got off of work early today since it was too cold for much to be going on where I work, I drive a Ready Mix truck, and decided to go hunting this afternoon and try to fill my last antlerless tag that I have.

There is a Winter Storm upon us here in Eastern Iowa and I figured the deer would be bedded up pretty tight and I have a couple patches of small timber on our family ground on either side of our pond and the creek that runs right through it all so I thought I'd try to sneak in and see if I could get lucky.

The wind was still coming out of the South, which is actually the worst wind for me to hunt this area where I come in from, but I thought it's worth a shot anyway. It was about 3:30 when I slowly walked into the area and I wasn't in there very long when I jumped 3 does from the West end of the pond and they ran away rather quickly and I wasn't able to get the gun settled in and the scope on any of them good enough to even attempt a shot and I thought "Crap, there's the does I was after!"

Well, at this point I decided to slowly walk the short distance to the East and look into the timber on the East side of the creek and I didn't get very far at all and I noticed a doe bedded down just up the hill from the creek resting with her back to me against a lay down tree and she had most of her body hidden behind that and a standing tree she was next to. I crept up to the closest tree and started resting the Ruger SRH 44 Mag against it and she was still oblivious to my presence. She was only about 40 yards away from me at this point but I had no real shot on her body and I was trying to figure out whether I wanted to make a noise to try and get her to stand up or should I attempt a neck shot?

I decided that I could make the neck shot at this distance as I've been able to put under 2" groups together with this gun @ 50 yards while practicing w/o any trouble. So I got real steady, got the crosshairs on her neck about halfway between her ear and her shoulder and squeezed off the shot. BOOM! She didn't even move. Her head went straight down on the ground w/o even so much as flinching.

If you look in the pic, just about 2" in front of the end of the barrel, you can see a small red spot which was the entry point.




And it's a little hard to see in this picture but there was about a golf-ball sized exit on the other side of her neck in this picture.



So now I can officially say my deer hunting is over for this season, and it's been a GREAT season! I've gone 4 for 4 with the 44 and I have plenty of meat for my freezer and plenty for some friends and family as well.