The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. -- P. J. O'Rourke
This is the site picture for a Marlin 30-30 lever action rifle.
What is is something wrong with this picture?
Hint: think antlers.
There is no deer in front of the sights!
I went out the day before and the day after Thanksgiving and saw neither hide nor hair of Bambi. I took this picture to remind me of how much fun it is to squat in a cold, damp forest with nothing to do except wait.
Decked out in a brilliant orange "Don't Shoot Me" vest I might as well have been a deer crossing guard.
Well, I am a little leary of exposing anyone's trade secrets, but my buddy Cookie over to the Cook Shack has a sure fire recipe for tenderizing deer meat. Being a novice and all I would never attempt this myself, but Cookie's an old hand at this so I am sure that he won't mind sharing his secret.
Tenderizing the deer meat is very, very important in preparing a delicious order of venison. Once it's tenderized, why there's nothing Cookie won't do to it, ahhhhh, I mean with it.
In this recipe, Cookie prepares some doe meat. Getting the meat ready for Cookie's special "treatment" also takes some getting used to. It's not for the faint of heart.
But Cookie likes to do it this way and who am I to judge?
Mosey on down to see what I mean.
Cookie surely puts himself into his work. Now that there's 110%.
I'm not sure what he does when he gets a buck but I'm sure it's interesting.
I finally had a close encounter of the venison kind.
Rob, my SIL and I went out gain on Saturday back to the Three Rivers Game Management area, the same area we were in last week. About an hour and twenty minutes after settling into the woods, a big doe was kicked up and ran past me, about thirty yards SW of where I was positioned. I heard her crashing through the frozen ground cover and then she suddenly appeared.
She couldn't have picked a worse spot. This is real dense woods with heavy growth bordering on a swamp. There is brush, saplings and moss covers much of the ground; everything was pretty frozen except for any water deeper than a few inches.
I had some narrow open fields of fire to the N, NW, NE and SE. But not to the S or SW (or W for that matter). I had time to let loose with a sabot round but I missed. I saw her white tail off and on for a few seconds and then lost her. Rob was directly west of my position, about seventy-five yards or so, but he never saw her. It was all over in less than ten seconds.
We checked the area for signs of blood or hair but found nothing, ergo the clean miss verdict. But it was still as exciting as all get out.
We had to get Rob home but went out again, this time to the southern part of the County. We got permission from a dairy farmer to hunt on his land. He even dropped his chores to help with a drive. He knew where the deer are on his property and directed us to a ravine behind his fields.
It was like a mini version of the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful but so steep I had some doubts about climbing down. I went about two thirds of the way down and got behind some trees. At the bottom of the ravine it cleared out a lot and there were great opportunities for a shot. There was a brook running along the bottom - pretty as a picture. The other side of the ravine was even steeper and higher.
After about an hour my SIL showed up along the snowmobile path that was cut in about halfway down. He, like I, saw no deer; but he saw plenty of deer sign. It was almost a relief not getting a deer in this ravine. Our new friend says it is a real chore to drag a deer up from this location through all the brush and briers. I believe it because I had a hard enough time getting my own sorry self back up the ravine.
The season ended today, 7 DEC, at sun down. I was thinking about going out again after church but the temperature dipped into the teens with high winds and snow.
Now that I am out in the woods again with a shotgun, all of a sudden I am hearing all kinds of stories and seeing videos of deer attacks on hunters.
SEDALIA, Mo. — A Sedalia hunter bagged a big buck on the second day of firearms season, but the kill caused him a lot of pain.
Forty-nine-year-old Randy Goodman said he thought two well-placed shots with his .270-caliber rifle had killed the buck on Nov. 19. Goodman said the deer looked dead to him, but seconds later the nine-point, 240-pound animal came to life.
The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called "15 seconds of hell." The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots.
Obviously those first two shots were not as well placed as Randy imagined. The deer wasn't too pleased with them either.
Rutting deer are crazy. My SIL once shot a doe. The buck was following her and walked right into his sights after the gunshot instead of running away. Crazy buck didn't care. He also got shot for his efforts.
But at least Randy Goodman will be chowing down on some deer meat for his efforts. This next hunter didn't manage as well. The deer/kangeroo kicked his ass, took his money, his watch and his woman.
Deer are known on rare occassions to kill people, sometimes children.
• Ron Dudek, 73, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., died Oct. 17 of complications from antler wounds inflicted to his face by a male deer that Dudek encountered when he went to pick tomatoes in his backyard garden. It was the nation's second deer-assault death in two years: Donald Sellers, 79, was fatally gored and mauled by his pet buck in Gilbertown, Ala., in 2003.
• Karen Morris, 56, of Clearlake, Calif., was hospitalized for 12 days with head injuries in an attack by a young buck Nov. 17 outside her home. The horns bruised Clifford Morris, 68, when he came to his wife's aid.
• In Covelo, Calif., on Sept. 29, Arnold and Jeannine Bloom returned to their pickup after watering a friend's vegetable garden. A small buck ran up to the truck and knocked the man on his back, California Department of Fish and Game warden Rusty Boccaleoni says. When Jeannine Bloom swung at the animal with a piece of firewood, it turned upon her and ripped a hole in her arm. The next day, Boccaleoni shot and killed the animal.
