A Christmas Day bonus was in store for me this morning as I left the house at at 6:30 am to hit the tree stand. Temps were about zero here in north Iowa and the wind was brisk out of the northwest bringing the windchill down to -13. This kind of weather makes a hunt a lesson in survival. Dressed properly for the 1/2 mile walk in with an inch of snow on the ground was noisy, for those of you that know winter hunting, i am talking squeaky snow. Not the kind of approach that one would like to start a morning hunt with but, one I had no choice and couldn't change. Once at the stand I dressed for sitting and put on heavy wool bibs coat, climbed into the stand and prepared for the dawn. Legal shooting light came at 7:15 and my anticipation was high as my wife had killed a booner sized doe from this hilltop 5 days earlier with her gp-100. I had hunted here 4 days prior and and seen 11 deer but a comedy of errors of trying to film and shoot saved the deer's life. today any legal deer was in serious trouble if in range as i had already made up my mind that if it was brown it was down. sitting quietly in my stand I had it all figured out and the deer would be coming from over the hill or around the hill directly in front of me. Then when the deer forgot to read the script, they came in directly downwind on the edge of the field. The Field edge is 25 yards away and within my effective range of the given handgun. Most of you would be saying "drop shot" at this point but not for me with this pistol. I was hunting with a percussion great plains .54 caliber muzzleloader. Read "old school", this gun is very accurate with groups of 1 1/4" at 25 yards and 2 3/4" groups at fifty yards very common. Those groups were shot in the fall when it wasn't -13. the deer getting downwind decided to start out into the field to get away from the stinky hunter that couldn't be seen,thus putting even more distance between me and them. After what seemed like an eternity, the lead doe stopped after stepping from behind the trees hiding her vitals and the Lyman barked in the frigid cold. The doe mule kicked and spun to run in the direction that she had come and in doing so it looked like i could see a blood spot on her opposite side. She and her partner ran from sight dropping over a terrace and into the bottom of a bean field. When the deer reached the bottom where i could see them again there was only one. I waited for about 5 minutes and then went to find my prize. Pacing off the shot was 33 yards from tree to impact. I was surprised when I didn't find any blood within 20 yards of where she was hit, however when i topped the terrace, i found that a blood trail was not necessary,as she had died with in 50 yards of the hit sight at the bottom of the hill. I believe that any deer is a trophy and doing it old school makes it even sweeter. I couldn't figure out how to post the pictures (computer illiterate) but will see if my daughter can help me post them.