Sorry, no gun in the picture. He was shot with my Marlin 1893 38-55(Thank YOU AGAIN Stone Fence). Wife forgot the camera this morning and this was after my brother brought him back to the house in his pickup tonight. You can also see a small antlerless buck my nephew shot. We had him in our S-10 blazer(that was entertaining getting him in there, wife says she's gonna clean the carpet but I don't believe it, yet
) but took him out to wash out with a hose and hang him for a while at the ranch we were hunting on. What goes around comes around. I was saying to my nephew this weekend "sometimes it sucks to be ethical but it has its perks too" as I'd had to let several bucks walk as they were on the wrong side of the fence this season(this includes a buck that everyone is after this year, if shot it will likely make B&C). Also included were 3 very shootable bucks about dark last night that stood about a hundred yards from me. This guy was one of those. He was the last to leave. He stood for a long time at about 100 yards then trotted over the hill.
This morning about sunrise my wife & I went to a different pasture. We started down a gully and had gotten about 400 yards into our walk when I noticed my wife looking back the way we came. I turned and walked back a bit out of sight of the gully, put my hands by my head and wiggled them like I had antlers. She repeated my signal(she only has an antlerless tag left). I started working back and come out over the hill and in the gully was a grey ghost. I could see it was a deer but not much else. I looked through my little binocs, I can see pretty substantial antlers and a white tail flashing. I worked a little closer to where I could sit and hold steady in the wind. Another quick glance with the binocs showed me the orientation of the deer with the glare of the rising sun. I held a little high as I thought the range about 200yards(later checked with a rangefinder to be 150). I lead about 4" into the wind and let the hammer fall. I heard the slap of the bullet hitting home, watched him jump, he stopped again a little further and I shot again as he wheeled around (I thought I missed the second shot). He turned around and bolted over the hill toward me. He topped the hill and hit the ground about 150 yards from where I was. I waited a bit, then crept up to where I'd seen him go down. At about 100 yards he jumped up again and started running again. I hit him twice more on the run and watched him drop again. When I got to him again he was dead. Turns out the first shot had gone high through both lungs and he was dead on his feet throughout, he just didn't believe it. I found the second shot had hit the deer as it turned, breaking a back leg. The two running shots were (1-125 yards)lungs then (2-175 yards)a bit futher back in the paunch. He's skinned, quartered, and cooling down to be cut up tomorrow. Unlike my wife's buck this one was a real butterball. Lots of fat.
We hunted till dark trying to fill our two antlerless tags but didn't have any shots at anything but fawns or mule deer(whitetail only tags). There's one more weekend of hunting this round then it reopens in January for a week.
If you look at the antlers I think he may be a cross. The antlers look like he may have had a little mule deer blood in him but not a first generation cross. He also looks to be related to last years buck. Wasn't as big a body as last years or the the wife's buck but not small.
