Intending to rest the stand for a day or so, it turned into three days. This morning, at o dark thirty I climb into my stand and wait for dawn, looking up at Venus Mars and Jupiter lined up in a row in the sky. Today I'm carrying my .58 cal. English rifle, not having much faith in the target gun even though I won our club shoot with it a week or so ago. As dawn approaches and I can see well enough I prime the lock, close the frizzen and slide the hammer stall over the frizzen. Way off to my right I see a deer shaped object about 80 yards out. Too far to tell buck or doe and too close to the cliff. So I wait and watch. After a bit it disappears. Soon I see a bunch of deer shaped movement way off to my right again, over the " cliff" they go. Then I see a pair of deer to my right but closer. I watch them for a while, and see a dark lump to my left that wasn't there before. It moves and shakes it's head, dang it's a buck, it holds it's head up as if it smells me. This doesn't look good, I watch and see it's making a scrape, the head positioning is it leaving scent on the overhanging brush. I turn my eyes to the other two deer and they are only about 30 yards out and approaching the buck. He turns and moseys off. They wander over to the scrape then start to mill around towards me. Every time I start to raise the rifle I have a set of eyes looking my way. I thumb off the hammer stall and raise the rifle o so slowly. The sights align with the shoulder of the nearest deer, Boom. I peer through the smoke expecting to see running deer, and see no movement, Really? Then I see a white belly, oh, oh, it's still breathing. I start to reload and a bad thought crosses my mind did I leave my reload tin on the front seat of my truck? I feel in my pouch, whew, it's there. I tear one of my paper cartridges, pour the powder, and spit patch a ball, and reload. The whole time the other deer is still hanging around. I have to put the deer I shot down so I lower the rifle down, and climb down. Once on the ground I go to reprime and only get a dribble of powder. I look and see it is the scant side of enough. I approach the downed deer and see I hit it high in the shoulder, shattering the spine but I still have a live deer. I cock and raise the rifle settling the sights on the head and fire. It's all over now, I mentally make my apologies to the deer for my sub par first shot, and thank it and the Creator for the harvest. This is the first time I ever had to make a coup de gras shot, I really didn't like it. Now the work begins....
PS, sorry no pictures, after having to take the head shot there was no gracious way of getting a picture.
