In the past, tagging out seemed to be such a chore. By the time that last tag is on the line, I am usually thinking more about how much space there will be in the freezer than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’m pissing off the poor deer hunters in Pakistan that never see a deer, but if you hunt deer, you know that after the buck tag is filled there is that period of time in the year where you stop having the same thrill up your leg. That was yesterday. The only thing was this was different. I had a lot more riding on this hunt.

For starters, I am not saying that I have retired the Whelenizer, my trusty freezer filler of 10 years. I took it out of the rotation this year for the simple fact that it had become too much of a sure thing. I had two rifles that needed to find first blood, the Hawkeye and O.T’s 25-06. There was just going to be too darn many rifles, and something had to go. Honestly, 35 Whelen on whitetails IS a bit much. Overkill is great, but the rounds were costing me about twice that of an ’06. The Hawkeye is stainless, so it can fill the roll of designated rain gun. The 25-06 was still a bit of a cypher. O.T. said it was a death ray on deer for 30 years. This is the first sub-30 caliber I’ve tried on deer. The Hawkeye did its job on the Monster Dink I shot Thursday. It was time to see what O.T.’s rifle had.

O.T. sold me this rifle last year. He had been talking it up for all the time I’d known him. It was a custom Mauser he had picked up in the early 80’s about the same time I was just getting into deer hunting. It had served him well through over 35 seasons. O.T.’s eyes went last year. He was just sitting in the chair, watching the T.V. and his good eye just went dark on him. The doc said the nerve had died from a clot or something– fluky thing, but it can’t be helped. There went his deer hunting. The remaining eye ain’t worth spit. I offered to buy his gun to help out. It took O.T. a while to warm up to the idea, but finally he mentioned it, and I dropped over with the cash.

Angus said that he wants a room like O.T’s some day. O.T. probably furnished it back in the mid 70’s when he was about half-way to where he was now. From there, he managed to fill it with every possible evidence of a life well led. The grouse were gone now. The quail he helped re-introduce to the county are rarely seen. Now he was being robbed of deer and turkey by a pair of bum eyes. It took him 20 minutes to get the safe open for me, although I suspect there was a lot more going on there.

The first thing I realized after working with the rifle for a bit was that the rifle needed some adjustment to fit me. I’m probably a head taller than O.T. I tried to get the first generation Red Dot scope to work for me. I replaced it with a Bushnell Trophy 4-12X40. After shooting it in the blind this year, I think I will take the recoil pad off. O.T probably didn’t like what I did with it, but I’m sure the Red Dot will find a home soon on one of my projects. Last year, I carried the rifle several times, but never got a shot at a deer.

So yesterday I was out at Midway. That is where I envisioned this rifle all along– a long sit overlooking The Garden of Stone. Besides the rifle, I had been worried about letting the new guy doing my hay touch The Garden. It seems that The Garden of Stone is really touchy on when you mow it. There is a mystery forb in that pasture, some little weed that only flourishes after the others die off. That is what draws the deer. I have not yet figured out what it is. The new hay guy mowed The Garden just before November 1. I’d hoped the mystery forb had time to recover. I suspect that was what brought the Monster Dink, my 5-inch spike to The Garden on Thursday.

I went out to Midway an hour early. Friday night, I’d done a bit of stalking over in that general area and seen deer moving in mid-afternoon. That was, by the way, a wonderful hunt. I totally mis-judged the wind, but stalking the pasture between Newstand and the Honey Hole was a real treat. The sun played on the remaining oak leaves and seemed to set them on fire. I left for Midway around 3 so I would not miss anything.

I ate my lunch in the blind, a Braunschweiger and Pepper Jack on a sesame hamburger bun washed down with leftover coffee mixed with Swiss Miss. Don’t laugh. At 30F that is good stuff! I really had not seriously started hunting before a doe came out from the Campground and started to munch mystery forb in the Garden of Stone. It was 4:15.

After Monster Dink on Thursday, I had to be on my guard. Kentucky only allows one buck per year. Even an inch of antler would have me in the soup with the CO. I cranked the scope all the way to 12X and studied that head for a good long time, gunning down the last of the coffee as I went. Finally satisfied, I slipped the safety off and went for it.

If you want a final pronouncement on how 25-06 worked, I’d say it seemed to create a bigger blast radius than a Turdy-cal. This was a high-shoulder shot. It had a reasonable entrance and exit through the chest cavity. However, besides doing in the lungs, it also must have created enough pressure to breach the diaphragm and involve the stomach. This was with the Hornady 117 grain SPBT. You’d thing from all that there would be a toes-up DRT right there in the field. Actually, she ran in a wide loop and crashed at the fence at the margin of the field, trying to go back the way she came. Was this better than the 30-06? No. It wasn’t worse either. Of course this is just my first shot on game with a 25 Cal.

I found her piled up at the fence, in the margin of cedars between the field and the logging road that runs beside. She was in sight of the picnic table at the campground, and 25 feet from where tents had been pitched just a month before. Angus and SuperCore were still out hunting, so I cached my gear and walked back to the house and got the S-10 Hirschewagen.

After I got the Silverado, the question was what to do with my old S-10. The one thing I really needed was a way to retrieve deer, preferably as a one-man operation. I took off the cap, rigged ramps and borrowed the block and tackle from the meat pole. I also put a serious winch on the front in case we ever had to pull a deer or the truck out of ravine. This doe had run towards the road and died within a few feet of it. I told the crew to stay put and hunt while I got the deer wagon. You’ll see from the photos that this ended up a quick 15 minute job. I was out of the woods before the end of legal hunting.

B&B took the doe in even though we got there late. If you are hunting in the Falmouth KY area, I can now recommend Ming Moon for Chinese and El Paso for good Mexican food. We got Chinese after the Monster Dink on Thursday and I went in for Mexican last night.

I have been roaming back and forth from my desk next to the wood stove and the shooting bench. I keep being torn between wanting to watch the sunrise and my painfully cold hands. Occasionally I’ve seen SuperCore’s orange hat in the window at Die Jagende Hütte . The sky is leaden. Snow is expected any time today. We had flurries here and there overnight.

Right now, my plan is, once the Ibuprofen has kicked in, to raise my lazy butt off the bench and start fixing breakfast for the crew. Beyond that, I am going to start breaking down camp, at least my end of it. Beyond that, I am going to experiment with hard-cast lead over the next year. My hope is to bring back the Whelenizer with 200 grain lead running at 35 Rem speeds.

And beyond that? I wish you all many happy deer camps. May your boots be forever stained with deer gore. May your boughs hang low with fuzzy wind chimes. May your freezers bulge with venison.

I just got a call from SuperCore. He’s cold and coming in. I’ll call Angus and see if he wants to be picked up.

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