Hey hey! Check it out!!!

I got a buck today, the first day of the season. Now I can go study for school and not be quite as distracted, although I do still have a doe tag. I'll probably still go hunting a little bit, but, because I got this buck, I won't be as intent on getting a doe. I will have meat to put in the freezer and antlers to hang on the wall. If I get a doe it will be like an extra bonus.

What I really need to do now is study. At the date that I write this, we have two more weeks of class this fall at Alvernia, and then one more week of finals.

Ok, so here is the scoop on the buck story,

I hunted in the morning before going to school and didn't see deer. After school, I walked out along the edge of the same patch of woods. My neighbor said he had seen a group of deer run into that patch of woods while I was in school, but by the time I got there they had moved on. I walked around elsewhere on the farm for a while but didn't see anything. I was going to head home, but on the way home I decided to call another neighbor and see if I could get permission to hunt on his farm. He didn't answer his, but I happened across his brother heading the other way on the road. We stopped and talked, and he said that he had a bunch of guys that where going to put on a drive through some wooded patches close to my house. I asked if they wanted help and he said they already had too many guys, but that if I wanted to I could go sit off to the side in case something ran out that way when they came through. I thought this was great, and figured it couldn't be better. They where going to make a drive and I could just sit there.

They came through the woods and chased out two deer. The area where we were is an area of some rolling hills with wooded patches in the valleys and fields on the hills. I stood on top of one hill looking down into the bush and across into the next field. Where they were making the drive was in the next valley on the other side of that hill across from me. To get a picture of this in your mind, none of the hills or valleys are all that tall or wide, but are long. I guess you could classify them as small ridges. To look across from one hill to the next is only about 100 yards. Anyway, when I heard them start shooting just over the hill I really perked up and got ready. The two deer, one buck and one doe, came running up over the hill and down into the brush below me. The doe came through the brush and up into my field first, then stopped, facing me head on, and looked straight at me. I shot and missed, and it took off running. I think the noise from that shot might have been enough to stall the buck in his tracks down in the bush. He had just been shot at from all directions on the other side of the hill, and I don't think he knew where my shot had come from. I started moving pretty quick towards the area where I thought he was, and he started coming up through the brush strait towards me. I think he saw me about the same time I saw him. He kind of hunched down and back and tried to turn around and run the other way. When I got what I thought was a clear shot at him I fired and dropped him pretty much on the spot.

The rack is 15 inches wide on the outside, It looks like it would have been a 9-point spread, but most of the points were broken off near their bases. Even the one good tine that remains on the right is chipped off at the tip. This buck must have been a real fighter.

Now here is the part that amazes me: I realized later that I had shot through two small trees and still hit him. Those trees are pictured below and were only about one or two inches thick.

Here are the pictures of those two trees. If you look close enough, they are both visible in both pictures. The difference in these two pictures is the direction they were taken from; the first one is from my point of view when I was shooting, the other is from about where the buck was.