Protrucker
45 Cal.
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2004
- Messages
- 614
- Reaction score
- 2
We have to admit that all the people here, on the forum, are our peers. We also have to admit that the encouragement, poking fun, etc. we receive from each other is definitely a form of peer pressure. Well......it certainly is a good thing! We all keep accepting the new (to each of us, anyway) challenges & getting great results.
Here's my latest story. It is the end result of inspiration & encouragement from Roundball's story last week, hunting in the rain. Thanks Roundball!
Saturday, November 15 was the opening day of the NY regular deer season & the forecast was lousy. They were calling for light rain to steady hard rain. Knowing what was predicted, I was wavering from using my flintlock to getting out one of my percussion guns to grabbing out my "old faithful" Ithaca Deerslayer, 20 ga. center fire shotgun. I really wanted to hunt with the flintlock, but wasn't overly confident that I could keep it from getting drowned. Friday night, I loaded up the flinter. Then I checked the weather forecast for probably the 15th time. I thought to myself, "I'm not going to get out the Deerslayer." Then I went the gun cabinet & got out my T/C percussion Renegade, loaded it up & set it beside my flinter & went to bed. At 04:30 Saturday I got up checked Weather.com & got ready to go hunting. I stuck my head out the back door, while I was getting ready, to see what it was doing. The rain had stopped. Great! I grabbed the flinter & headed out for the truck. I wasn't even ten feet from the back door & it started raining. "D#$%!.....well, I'm already out here, I'm taking the flintlock!" By 6:15-6:30 I was in my stand. Right around 8:30, two does ran up over the hill about 80-100 yards out. A short ways behind them was a buck with his head down & his nose stretched out. Two other deer followed him, but I couldn't see them good enough to identify what they were. No shot opportunity was presented. The rest of the day I sat there, checking & changing my prime while the weather went from light drizzle to not raining to monsoons back to light rain again. I stuck it out right up until a few minutes after sunset. I passed up two shot opportunities on does, hoping that a buck would be following behind. When I got home that night I toweled off my gun, ran a couple dry patches down the bore, put tape over the vent hole & left the gun in the house for the night. Sunday morning, I was back in the woods, with my flintlock, at about daylight. The wind was blowing so hard that I didn't want to get back up in my tree stand so I decided to move over to the ridge where the buck had chased the does by Saturday. I hunted there for a couple hours, and then decided that there wouldn't be much deer activity with this wind unless someone pushed them. The whole time I kept thinking about the load still in my gun since hunting all day yesterday, in the rain. I decided that I would try for any deer that offered a shot today. I didn't want to wait for the big buck, only to find out that the gun wouldn't go off because it got too wet. I worked my way around the hill toward a ridge that always has deer bedded down in there. I've tried for over 30 years to get a deer on that ridge, but they have a perfect spot. Before you can get close enough to see them, they usually see, smell or hear you & blast out the other side without offering a shot. Well, Sunday morning everything finally worked out right to get onto that ridge without spooking the deer out. I spotted a deer about 75 yards away in the thick brush. When she moved so that I could see her good enough for a shot I took aim. Just before I squeezed the trigger, she lay down & I couldn't see her good enough any more. The brush was thick enough that I even lost track of her. After watching for a few minutes without seeing her again I got out my binoculars & started scanning the brush. There she was, but I also saw another tail twitch. I turned up the power on the binoculars & was able to make out another deer standing, facing away. Time passed & I decided to try to move in a little closer to try for a shot. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to close the distance to about 50 yards. During that time the doe that had laid down got up, milled around a little behind the brush & laid back down. The second deer also decided to lie down. I was able to see with my binoculars that the doe I had aimed at earlier was a young deer & the other one was a mature doe. The young deer got up again & was milling around behind the brush again when I finally had gotten to where I might be able to get a shot. The mature doe was still lying down. It looked like a tough shot, but I thought that I could make it. I leaned my left elbow up against a tree to steady myself, took aim & squeezed the trigger. BOOM! The shot went off just like it's supposed to. I must have done things right to keep the load dry. :grin: The wind was blowing to the left hard enough that the smoke cleared fast enough to see the doe's head just flop over. She was dead in her bed. Two other deer crashed out of there! I never saw the third deer before the shot. I reloaded & walked the 50 yards to my deer. My shot was not perfect though. She had been lying down, not quite broadside & not quite quartering away. Instead of the shot going in through the shoulder, it entered at the base of the neck & traveled up the spine. There was a big bulge in the left side of the neck, just below the skull. That's where the ball came to rest.
Thanks again for the inspiration Roundball! :hatsoff:
Sorry about the "lipstick" in the photo. I tried to wipe it off. :rotf:
Here's the ball that did the deed:
I didn't weigh the ball before the shot, but assuming that it weighed the theoretical 224 grains, it retained 94.8% of it's weight at a recovered weight of 212.4 grains. Sorry for the blurry ball pic's, but that's the best that I could get.
