Some pictures from the Deer Lease this past weekend. I had a great time! I like it more than I thought I would, and I was friggin' awesome! We weren't seeing a lot of deer but we had promised Tobi we would bring he back some meat for processing, so Saturday night I shot a pretty good size doe. I shot it right above the shoulder to explode the heart, killing it instantly. It dropped immediately. We took it back to camp to clean, skin and gut it then packed the meat into a cooler. Everything will be used for meat except of course the guts. The next morning we went back to the same stand. I had taken some allergy medicine so my eyes were getting real heavy. SAP ALERT: Buck tucked an arm around me once I fell asleep and let me rest on his shoulder for about an hour while we waited for the sun to rise. As soon as it became light enough so that we could see the feeder we began to hear the deer walk out of the woods all around us, gathering beneath the feeder. Then out came a really nice looking, mature buck, atleast six points on the horns. Since I had shot the doe the day before, it was the nephews turn to shoot. Trace is about 8 or 9 years old. At the last second he backed down and wanted me to shoot the buck. I think he knew he would miss. He's a little gun shy because the last time he tried to shoot the scope hit him in the head, and he missed completely. Still, I was so happy he let me shoot it! My heart was racing while I was lining up the crosshairs on the shoulder of the buck, the last thing I wanted was to miss and lame the deer. It's only fair to kill it instantly. I pulled the trigger and the buck dropped right where it was under the feeder. The other deer scattered. About 30 minutes later we walked to the feeder to look at it, and to my surprise, it was a 9-pointer! YAY! I had hit it right in the shoulder and killed it instantly, like the doe. Again, we took it back to camp to skin and clean it. Buck and I are keeping the meat to get it processed into sausage and steaks. Buck is also going to skin and boil the head so I can have the complete skull and horns, which Buck is going to mount for me. YAY! Here are some pictures, but a warning: if you don't want to see dead deer, don't scroll down completely. Something else I forgot to mention, there was another smaller buck that walked out on Saturday night. I didn't shoot it because it looked real young.
Buck is very talented when it comes to behaving like a primative neanderthal. He could easily take care of himself if he had to live in the wild, as long as he was supplied with ammunition and bug spray. He took me on a hog hunt this past weekend at his uncle's lake property. After fishing all day and catching nothing but four sun perch (and I'm certain it was just one foolish fish) we returned to the truck where he took his .243 rifle out which had been buried beneath the .410 and .22 he had also packed just to be safe. We walked a bit until we came to the first feeder and sat about 70 feet away from it. His uncle told him that it would be fine if he shot a couple hogs as they were rooting around his property and making a mess. I think we sat there for an hour and a half and not one hog showed up, even after the feeder went off and littered the ground with deer corn. Even though we had completely covered ourselves with Deep Woods Off, the mosquitos were still swarming us, not biting, but just being pests. Then Buck did something that caused chills to run down my spine: he cupped his hands around his mouth and squealed like a pig wrestling with another one. It was haunting and surprisingly really loud. I'm a bit ashamed to say it but it was a huge turn on for me. I don't know why but it was just too hot. We got fed up soon after and went to Whataburger, bringing the food back so we could sit on the dock in the middle of the lake and eat it while watching the sunset. Surprisingly, it was his idea.
