Starting a New Year

Well on New Year's Day I was out hunting with my dad, Nolan and Caleb, my uncle Randle, my Papa, and my cousing Ethan. That sounds like a lot of people and it was for me since the first year I went out there Nolan, Caleb, and Ethan didn't go. Then Nolan showed up last year and now, Caleb and Ethan. It was nice being able to hang out with my family. Sure it was dirty and we probably all smelled bad, but it was worth it. Anyways back to hunting. Nolan and I went up there with our uncle Randle and got to camp around 2:00. The wind was terrible. We got there and the wind was howling blowing just so terribly there was no way that any of us were going to go and sit in a blind. Well when we got there my Papa and Ethan were all ready there. They said the wind was worse the day before. We all went to scout the whole farm and see where we might have a shot. My favorite place to hunt was a corner of the property and a boundary line to what we could hunt. The reason it is my favorite spot is because my very first year hunting, I shot my first two dear there within 5 minutes. It was awesome. Well the day we got there we went to that corner where my Papa had layed mace down for the dear to eat and we saw fresh poop. My Papa didn't get up early enough to go out to the blinds to shoot a deer. If he had've been there, he would've gotten a deer. Well it was okay because he would end up getting a deer anyways. So once we got done there we scouted other places and went back to camp and got some plywood to set up a deer blind somewhere. So we went and set it up and came back to camp. We waited until about 4:30 until we went out to the deer blinds. Since I don't have my hunter safety licence I can't sit in a blind by my self or hunt by myself. That was a minor problem. At this time my dad hadn't shown up with Caleb yet, so we went with my Papa in a truck and drove around. Well when we passed by my favorite corner blind, we spooked a deer that was coming to a feeder. My Papa jumped out of the truck (no not literally) with his gun in his hand and shot at the deer. He missed, but he backed up all the way to the fence and got out. The deer had gone under the blind! There were masquite trees everywhere so he didn't have a clear shot. Once the deer came out of the brush...BAM! He shot again and missed again. That would be the last time we would see that deer. After sitting and waiting for about 30 minutes we left and drove somewhere else. On our way through the fields we happened upon antelope. Unfortuneatly we can't shoot antelope. There 9 of them and at least 4 bucks with them. They ran right in front of us. It was pretty cool. I'll tell you what, antelope can run! They didn't even care that we were right there to. It was as if they knew that we couldn't shoot them and were bragging about it. After the encounter with the antelope, we headed back to camp. By this time it wa almost 6:00. We decided that we would wait until 6:15 to go and check on Randle. Randle was being pretty brave himself sittin' in a windmill blind while the wind was raging on. He got pretty cold a couple of times, but told himself to tuffen up. Once the sun was set for good he headed back empty handed seeing at least 4 doe on his way back. It's pretty surprising for my uncle Randle to come to camp emty handed after the first night. He usually has like a 9 pointer or an 11 pointer hanging in the barn when my dad gets to camp. Not this year. We got back to camp settled in more and started cooking dinner. Man I can tell you, my uncle Randle, he could cook. That's probably the reason why we didn't have much left when my dad pulled up around 7:30. Being New Year's Eve, it's tradition to stay up to midnight right? Not when it comes to hunting. We stayed up to about 10:30 and gave up. It was a good thing too because we would be waking up the next morning around 5:00 a.m. We decided to wait to cook breakfast until after the hunt which was probably good. Well I didn't end up in my favorite blind because we figured since I allready got a deer, we would give someone else a chance. So I went and sat in the corner blind opposite it. There is allmost no room to sit even one person in there. It was so uncomfortable. Well I was sitting there waiting for the sun to come up so I could shoot something and right as the sun was coming up, I saw movement. I pulled up my gun and looked through the sites. It was definately a nice buck, but it was too far of a shot for me. So I was sitting there and thinking to myself, "Someone shoot him!" He was too much in plain sight. Then I heard a loud BANG! and he dropped like a sack of feed. I didn't pay attention much after that. What happened was my uncle Randle decided that if a game warden did happen to show up and ask me why I was by myself, we could talk to him right down the road. So Randle shot the stupid thing and he dropped. Caleb was in there with him and they waited for about 5 min. until the deer jumped up and started