Here's my latest story. It is the end result of inspiration & encouragement from Roundball's story last week, hunting in the rain. Thanks Roundball!
Saturday, November 15 was the opening day of the NY regular deer season & the forecast was lousy. They were calling for light rain to steady hard rain. Knowing what was predicted, I was wavering from using my flintlock to getting out one of my percussion guns to grabbing out my "old faithful" Ithaca Deerslayer, 20 ga. center fire shotgun. I really wanted to hunt with the flintlock, but wasn't overly confident that I could keep it from getting drowned. Friday night, I loaded up the flinter. Then I checked the weather forecast for probably the 15th time. I thought to myself, "I'm not going to get out the Deerslayer." Then I went the gun cabinet & got out my T/C percussion Renegade, loaded it up & set it beside my flinter & went to bed. At 04:30 Saturday I got up checked Weather.com & got ready to go hunting. I stuck my head out the back door, while I was getting ready, to see what it was doing. The rain had stopped. Great! I grabbed the flinter & headed out for the truck. I wasn't even ten feet from the back door & it started raining. "D#$%!.....well, I'm already out here, I'm taking the flintlock!" By 6:15-6:30 I was in my stand. Right around 8:30, two does ran up over the hill about 80-100 yards out. A short ways behind them was a buck with his head down & his nose stretched out. Two other deer followed him, but I couldn't see them good enough to identify what they were. No shot opportunity was presented. The rest of the day I sat there, checking & changing my prime while the weather went from light drizzle to not raining to monsoons back to light rain again. I stuck it out right up until a few minutes after sunset. I passed up two shot opportunities on does, hoping that a buck would be following behind. When I got home that night I toweled off my gun, ran a couple dry patches down the bore, put tape over the vent hole & left the gun in the house for the night. Sunday morning, I was back in the woods, with my flintlock, at about daylight. The wind was blowing so hard that I didn't want to get back up in my tree stand so I decided to move over to the ridge where the buck had chased the does by Saturday. I hunted there for a couple hours, and then decided that there wouldn't be much deer activity with this wind unless someone pushed them. The whole time I kept thinking about the load still in my gun since hunting all day yesterday, in the rain. I decided that I would try for any deer that offered a shot today. I didn't want to wait for the big buck, only to find out that the gun wouldn't go off because it got too wet. I worked my way around the hill toward a ridge that always has deer bedded down in there. I've tried for over 30 years to get a deer on that ridge, but they have a perfect spot. Before you can get close enough to see them, they usually see, smell or hear you & blast out the other side without offering a shot. Well, Sunday morning everything finally worked out right to get onto that ridge without spooking the deer out. I spotted a deer about 75 yards away in the thick brush. When she moved so that I could see her good enough for a shot I took aim. Just before I squeezed the trigger, she lay down & I couldn't see her good enough any more. The brush was thick enough that I even lost track of her. After watching for a few minutes without seeing her again I got out my binoculars & started scanning the brush. There she was, but I also saw another tail twitch. I turned up the power on the binoculars & was able to make out another deer standing, facing away. Time passed & I decided to try to move in a little closer to try for a shot. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to close the distance to about 50 yards. During that time the doe that had laid down got up, milled around a little behind the brush & laid back down. The second deer also decided to lie down. I was able to see with my binoculars that the doe I had aimed at earlier was a young deer & the other one was a mature doe. The young deer got up again & was milling around behind the brush again when I finally had gotten to where I might be able to get a shot. The mature doe was still lying down. It looked like a tough shot, but I thought that I could make it. I leaned my left elbow up against a tree to steady myself, took aim & squeezed the trigger. BOOM! The shot went off just like it's supposed to. I must have done things right to keep the load dry. :grin: The wind was blowing to the left hard enough that the smoke cleared fast enough to see the doe's head just flop over. She was dead in her bed. Two other deer crashed out of there! I never saw the third deer before the shot. I reloaded & walked the 50 yards to my deer. My shot was not perfect though. She had been lying down, not quite broadside & not quite quartering away. Instead of the shot going in through the shoulder, it entered at the base of the neck & traveled up the spine. There was a big bulge in the left side of the neck, just below the skull. That's where the ball came to rest.
Thanks again for the inspiration Roundball! :hatsoff:
Sorry about the "lipstick" in the photo. I tried to wipe it off. :rotf:
Here's the ball that did the deed:
I didn't weigh the ball before the shot, but assuming that it weighed the theoretical 224 grains, it retained 94.8% of it's weight at a recovered weight of 212.4 grains. Sorry for the blurry ball pic's, but that's the best that I could get.
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