Went out saturday morning with Greg to his foodplot. Was the opening day of rifle season, and we just wanted meat. Bowhunting is our main love, but this was pretty much a shopping trip. Greg picked me up at 6am and we were in the blind at 6:30.
At about 7:00, 3 does came out of the treeline and milled around the feeder and the west end of the feedplot. The feeder went off at about 7:10, and they commensed to having breakfast. We gave them about 10 minutes to make sure they weren’t being followed by any of the bucks that were in the area. When we were convinced they were alone, the guns went up. I told Greg which doe I had my sights on, and he picked one out of his own. Greg counted backward from 3, and the guns went off. In seconds the entire field was vacated. We waited about 15 minutes, then a couple of crows came to the feeder, so I had to take a shot at one of them, and I missed. We gave the deer plenty of time to die, then we packed up our gear and walked to that edge of the field. The only spot of blood was a squirt about 6 inches long, leading to the southwest corner of the field. We hit the treeline, made a big circle and found my doe laying in amongst some persimmon sapplings. Not a single spot of blood anywhere. Hardly any at the entrance wound, either. We dragged my deer into the field, then took off looking for Gregs doe. No blood was found, until about 30 yards into the tree line. From there, it was a “Spot Here and Spot There” blood trail. (Sound like a hog you shot, Treestand?) Suddenly, about 50 yards into the trail, Greg’s doe jumped up and hobbled off into the thickest bullshit scrub and thorn thicket she could find. We sat still for about another 15 minutes and I went and got my rifle, so that Greg could watch the blood trail and and I could keep watch out front. When we resumed the trail, the blood trail resembled that of a stabbed hooker that once tried to escape from my apartment. The blood was very dark, and contained a lot of partially digest food, but didn’t really stink like a gut shot. After about 30 more yards, we found the doe piled up in a dry ditch.
Upon doing the autopsy on my deer, we found that the bullet entered just behind the shoulder, destroyed the vena cava, and both lungs. I was shooting a Ruger M77 .243 with a Leupold VXII 4x.
On Gregs deer, the bullet entered just behind the shoulder, destroying 1 lobe of the lung, then turned and travelled thru the liver, the stomach, and into the intestines. Anybody thats cleaned a deer thats been shot in the guts can appreciate that smell. Greg was shooting a Steyer rifle, that was modeled off the old Mauser K98 action. Really interesting rifle. It was chambered in a .25/06. I really expected more damage and even a pass thru from that caliber.
At check-in the doe’s weighed 98lbs and 88lbs field dressed.
Driving down the road in an electric golf cart with 2 fatboys and 2 does attracted the attention of a couple of Mexican road construction guys. Luckily, we did not attract the attention of any law dogs.
