Pennsylvania Game News - August 2009 - 8

chamber, aimed at the buck’s back as he passed beneath me and fired again. Twenty yards later the deer collapsed dead and I put my tag on my best buck ever. As a footnote to this episode, I later met the hunter who downed the very same buck I had missed earlier that morning and we had a chance to compare our trophies. His buck was a real beauty and would have probably been a huge 12-point if the left antler hadn’t broken off halfway up the main beam (an imperfection I hadn’t noticed in the half light of dawn). Given the turn of events, I had first missed, and then bagged, two of the best bucks of my life, and because of the damaged antler, the one I tagged turned out to be the better of the two. Number Nine My most representative 9-point came in just my second year of hunting. When I again reported to that Fulton County mountaintop for opening day in 1973, I carried my trusty Marlin, this time fitted with a 4x scope. Those optics worked just fine when a wide racked buck trotted into view trailing a string of does. When I shouldered my rifle to scope him, the lead doe immediately spotted the careless movement, froze in her tracks and snorted. At 70 yards I caught a quick glance of the buck’s impressive antlers before his head disappeared behind the thick trunk of an oak tree where, alerted by the doe’s alarm, he also froze. With his entire head and rack obscured by the tree, the buck’s body from the shoulder back was still exposed. But the doe’s eyes fixed on me and her body quivered nervously. The whole herd was on the verge of scattering, so I placed the crosshairs on the buck’s shoulder, holding a mere inch from the tree trunk and fired. The mountainside exploded with white flags as the entire herd, including the buck, fled pell-mell downhill toward the valley. My first and only deer up until that time, the one I had shot just the year before, had dropped dead in its tracks. I had expected the same result this time, so when the deer bolted away, I was convinced the shot had missed. For the next hour I just sat there slumped against an oak stump replaying the debacle in my mind and second-guessing myself. Maybe I should have waited until the buck stepped out from behind the tree. But then I recalled something I read in an old Game News article — that a hit deer will often tuck its tail down against its rump as it runs. I again replayed the aftermath of the shot in my mind. There were a lot of white flags flailing as the herd bolted, but if I remembered correctly, the buck’s tail had been tucked down. It was just my second year of deer hunting, and believing I had missed, I hadn’t thought to follow up my shot, a mistake I would never make again. I headed down the mountainside, my eyes scouring the forest floor for any sign my shot had connected. A hundred yards farther, just below the lip of a bench, I spotAUTHOR with his 10-point buck taken with a bow that completed his Keystone countdown collection. 8 GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - August 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - August 2009