• BALL GROUND, Ga. [10/8/07 - sig94]-- A man was found deadafter apparently being attacked by a deer. The body of John Henry Frix, 66, was found around 8 p.m. Sunday inside the deer's pen on his property. He had been gored several times in the upper body by a deer's antlers, Cherokee County sheriff's Sgt. Jay Baker said.
The deer was one of several Frix kept on his property.
"This particular deer had apparently been in rut, which is their breeding cycle, and they become very aggressive," said Cherokee County Sheriff's Deputy Jay Baker. "This deer had been quite aggressive the past few days, so we think that's what caused the attack on the man."
Maybe I could start a protective service to handle these kinds of incidents. As a commenter said on the original deer-attacks-hunter article:
timpatico writes: If that deer had a chance, he'd kill you and your entire family. Then burn down your house and pee on the ashs. Those Deer just are not right in the head.
My rates are reasonable and I'll give you a free fire extinguisher to boot.
Once again we were back in the woods at 0630. Just my SIL and I this time and we were hunting in an area behind the homes of some friends of his. Still a little swampy but nothing like yeaterday. It was colder and it was snowing heavily. I had no idea where we were once we got off the main road.
And it didn't matter a bit because neither one of us saw a deer for two and a half hours. But I did notice that my new scope had been installed 90 degrees out of whack. So yesterday as I put 25 rounds through it trying to dial it in at 50 yards, whenever I tried to raise the recticle, I was actually moving it to the left. And when I moved it to the right, I was moving it down. I was thinking as the shots moved to the right when I dialed it up that I was a complete idiot. *sigh*
We left at about 0915 and drove to Lysander for some breakfast. We each had a big, thick slab of breakfast pizza (really, it was 3/4" thick with eggs, ham, sausage and corn) and coffee. The bill came to $6.45 for the both of us. Ahhhhhhh, Upstate New York.
On the way back home we stopped here to hunt. We were right behind the house in the lower left corner of the picture (Google map). Once you get past the rear yard where it is flat and green, there is a ridge line. From there the property drops down sharply about fifty feet into a valley. See the first green blob of treetop closest to the back yard? I was about 75 feet from there. My SIL went around the scrub to the left, up and back around and tried to drive something over.
Nada. Not a thing except an overcaffeinated squirrel bouncing off the trees. After an hour we left.
As soon as I got home I headed back to the gun shop. The guy was just a little embarassed. He reset the scope and bore sighted it again. We had a laugh over it and I got a free replacement box of sabots. I stopped home to pickup my range pass, sat down for a few minutes and fell asleep. So much for the range.
This is where we were yesterday.
That faint oval was my approximate location. This is NYS DEC managed property on Kellogg Rd. Rob was about 3/4 inch to my left. My SIL entered the woods above the top right corner of the picture on Smokey Hollow Rd. The lighter colored area above the oval is the swamp/wetlands.
We all had a good time nonetheless. We dropped my SIL off on the east side of the woods around 0630 and he started walking southwest to drive the deer towards us (hopefully). We got into the woods at dawn and trudged probably over a quarter mile into the State hunting grounds. The morning was cold and damp so we decided to walk into a half-frozen swamp. Rob and I took positions about 100 yards apart just short of the swamp. We stayed there almost two hours.
Rob saw a single doe but couldn't get a shot off. Neither I nor my SIL saw a deer. Rob had to get home so we were outta there at 0930.
I really enjoyed myself but I realized that my Remmy 1100 is basically a pheasant gun and after not shooting it for about 25 years it now hammers the living daylights out of my not so young shoulder. So I went over to my favorite gun shop and asked to see what they had in a used slug gun.
I first looked at a used Weatherby but it was a smooth bore. Out next popped a Mossie 500 with a ventilated, cantilevered, rifled slug barrel. I picked out a Barska 1.25 x 4.5 to sit on top and we were done.
Next trip was to the range where I put 25 rounds through it. This gun was made for sabot rounds.
The recoil is very comfortable because of the ventilated barrel and a nice thick butt pad. My shoulder killed me after 5 rounds with the 1100. After 25 rounds with the Mossie my shoulder did not hurt at all.
I got it to fire a 4" group at 50 yards.
My SIL and I are going back into the woods tomorow morning again.
Tomorrow we are having our Thanksgiving meal at my daughter's house. We have been baking pies for two days and my wife is making the stuffing tonight. We will have two turkeys, one roasted and the other deep fried. I just can't get used to the taste of fried turkey and prefer roasted. We'll miss our daughter in the Army but that is tempered by the fact that she is flying in on December 19th and will stay with us through New Year's before returning to DLI.
She reported a few days ago that there were protestors outside DLI - the idiots thought that DLI was giving instruction to Army personnel on how to waterboard terrorists. The fools don't realize that waterboarding is a third semester course; waterboarding comes after the second semester fingernail pulling, testicle pounding and colon water cannon classes.
My SIL finally talked me into going deer hunting with him. Friday morning at oh-dark hundred we will enter the woods and practice our deadly trade. I will be sporting my new Remington camo orange hat as I carry my trusty 1100.
So I am going out again. This time I will bag and tag the elusive Bambi.
I gave up deer hunting years ago because I am such a lousy deer hunter. I don't have the patience.
I dug out the last NYS big game permit I bought; it was for the 1977-78 season. Crikey.
Bambi should be a lot older and slower now. I'll get my shot when he takes off running in the woods and breaks a hip. I just hope I don't have to stop and pee when he does that.
