With my left shoulder surgery happening on Monday at 1pm I resorted to using the ol Savage 99 in 308 Win. I had taken my S&W 629 along in case there was a close shot that could be taken. But I never thought it would happen like this:
My son in-law invited me to his grandpa's property, where on Friday he shot a beautiful large bodied 10pt with his 30-06 and also told me that his pastor and a friend got several as well. I left the house early and arrived at the property gate at around 5:30am, and called since the gate was locked. Brett (son in-law) and his pastor came up and let me in, then I followed winding around down to where they had set up camp. We had some coffee and waited for Mike to wake up, and get the fire going. They couldn't wait to show me all the deer hanging under the old house that isn't used any longer.
Brett was right this was a nice large bodied 10pt that if not for losing a tine would have been an 11 pointer with a double eye guard on the right side. I'm guessing his buck weight was probably @ 250 lbs. The other deer were a bit smaller as there were two other small bucks and two does.
Well we headed back to the camp fire, where I dug out my Knight and Hail Rattle bag and new grunt call and demonstrated them a bit. After a bit I turned around and down from me about 200 yards was a large deer standing full broadside as if to be trying to zero in on the noise from the rattle bag or grunt call. I grabbed the Savage 99 and looked thru the scope and it was a nice large bodied buck with chacotate brown rack, I started to shake because of my left shoulder and shot. It was a miss and the buck just stood there as if not hearing anything at all, so I levered in another 180-gr WW 308 Win cartridge and when the cross hairs came down this time, touched off the trigger and watched the buck just drop in his tracks.
The guy's just could not believe it.... no hiking for me, no tracking for me it was done by 8 am.
Now here is my son in-laws buck next to mine, as you see his is the larger of the two.
By the time we got home, my left shoulder was just nailing me hard but it was a great day with getting my buck first thing in the morning. I would have liked to have gotten the size of buck my son in-law did. But as we walked around the property the rest of the day no bigger one was found or rattled in, so I'm glad I took the buck I did.
