Mon Dec 11, 2023 5:09 am
Niiiiiiiicely Done emptymag! Dandy of a buck....way to get it done & make it happen. You shoot a nice buck and the Vikes won an abysmally awful....just horrendous game....gotta be a helluva good Sunday Funday for you.
Does anyone else hunt muzzleloader by having a muzzleloader with them but then shoot the deer with a rifle or a shotgun? I've only actually ever killed one deer with a muzzleloader.....shot a fat doe back in the day in NoDak....tons of extra doe tags back then and there were good for all seasons.....so I was deer hunting the ND way...driving around and shooting them with a rifle out the truck window....when a happened upon a couple thirteen-fourteen deer feeding on the green regrowth of a long since disced over wheat field.....quarter section I knew the farmer extremely well, and he actually had posted this piece "Open to Hunting," what an awesome dude, sadly about the last of his kind in this particular part of the state.....anyways, I picked out a nice doe and drop her in her tracks.....I actually seem to do that a lot (knock on wood) and I'll be honest I'm just pretty lucky when it comes to shooting shit with a rifle, aim for the vitals in the chest and end up hitting them in the neck or spine instead....better to be lucky than good sometimes.......so I leave the rifle in the truck and walk out to gut the doe and drag her back while carrying my muzzleloader just in case in the very rare chance someone stops to watch me drag her out which is excellent entertainment for dudes living out in the middle of bumfukc Nowhere, ND and happens a lot.....annoying as fukc....especially if you're in a spread trying to decoy some fowl and weren't a dipshit and took the extra four minutes to park almost a mile away versus a hundred yards....always awesome when some NoDak dork with nothing better to do sits parked downwind of you on the road in the nearest point to your spread....even more awesome when instead of watching you through binos they choose to watch you through their scope..............so anyways-anyways......the dow has a fawn and the fawn won't leave their dead mother's fresh corpse after out of the blue she dropped dead while they were just trying to get enough calories eaten to compensate for the ones they'd burn while trying to stay warm throughout the night.........and then this fukcer who liked fresh venison steaks being a broke college kid and all decided to kill this poor fawn's mother and was now walking his way across the field towards them.....poor fawn didn't know which way was up or what the fukc to do being the sentient being that cared for it was just snuffed off this universe......so I did the only right thing to do and killed the fawn so it wouldn't have to most likely suffer through a brutal winter trying to figure out how to survive being dumb enough to not run away with the rest of the herd......but I can't hit shit with a muzzleloader and had to shoot and reload at least a half dozen times as I walked from my first shot at about a hundred until my last shot finally hit and killed the fukcer by also dropping it....thank freaking God because already never anticipating something like this happening and somewhat shaken up by it I don't know if I could've handled crippling the thing and giving it a slow, unceremonious death.
And that's how I shot the only deer I've ever killed with a muzzleloader.
And that's a story that whenever it resurfaces in my mind after consciously and I'm sure subconsciously trying my damndest to repress it......it makes me not want to deer hunt ever again.
I'm getting so fukcing soft with each passing year. I've felt fairly bad about the buck I shot this year, and am still haunted by hitting that fawn and doe simultaneously on the drive home from hunting the Monday evening after opening weekend. I honestly don't think I would've been able to shoot either one if they walked directly under my stand that afternoon, I'm almost certain I would've let them pass.....the only caveat with that being I did feel a decent amount of pressure to shoot a deer out of my new stand in order to show a nice enclosed stand is effective and worth the time and money invested in building them, and the commotion of being in the woods building them doesn't scare all the deer off the property.......so I'm pretty confident I wouldn't have shot a doe or fawn, especially if they came in as a pair, but I'm not 100% certain. The "hunter gene" is still in me and the desire to kill something and eat it kicks in sometimes randomly when I least expect it. Bottom line, it fukcing sucked having that fawn and doe walk out in front of me timing it perfectly....being spaced apart perfectly, in the perfect spot of the road where swerving to either side meant rolling my vehicle into the creek on either side of the culvert.....literally the only thing I could do was brake as fast as possible which meant hitting them at 45-50mph versus 55-60mph......killed the fawn outright and mangled it, but the mom was bedded on the road right where I'd hit them and she could hear me approaching but couldn't see me.....was frantically trying to turn her head and spot me but it was obvious she couldn't.....was blinded from getting hit....doe was in rear coming across the road left to right following the fawn, which I don't think I've ever previously seen.....can't think of any other time where I've seen a fawn break cover and be in the lead instead of following it's mother. I shot her in the head with a slug....actually missed her high with a 20ga slug on the first shot not wanting to ruin any meat....the second shot I'm not sure if I hit her, I feel like I