did.

A 200gr Sierra game king from my dads old Remington 721 in 30-06 did the job, and we heard the buck run uphill for about 10 seconds before crashing and tumbling back down the hill. It was wild to hear just how much noise he made tumbling down the hill.

We knew he was dead so we ran back up the skid road to get close to him. Walking down in on him in the dregs of last light, I didn't have enough knowledge of deer to understand just how big he was. My uncle and cousins started losing their gourd while I just sat there looking at this big old fella. We expect he weighed 230 on the hoof, and measured 25.5" wide which is huge for a blacktail.

My cousin gutted him out in about 3 minutes flat and we started dragging him downhill while my uncle took the packs and guns to go grab the truck. We hit a couple of blind drop offs while heading down the hill where the deer took off, dragging my cousin and I downhill for ~30 feet before hitting a plateau. The second drop off my cousin took an antler tine in one butt cheek which bruised the heck out of him.

After a short, brutal drag we got him to the truck and it took 4 of us to get him up and in. Then the cold work of skinning him began at the house. It was a party, as the whole family came over to see my first buck, and we took turns warming up inside with pizza and hot chocolate while other people would work on skinning for a few minutes.

Every aspect of that night is printed in my brain, and is nothing but joyous.

The only bad part is the next day I papered that rifle just to have some bench time, and it was shooting an 8" group. Proper to the hunt it was shooting about 1". Somewhere along the line the scope took a hit. I'm extremely glad I still hit the deer where I planned to, even with the scope being out of whack.

Picture of the blacktail attached

Click to expand...

wv270wsm said:

The only way that day could have been any better is if my dad who'd passed away two years prior could have been with us in person . It was from his stand that this took place.

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Ol' Red said:

That is a very nice Blacktail.

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unclebob said:

Great buck
Was your next one that big?

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marksman1941 said:

I've been looking for this pic for a while now. This was my third buck, which brought me back to earth on the reality of what meat sometimes looks like lol. They won't all be big monsters.

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Grizzly60 said:

Those are better eating than the big monsters. My preferred target.

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Ol' Red said:

I share one. Two buddies and myself had an outfitter fly us out on the Alaska peninsula, north of Illiamna. When flying through the pass, wing flaps down on a DeHaviland Beaver, we still gained about 100 feet of altitude a minute due to high winds. As we were landing on the lake I remember thinking what a smooth landing for floats. When the floats actually did touch the water the shore, which had a four foot cut bank, looked very close. When the pilot said $h!t, I was concerned. He gunned the engine and pulled the stick back hard and skipped up onto the bank. We came to a stop about 35 yards on dry ground. All of us were very quiet for a while ( don't know how long), and I finally said "if I knew we were landing on dry ground I may not have worn my hip waders. The pilot said he needed a few moments to gather his thoughts. I told him I would be a short ways off kissing and hugging the ground. We pushed the plane back into the water and he lifted off into the 70 MPH wind in just about twice the length of the floats. The winds got worse later that day and brought a couple inches of rain. That story can wait. It's a little crazy.

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