Muzzleloader opener

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November 13, 2010 Rifle Hunt

An earlier shot of the alfalfa field as I saw it this Saturday afternoon. I was on the ground as the wind was blowing hard and it was sleeting/snowing along with it.

About 5 p.m. a deer was all of a sudden in the middle of the field right behind me. I was facing the woods, looking down the ravine, where I was expecting deer to be moving. I had been looking over the field, glassing all afternoon so the deer was a big surprise! He smelled me as soon as he got directly south of me. Starting slow he made his way to the wood line that you see facing in the picture above. I had been arguing with myself the entire time about whether to take a shot or not. It was a seven that I had seen during archery season earlier. At that point he was running along the field edge to the north. I had powered down the scope from 8 to 5.5 and evened the cross-hairs just in front of his chest an inch or so. All this happened in less than one minute, from first seeing him to squeezing a shot.

Immediately I was beating myself up for making a shot at a running deer. He just kept running until he went out of sight in the northeast corner of the field(far to the upper left corner of picture above). I slowly picked up my stuff and made my way to the hill he was on when I made the shot. At first it looked like there was not blood, but then I saw a small speck. I was mad at this point, thinking I made a bad shot and not looking forward to a tough recovery. I called Chris and asked him to come around when he got down to assist in tracking.

I followed tracks and some blood until I realized he was piled up in the corner of the field. He had gone just out of view when he went down.

He's either a 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 year old. Best deer I've taken!

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November 11, 2010 Rifle Hunt

Second week of rifle season. Didn't see any bucks the first weekend.

Out at the "carpet stand" for an early-out from work after a morning meeting in St. Paul. Didn't see a thing until walking out into the alfalfa field, where it looked like to fawns eating.

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