Gas Pains

Tom grew up in Milwaukee, bartended in Wauwatosa in the '70s and moved here in 1984.

Commentary, observations and musings about the outdoors, life in general and maybe Tosa politics and personalities will be the order of the day. He savors a lively debate as much as terrific cooking.

Something Out of the Ordinary

Deer Camp, Friends, Strange But True, Life Is Good

NewGuy is in his stand in the swamp and glances over his shoulder. There is a deer at twenty paces giving him the evil eye.

How do you drop a deer when you’re facing the wrong way and the animal already has the drop on you?

The answer is - you don’t.

By the time he turned and got his cowboy rifle up that whitetail had vamoosed.

More fog this morning and everything was wet - absolutely dripping wet.

Mennonite killed a deer early-on.

I’m up in my stand by the creek trying to keep my scope clean from the fogging and trying to keep my wits about me on a wet and slippery stand.

I hear splashing behind me.

I turn around and there is herd of deer trotting around the edge of the pond. Eight of them.

I wheel about and brace my left leg against the tree trunk. Working the bolt to chamber a round and steady my trusty Browning against the tree trunk I put the crosshairs on the third deer.

Ka-boom!

Dropped it.

I work the bolt again chambering another round and put the crosshairs on the lead deer.

Ka-boom!

Deer down.

Now they’re fleeing for their lives.

Chambering my third round I let fly at the trailing deer and miss. 

Out of ammo I watch the backsides of the rest of them flagging me as they run full-tilt in the direction of the Hillbilly House.

NewGuy got a lesson in field dressing and following breakfast we ran to town with Mennonite to get the deer registered.

One is hanging in the shed and the others are iced-down in the back of the truck.

57 degrees by noon. It was positively tropical today.

Here is a singularly strange occurrence-

One of the deer I shot had a yellow ear tag on it.

There are no known game farm operations anywhere around us and the registration station had never seen anything like it. 

Ever.

So I left a voice mail and an email with the warden to see if he can shed some light on it.

NewGuy got  a shot off at a deer in the swamp this afternoon.  No sign of hair nor a blood trail.  We're thinking that Model 94 cowboy gun might be shooting a tad high.

It has altogether been a good day in our camp. 

We're butchering after tomorrow morning's hunt...

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