The annual gathering of handgun hunters organized by Gary Reeder, aka Handgun Hunters Challenge, was held this year on September 30 running through October 4 in the hills of Tennessee at Wilderness Hunting Lodge.
I arrived Wednesday evening by myself. Kim Ralston was still chasing bears with Matt Nash in Georgia, and my regular hunting partners, Gerald Altman and Britt Jackson had weekend commitments and couldn't get away. I spent the day on Thursday walking the Tennessee hills in two different areas watching for game, taking an inventory of what was available. I saw an abundance of Fallow deer, rams, Sika deer, and a few Blackbuck and Aoudad.
Friday morning Gerald and Britt arrived at breakfast as they were able to get away for the day to come down and hang out with the crew. We went to the area across the road behind the lodge to get a better look at the Blackbuck. There were five hanging together in the field, but none were mature or had any size to them. There was a group of thirteen rams traveling together with two nice Strawberry colored Texas Dalls in the group. We followed the group for a while as I was trying to get a shot on the larger of the two Strawberry rams. I couldn't get a clear shot and the group traveled into the woods and completely disappeared. We searched for over an hour and was about to head in for lunch when we spotted a lone ram in the very far corner of the field. As we moved closer, we found the entire group and by this time they had gotten spooked. They started traveling across the field heading back to the woods and I got in position for a shot. I had my back against a fence post with my 44 magnum BFR resting on a set a shooting sticks. Britt was spotting for me and when he confirmed the largest Strawberry was clear, I took a shot at 73 yards. The ram instantly went down. Upon examination, the shot entered low in the left shoulder taking out the heart and exited in front of the right shoulder. I was using a 240 grain Speer Deep Curl JSP.
After lunch we decided to take a trip through the cornfield as Alan was offering a ram/hog combo. The hogs were congregated deep in the corn and it was hard to get a shot. Finally a nice boar and sow appeared down a corn row within 20 yards. The sow was by far the larger of the two. She had her head down feeding towards us. At a distance of 15 yards, I hit her at the base of the neck with my 45LC using a 250 grain Hornady XTP. This was the same load I used on a Black bear in Maine. The sow went down instantly.