running! Randle got his sites on him again and might have nicked his leg. He fell, but immediately started running again. He was running into the fence trying to jump over and finaly got over and I see Randle get out of the truck and start running with his pistol in his hands. I never saw the deer get up so I was thinking, "What in the heck are you doing?" It looked kind of funny, but Randle got his fair share of a workout. He ran up to the fence and tried to shoot, but the stupid thing was on safety. So he shot twice and missed both times. He climbed over the fence and started running after it. He followed it for about 10 min. and decided to come back because he lost it. I lost him when he jumped the fence. When he came back with no deer I thought, " Crap. We have to go find it now." Sure 'nough, he came back and got my Papa, came and picked me up, and we went in search of the crazy deer. At first we had really good blood tracks, blood everywhere. You could definately tell that he was sick. Once we got to the place where Randle lost him, we got a little lost because Randle wanted to go to the right, when the deer actually went left around the base of the hill. It took us so long to find the stupid thing. By the time we finally found it, it had gone to the bottom of a hill, around the base, and staggered all over the place. When we allmost got him to the top of the hill (because we didn't want to go back around the hill), I went back to the truck to see if my dad was there waiting so he could come help us because that sucker was heavy. It turned out, he wasn't. So I went back to the deer and started helping haul it back. Caleb and Ethan (my cousin) were waiting in the truck. I asked them how long it had been and they said that it was an hour. An hour! That's way to long to search for a deer. So when we finally got him into the truck, we headed back for camp. We decided to go the long way around since we thought that my dad was still hunting. When my dad got back to camp, he came empty handed. We were thinking,"Man this just isn't our year." Every year since I've gotten there, we've gotten at least 5 deer. Two being mine the first year. That was an awesome year. Last year Nolan got two deer. One was a doe, the other was a buck. I'm still beating him with two bucks. This year, we didn't seem to have so much luck, or so it seemed. That evening, I wanted to sit in the blind that we had made all by myself. So my dad went and dropped me off and went to the blind I was sitting in that morning. After about an hour or so, I got really tired and bored. I ended up falling asleep. After I realized that I was asleep I awoke with a start. I thought to myself, "Crap, I've fallen asleep." After about 10 min., I heard a gun shot. Now I was thinking, ok now somethings coming. So I waited and waited. I figured I wasn't going to see anything and if I did I wasn't going to be able to shoot it since the sun was set, so I got out of my blind and went to the road right as my dad was pulling up. Well my dad was the one that ended up getting the deer. He told me that he was getting a little impatient as the sun was setting and he wasn't seeing any deer right as not one, but two deer come running up. The first one came up on a full sprint on a mission to go to something. The second deer was slower, but seemed to be following the other younger deer. Well when my dad saw the first deer, he waited for a little while and the second deer came up. The first thing he saw was the horns. They were huge! As soon as he saw them he put him scope on him because he thought he had himself a nice big deer. The problem was, he only saw one side of the head. As the deer turned and looked at him, he noticed that he was missing half his antlers. My dad's head fell a little bit as he noticed he didn't get a trophy deer, but decided that this deer needed to die. So he took a shot at it and hit. That was the end of that deers life. The other deer supposedly turned and ran straight at me. I explained to him that I never saw anything and that it probably went around the brush. So we went and found his deer (within 5 min.) and decided to gut it. As he was gutting it he noted that he hit it in the stomach or the gut. While he continued to gut, I asked him how freaked out it would make him feel if the deer got up right then and started running away. He told me he probably would never hunt again. I don't know about you, but a deer that has been cut open and everything just getting up and running would kind of freak me out. Randle ended up coming and helping us gut the deer and explained that Papa had gotten two deer and my personal favorite deer blind. One was a ten point and the other was a spike. It was really funny. So we ended up having a good year. An added thought is that I went hunting the next morning and had no luck in general. In short, I got myself a monster deer at my previous hunt, and I'm happy with what I have. Hopefully I can get something this next year.


Blu