Bob’s Model 44 and the Buck

As you all know, my buddy Bob died this past winter. He was an outdoor writer and magazine editor. Out of the estate I managed to snag a minty Ruger Model 44, and swore I’d put it to good use. Bob would have been proud. I nailed a buck with it Friday night– 80 yards, perfect shot, The only down side is that this is the first season in 40 years that I haven’t been able to call Bob to tell him. I miss the old coot. He and a bunch of his now long-dead friends got me into hunting and shooting.

This has been a tough season for me. I do not mean to make excuses. It has just been hard. It has been hard for all of us– except Moose. He got his buck in the first hour of season. Angus is still scoreless. SuperCore managed a small buck on the Opener, but has been struggling to fill a tag ever since.

Part of it has been the cold. It has been a good 10 degrees colder than usual. We lost two days of hunting last week. A couple of decades ago, I would have been excited to be out with 2 inches of snow on the ground. I can’t really remember this much snow in Kentucky’s Rifle Season. I’m in my 62nd year. That much snow and cold just were not for me. I’ve been nursing a nasty virus all season. We all went home for a couple of days; I tried to recuperate. I still have a rattling cough.

A good part of my trouble was the expectations I had placed on the season. Chief among them was giving the Model 44 a workout. In that, I have succeeded. The rest is highly problematic.

Back when I got the farm, I was still bowhunting. It was just part of the deal to be putting stands in inaccessible ravines and dragging deer out of them. Over the intervening 2 decades, I have been gradually pulling in from that. My last stand that required that kind of schlepping was installed in 2006 — Newstand. I had not shot out of it in years before finally pulling it out in 2017.

I really got to missing that kind of action this past year. Bob had died. I’d gotten a couple of his pieces. What I really needed was some better venues for using them. I had been nursing the idea of putting a stand at Hundred Acres since my first season at the farm. It had taken 18 years to finally find the right tree with good view of the place. I have to say that I was still looking at the situation with 18-year old eyes. When I first started hunting Hundred Acres, it was a very open hillside under the largest oak trees on the property. The canopy kept the light out from the ground and so there was not much ground clutter. It was perfect for squirrel. All my kids got their first taste of squirrel hunting down there. Deer and turkey used it in the fall as a giant acorn buffet. Hundred Acres is just a name we gave to the place. It’s just a 5 acres woodlot out behind the house. It got its name because it was next to Poo Corner. That was the place we used for the first few months while we were waiting for the plumber to get the toilet working. Shaman’s Thoughtful Spot overlooks both of these places. You get the idea.

Putting up the stand at Hundred Acres was easy. It is right inside the tree line. There is a perfect shooting lane going 120 yards to the creek. I also have a view of the whole hillside. What I hadn’t planned on was all those acorns sprouting. Over the last decade or so, enough of the old trees have fallen over that there is now enough light for thousands of oak saplings to start growing. The whole hillside is bristling with these mighty saplings. I began to notice them too late.

My first hint that something was off-plan was at 1715 Friday evening. It was getting on towards sundown. I was in the stand and had Bob’s Model 44 at the ready. I had heard stirrings out in the adjacent pasture. The deer were moving. Suddenly, a doe broke through the shooting lane and disappeared. Then another came through and another, and. . . All told a herd of 4 doe came through the shooting lane at a run. That was okay. I had another 100 or so yards of hillside to pick them off– except I didn’t. I could hear them move through the oak saplings, but I could barely pick out the movement. I sure was not going to get a good shot. I was kicking myself when the buck that was trailing them showed up. He obliged me with a perfect broadside pose in the center of the shooting lane. I took the shot. He jumped and ran a bit before everything went silent.

I called to SuperCore that I had shot a buck, and would need help. SuperCore came immediately on the ATV. By then, I’d gotten down to the buck’s level and traversed the 80 yards or so to where he lay. It had been an optimal shot with nice exit hole through. The buck was down close to the creek, and if I followed the blood trail with the ATV, I would not have a huge problem getting him out– or so I thought.

The dark clouds began to gather when SuperCore got the ATV stuck between two trees on his way through the fence. It stalled out on him, and he could not get it started. It turned out he was low on gas, and pointing it downhill had left him dry. We walked back to the cabin, got gas and the Silverado and went back out. Gassing it wasn’t enough to solve the problem. We had to pull it out with the Silverado, and let it sit on level ground for a bit before it restarted.

SuperCore is 77 and has had a quad-bypass. Our efforts so far had fagged him out completely. I took off with the ATV, still optimistic that I could make a quick grab of the carcass and be back for Happy Hour. Yikes. That was a poor assessment. By this time, darkness had set in completely. I am not experienced with an ATV, and where it was easy to mow down the smaller oak saplings, some of the larger ones did not want to yield. All of a sudden one made the ATV try to dance on its hind legs, and I nearly went over backward. I got down to the level of the buck and found the blood trail. However, despite getting as close as perhaps 20 yards from the carcass and spending 20 minutes with a flashlight on foot, I could not find the bugger. After close to an hour, I tried to come out and did not have all that easy a time. I got a bit lost– well, how lost can you be in a 5-acre woodlot? I just misjudged things a bit and when I came to the barbed wire fence, I had to hunt a bit before finding the way through.

SuperCore and I went back to the cabin. We were both spent and sucking air like a pair of carp. At this point, I was still thinking that on the arrival of my two sturdy sons, we would go back down. Moose showed up. I forget sometimes that he’s still on a cane from the auto accident last year. Angus showed up much later. He was all game for going out, but by now it was closer to 2300. Retrieval would have to wait until morning.

It was still a chore getting the buck out, but not nearly as bad as the attempt in the dark. We just lashed him to the back of the ATV, and up I went. Cleaning the buck was a job I was dreading, having left it out in the elements for over 12 hours. However, it was remarkably easy and the cold weather had preserved the carcass. I’m expecting a good yield off it. After a stop at the meatpole for pictures, we all adjourned to the store in Lenoxburg for a well-earned meal.

Bob’s Model 44– How did it do?

Bob’s Model 44 did exactly what it was supposed to do. Performance at 80 yards was about what you would expect from a 30-30. The 240 grain Hornady XTP went in, expanded, took out both lungs and clipped the top of the heart and exited with a thumb-sized hole on the offside. There was plenty of blood to follow.

I had my other buddy, O.T.’s early-model Aimpoint sight on it. The Aimpoint did fine, although I have to say the field of view as was not as big as I find comfortable. The edges of the field are distorted as well, so the sight picture is a bit claustrophobic. However, at 80 yards in the gathering gloom, the red dot showed up adequately on the buck’s side. I may change it out later– I haven’t decided yet.

The rifle itself? I can see why some call the Model 44 the best close-in deer getter ever made. If I had been stalking or still hunting with it, I would have been even more impressed. The bulk of my ground pounding was done years ago with a Rem 1100 and slugs. This rifle is significantly lighter than that rig, and I can remember how heavy the slug gun was, especially at the end of the day. This rifle’s weight is negligible, even with a scope.

Hundred Acres — The new Stand

There is so much that is just right about this stand. It is hard to call it a failure. However, I’m not so sure about its continued usefulness. When we got the place in 2001, we stopped mowing a patch of pasture just behind where the stand sits. It is now 2019, and the oak saplings are now so thick that I doubt I could get the Silverado through them, let alone an ATV. This is exactly what I have to look forward to in Hundred Acres. The canopy opened up, the little saplings are starting to grow. The bigger ones are passing broomstick width and heading towards baseball bat thickness. I may keep the stand up just because it will be an ideal spot for sniping squirrels out of the canopy. As a deer stand venue for rifle season? I think this was the last best year for it.