had to have tagged her by how she reacted....head flipped backwards like a dying duck will sometimes do on the water after Arkansas'in a cripple....and she was bleeding out her ear....like a solid stream of blood a half inch in diameter flowing out her ear yet I didn't see where I hit her, and there was no skull and brain matter on the road out the other side from a slug exiting her head....so I honestly don't know what the fukc happened. I'm wondering if I lowered my shot significantly after going high to once again miss high, but only barely, and the sonic boom from a rifled slug nearly grazing the top of her head was enough to break her ear drum, give her a concussion, and cause her to bleed out her ear like a faucet like she did. Thank God I for some reason brought my 20ga with the extended mag to walk some shit before sitting in the stand the last hour....was hard enough to see the bead of my 20ga in the pitch black dark so I probably would have had to walk right up to her with my rifle because no way was I finding her through the scope from even ten yards away. So being that she was now bedded on the road right where I'd hit her but how with her head pointed straight up to slightly backwards while she bled out her ear doing the crappie flop with her mouth open and aghast making a low death moan an ungulate in that situation have been known to make.......thank God my third shot coming out of my extended mag wasn't a slug but one of the two or three number three buckshot shotshells I'd mixed in and forgot about....since I took the top of her head clean off and sprayed brain, skull fragments, and blood across the brand new blacktop.....like brand new, road was worked on for months and they'd just finally finished resurfacing it and painting the lines the Friday prior to opener...so literally days old very fresh black top. Luckily it rained the day after the following day because it looked like a grizzly murder scene.....like some large mammal had their brains blown out and was then dragged as their head poured out about as much blood as can be expected as the only source of where the animal bled out from. I had to move all the dumb shit and tools I had from building and working on my stand forward in my old shitty SUV....had not one but two chainsaws in there for instance.....one an 80cc Jon Deere last made in 1982 with a 24" bar on it so not exactly a small saw......so I had to move an entire vehicle worth of shit into the front seat and between the back of the front seats and where the back seats folded down in order to open the back up for loading up two deer. The fawn was a piece of cake to drag up the steep ditch and load into the back of my SUV, but the doe was a real motherfukcer. If you've never tried picking up and loading a big doe that's warm, freshly dead, and limber as fukc into the back of an SUV not field dressed.....let me tell you, it is a bitch. Then add in how the top of her head and all of her brains are missing and the source of the blood fountain where what seemed like gallons of hot, body temperature blood was draining from.....it sucked. Then add in that you're trying to hurry since you're only a mile and a half maybe two miles from home, have no intention of waking up anyone with a badge in order to bother them over getting a couple roadkill tags when it seems like being 9:30pm on a Monday night it'd be a lot easier to just load them up and bring them home and cut them up without alerting anyone as to not be a pain in the azz more than anything.....so frantically trying to do everything as quick as possible fearing any vehicle that might pass by stopping and going,
"What.....the......fukc........is going on here.......What......the......fukc.....is wrong witb you?"
Being that I was soaked in still living body temperature blood that looked about the same as the effective visual of dry ice does on a cold night at or near freezing temperature out....soaked in hot blood.....just "steaming" off me......I wanted to get this shit done sooner than later.
I finally got the doe in the back after cutting slots in the skin gap between her hind leg tendons and the bone and looping a short length of rop through it and tying a loop in it I could use as a handle.....and on about the eighth and close to final hoist and heave.....I finally got her up with her head finding a way to dangle out and almost slide her whole body back to the road shoulder, but I held her front legs up and in far enough, ditto with the hind legs via the rope loop I'd made, so I wax able to squat and push her body in just far enough using my chest to push her.....that she didn't fall out that time once I let go of one set of her legs to readjust and push her fully in the rest of the way. I'm not shitting you I almost gave up and was about to leave her there it was that freaking hard getting her up and in the back of my ride......big doe, not field dressed and all the extra weight of her organs, and blood.....still a shitload of blood in her which I was soon about to find out once I got her home and started getting her.....but yeah, a dead doe that was dead for all of thirty seconds and limber as any deer can possibly be was by far the hardest game I've ever loaded.....ever......and I once loaded a cow Moose whole (field dressed but head on and otherwise fully whole) after dragging her a hundred yards and picking her up and lifting her over the gunwales of my brother's 17' aluminum fishing boat......me, two of my brothers, and a brother-in-law.....big ass cow Moose dragged the length of a football field into a beached boat and it was way fukcing easier than getting that doe into my SUV was......
