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good story
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Remember your First ML kill?
- Thread starter Stykbow
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That looks like a really nice one! Hunt and bear details???
Crazdgunman
32 Cal
We live in north western Montana, and we’ve got lots of bears. Our game cameras were catching four different bears, one HUGE, in the 400 lb class.
Anyway, one day while heading out to the blind I just ran into one of the medium bears. Seventy one yards, low light. Through the lungs and slashed the heart with a 385 grain conical. He ran forty yards and folded up.
I’ve hunted a lot, but this was extra exciting.
My first muzzleloader kill came on November 9, 1988, while hunting public land on Jordan Lake In North Carolina with my brother, I took a midday walk and jumped a bunch that took off in deep woods and couldn’t get a shot. It made me move my tree climber to a crossing of trails near that spot. The next morning it was clear, cold, and calm. I waited in the stand since before sunrise with my .54 TC Hawken that my brother had made for my birthday. Thinking I was hearing a squirrel digging behind me, I looked over my shoulder a saw a doe standing 10 feet from the tree I was in. My shot put it down on the spot with a Maxi ball and 100 grains 2f powder. I reloaded quickly in case it got up and immediately heard a twig snap. Right in front of me at about 25 yards stood a spike buck. NC limit at that time was two in one day one doe. I quietly cocked the hammer and set the trigger release (which sounded loud to me) and squeezed off a shot that only set off the cap. Again, I cocked with that loud click, recapped, and pulled the set trigger, to my surprise he was still standing there wondering where all that noise was coming from. The next shot anchored him right in his tracks with a large hole through his heart.
I found my brother to get help with the two and when we returned to the spot, there was a six pointer standing right where that spike buck was. He disappeared before brother Could get his gun up. Not the biggest deer I ever got but my first and most memorable.
I found my brother to get help with the two and when we returned to the spot, there was a six pointer standing right where that spike buck was. He disappeared before brother Could get his gun up. Not the biggest deer I ever got but my first and most memorable.
Cool stories guys! I absolutely remember mine. This was my first deer, period. 2001 if my maths correct, 14 years old, ohios muzzleloader season, which I believe was late December/early January.
I remember distinctly how the woods were bare and bleak. It was cold, dark, and I wasn’t used to getting up early, ha. Snow on the ground. My uncle helped me pick out a stand location a few days before, looking at fresh sign in the snow. That morning he drove me down way back into some fields, small corn and bean fields, with lots of hardwoods in between, in the basin of the little Miami River. He walked me about halfway across one of the fields, said good luck, then walked back to his truck, unbeknownst to me, just to catch up on sleep, lol!
After the woods started waking up, it wasn’t long before two does slowly and cautiously made their way up the deer trail, just as my uncle said they would. I had a cabelas branded .50 hawken, (interarms probably?), loaded with black powder and some sort of sabot, cant remember exactly. When the lead doe finally stepped clear of trees and branches at about 60 yards, i did my best to calm my nerves, silently bring the hammer to full ****, set the trigger, and slowly started to press the trigger. After the cloud of smoke cleared I could see she was down, and expired pretty quick.
It made a big impact on me. I very distinctly remember the mixed emotions and feelings of adrenaline, utter excitement, and sadness. It was all at one time exhilarating and made me feel alive, and very natural, but also sad and a bit confusing to me at that time. Neat part of a hunters journey, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Drug her back a ways, which wasn’t too bad with the snow, plus needless to say, I was pumped up. Went and got my uncle who was sawing logs in his pickup!
He showed me how to field dress her and away we went, a pretty memorable day for me! The start of a very big part of my life.
I remember distinctly how the woods were bare and bleak. It was cold, dark, and I wasn’t used to getting up early, ha. Snow on the ground. My uncle helped me pick out a stand location a few days before, looking at fresh sign in the snow. That morning he drove me down way back into some fields, small corn and bean fields, with lots of hardwoods in between, in the basin of the little Miami River. He walked me about halfway across one of the fields, said good luck, then walked back to his truck, unbeknownst to me, just to catch up on sleep, lol!
After the woods started waking up, it wasn’t long before two does slowly and cautiously made their way up the deer trail, just as my uncle said they would. I had a cabelas branded .50 hawken, (interarms probably?), loaded with black powder and some sort of sabot, cant remember exactly. When the lead doe finally stepped clear of trees and branches at about 60 yards, i did my best to calm my nerves, silently bring the hammer to full ****, set the trigger, and slowly started to press the trigger. After the cloud of smoke cleared I could see she was down, and expired pretty quick.
It made a big impact on me. I very distinctly remember the mixed emotions and feelings of adrenaline, utter excitement, and sadness. It was all at one time exhilarating and made me feel alive, and very natural, but also sad and a bit confusing to me at that time. Neat part of a hunters journey, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Drug her back a ways, which wasn’t too bad with the snow, plus needless to say, I was pumped up. Went and got my uncle who was sawing logs in his pickup!
He showed me how to field dress her and away we went, a pretty memorable day for me! The start of a very big part of my life.
Small spike buck on uplands near the Cimarron River in a mixed hardwood stand between prairie ground and wheat fields on bottomland near the river. I was huddled under a large Eastern Red Cedar tree just after sunrise in late October and was presented with a rear-quartering shot in the brush about 80 feet away. Shooting a brand new that season (1998) Traditions Whitetail .54 percussion rifle, 80 gr. of Pyrodex and 425 gr. Hornady Buffalo bullet. Shot traversed right flank to left shoulder in and out. Buck fell about 100 feet away. I remember even as a 50-year-old (it was the first deer I'd killed since my very first in 1974) how excited and proud I was of that little buck. Had to drive 20 miles to check him in (today we check them in on-line). At that time I was donating venison through Hunters for Hunger. A number have fallen to the .54 since then, and I put it in the freezer and can the meat now. Love primitive firearm season and taking deer with a single-shot sidelock.
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