My mind drifts back. What was my first deer like?  Let me give you a few highlights:

1) Just before I shot my deer, I had nearly been trampled in a stampede of deer.

2)  I shot my first deer at 10 feet  with a Texas Heart Shot

3) I shot at a buck, a respectable 4 pointer, but what fell down was a doe.

It all started when I was invited to hunt Sue and Hugh’s place outside Warsaw, Kentucky.  Sue and Hugh had a trailer on 80 acres.  I had been having some nice close-calls with the deer during archery season, but I was still scoreless.  I went out for the Rifle Opener with my Remington 742 in 30-06 and a nice big thermos of way-too-strong coffee.  Somebody had also sent me one of those fancy grunt calls with a tube.  I’d never had one before, so I thought I would give it a try. Hugh sent me up the hill behind the trailer.  He said it was  a good spot and if I put my back up to the stand of cedars about half-way up, I would have a good view of the creek below.

I had put  new 3-9X Simmons scope on my rifle that Fall, and had been having a devil of  a time getting it sighted in.  I really did not know what I was doing in those days.  I remember going through at  least  4 boxes of ammo, trying to keep it on a pie-plate at 50 yards.  I had the scope cranked down all the way to 9X

It was a little cold that morning, and I was hitting the coffee pretty heavy.  By 10 AM, I needed to pay the rent, so I got up and wandered away to find a good spot to make a deposit.  When I was done, I saw a nice stump close at hand and figured one place was as good as another.  I sat down.  It was getting late in the morning, so  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try out the new grunt call.

I blew three times on the grunt and was stashing it back in my shirt when all hell broke loose.  Just uphill from me a mixed herd of about a half-dozen deer came busting through the dense cedars and down the hill right towards me. Most had no idea I was there.   They ran so close to me that one hoof print was left in the dirt between my boots.  My rifle butt was on the downhill side of me; the barrel was propped across my legs. The first few whitetails ran straight at me and I leaned backward as one of them side-swiped me. That’s the one that left the print between my boots. They all ran down the hillside and stopped at the edge of the creek. At short range, a small buck offered me a perfect shot.

I regained my balance and swung the rifle around. I had forgotten to crank the magnification back from 9X to 3X so when I took a sight on the buck, all I had was a patch of fur. The fur behind the front leg was moving slightly, so I followed it. What I was not aware of was the doe at the tail end of the herd had come from behind me and crossed right in front of my sight. She was running toward or a little ahead of the buck just as I touched it off.

At about 10 feet, I sent a round of 180 Grain 30-06 into her rump. It entered just off-center, and traveled parallel to the spinal column before exiting through the spine between the shoulder blades. Ooops. The buck and the rest ran off, and I was left with a very dead doe.

It’s true. Everyone gets their deer cherry popped one way or the other; mine was being nearly run down by a whole herd of stampeding deer.

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