All in all, I think people doubt me when I said,
"I really wish you would've got it instead of me," when talking about the buck I shot....which wasn't any sort of big trophy anyone was super jealous of but it was definitely the nicest buck I had pics of after a couple months of pics taken from all over on any of the four trail cams I had out.....so I think there was some jealously, more than anything because I shot the only deer off my brother's property this year after building a big stand and it just so happened to be the biggest buck on the property.......
....but yeah, I'm being totally serious.....I wish someone else would've shot it. I feel kind of bad about killing him. I needed to, and I'm grateful for him dying so I could eat his meat, and serve as what I'm hoping will be enough encouragement to motivate some of the other dudes in our party to build stands, but now that I've done what I felt needed to be done in "proving it" and proving myself......I could totally see myself not shooting a deer again for a very long time.....possibly forever.
I'd much rather spend half a day pushing the thick shit stuff on the adjoining public land towards my brosefs sitting in their stands hoping they get some shots and good opportunities of killing a deer......and I love building stands and being in the woods burning and clearing them.....but I simply don't know how much more killing I've got in me when it comes to large mammals like deer. The more I've watched them while feeding them or on trail cam pics.....the more I realize how little difference there is between them and humans.....well, actually I think deer are much more noble, pure, and beautiful beings than I view humans as being. I almost quite literally have the best parents ever, and being born and raised by the best mother ever.....the most loving and compassionate mother anyone could ever have to where I don't really understand how she's able to love me maternally like she does......
.....she's the only human mother I'd put up against a doe whitetail for potentially having the same capacity when it comes to sacrificing, being disciplined, dedicated, and caring for her offspring......and as much as I love my mom....it's most likely at best, a comparison that winds up being a tie....despite however subjective I want to make things in a biased effort to prop my mother up there.....who I love to death and fully believe is the finest mother any human could possibly ever hope and be truly blessed to have......
.....making her on par with any random doe whitetail.
I dunno man......I've lost seemingly all the blood thirst I might've once had......to where the times I wind up dealing with blood....sometimes literally soaked and warmed up from it.......those instances occur not from any desire or wanting to have them happen........they occur with great remorse that soon becomes regret.
Hunting really is a young man's game. Most old timers tend to view the reasons for why that is being based on things like energy, less need for sleep, less affected by hangovers, less other life commitments, less things to get in the way when having more drive....more stamina for what ends up being physicality within the sport of hunting......
The famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill goes something along the lines of,
"Any young man who isn't a liberal has no heart, and any old man who isn't conservative has no brain."
Hunting is a sport where being youthful often aids in the frequency and volume of success afield but it's not due to the reasons that people generally attribute it to......
.....contrary to what Churchill said, when it comes to hunting.....the desire to pursue and kill animals.......
.....young men don't have the hearts yet that old men do towards animals.....the realization that an animal like a deer is quite possibly, an equally complex sentient being with a wide range of feelings and emotions....a desire for not just themselves to live, but their offspring that they nurture, care for, and yes....love....with that love possibly being purer than what we as humans know it to be.......
.....I just don't know how much more of them I can kill without it severely starting to fukc with me.
Honestly.....if hypothetically all rules that we are bound by that are built as part of the social construction that is the shared state and reality for which we live in were removed......if killing humans were to become as complicated from a legal standpoint as killing deer is with an equal amount of legal consequences? So....AKA "none".........
I'd think there's about 2% of the human population who I'd for sure feel less conflicted about "harvesting" from a moral and ethical sense than I've gradually become inclined to feel towards killing deer.
I love hunting. I absolutely will never judge anyone who hunts and kills just about anything.....I would love to be next to family and friends in a stand as they enjoy harvesting a deer, which is more or less why I enjoy building stands and hope to experience down the road while spending time in them......
.....I'm just not sure how much I'll be able to pull the trigger myself going forward.
What's odd is I somehow don't feel like a total phaggot for feeling this way.....I always assumed that's how I'd feel if/when the day ever came when I finally and fully "lost the itch" and turned into a has-been.
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