Last minute success

With just two hours of daylight left on the last day of the gun season, Joe and I were pushin' out some cover for Joe's buddy Batts, who had yet to fill his buck tag. We were awful happy to hear those gunshots ringin' out ahead of us on our third push, and even happier when Batts hollered out that he'd hit a nice buck.

There was considerable confusion when we got the deer though... turns out, when you try to shove a .243 bullet through a deer's ears, the horns pop off. He hit the buck hard on the first shot, and was shootin' through some pretty tight cover on the two follow-up shots. Only thing we can figure is the bullet musta skipped off a sapling or somethin' and redirected itself right into the think-tank... Boom, headshot. Since it's only Batts' second buck, and a helluva nice one at that, he's gettin' it stuffed, so the taxidermist should be able to fix that for him. T'was a helluva nice way to end a very successful season.

He held the bones in place for a decent picture.

Over the summer, I was thrilled when a brute of a buck showed up on my trail camera upstate. Upon closer inspection, my little brother noticed what he thought was a droptine, and after drinkin' a few more beers and lookin' at the pic way too many times, he had me convinced.

Unfortunately for us, another lucky hunter confirmed the droptine for us on the third day of the season. I was hopin' he'd make it through for us to chase again next year, but oh well. Hopefully, he spent most of November bangin' lots of does and spreadin' his seed around. He was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime buck.

We do have an ace in the hole, however... the neighbor to the land we hunt up there shared a trail camera picture of another deer with very similar characteristics, including a lengthy droptine. As far as we know, that buck made it through unscathed.