Closing Weekend — Shaman Nails a Doe – Genesis9:2-4 Ministries

Angus and I were just pulling onto our street back home as Rifle Season officially ended on Sunday. We had a cooler full of frozen venison. The truck was packed with all the rifles and gear. It had been a crazy season for all of us, but that was that. It was time to move on.

Our last weekend at camp started off with major let downs. I talked to SuperCore on Thursday and found out he was nursing a very bad cold and was going to stay home. He also said he’d taken his Wetherby Vanguard out to the range earlier in the week and discovered his scope was over a foot off. That explained how he was able to miss two doe during Opening Week. The scope is completely hosed. He is sending it back to Nikko for a rebuild. I checked in with Moose. His mother broke her knee and he was stuck at home taking care of her.

I have not had reason to write about it, but I had a problem with my right heel back in July. It gave me enough pain that I missed 3 days of work and wound up at a local Orthopedic emergency clinic. It was diagnosed as an inflammation of my Achilles tendon and I was given pain killers and one of those boots that immobilize the ankle. I lived in the boot for a few days and the problem abated. I had not had trouble with it since– until this Thursday.

I tried to take off from work Friday evening, but by the time I’d gotten a mile down the road to deer camp, my right heel was telling me I wasn’t going to make it. I spent Friday night and most of Saturday at home in the boot. In the late afternoon, the pain abated and Angus and I took off for camp. It was not like we missed all that much. It had been raining steadily all day.

We made it down just in time for Angus to get in about 15 minutes of hunting. He’d walked about 300 yards from the cabin when he happened upon three doe just above Fountain Square. He shot at one. She just looked at him disapprovingly and ran off. We’re still scratching our heads over that one. I did a quick bore sight on his rig, and it was still right where he’d set it before season. He was out Saturday morning and saw the same three deer, and the doe appeared completely healthy and unharmed. I told him that probably meant the root cause was somewhere in the nut actuating the trigger assembly.

The Shaman Nails a Doe

On Sunday, my right heel was sufficiently calmed that I decided to go out and make one last try at it. I’ve got a pair of hunting boots that do a fair job of immobilizing my ankle. I got the foot stuffed in and the laces tied up snuggly and didn’t have any pain. The bad weather had blown out overnight, leaving us with a dusting of snow. Angus went to the stand at Blackberry. I walked out to Midway.

At 0845, a pair of doe came out of Left Leg Creek and sauntered through The Garden of Stone. We have shot 19 deer out of that piece of pasture in the last decade–no bigger than a tennis court. I got my rifle up and grunted. The trailing doe kept walking. The lead doe stopped. The Mauser From Hell spoke and I ran a 175 grain Speer round nose through both lungs and took off the top of the heart. She ran for a bit. I found her 50 yards away laying in the middle of our campground, near the picnic table. The other doe ran back into Left Leg Creek, but emerged a short time later and went looking for her buddy on the other side of the pasture. She was hiding in the cedars when I found her compatriot.

Angus was still out hunting at Blackberry, and he had yet to fill a tag, so I left him alone and went back to the cabin to retrieve the truck. The walk back got my right foot complaining again. I spent the rest of the day trying to baby it, but it was downright angry by the end of the trip.

The doe weighed 140 pounds live weight. I nearly had her ready for transport to the processor when Angus showed up. He had seen deer, including the three doe I mentioned earlier. However, there had been no chance for a clean shot. He was done. For the first season as an adult, he was going to be eating tag soup.

We drove to Lenoxburg to drop off the doe, and then went back to clean up camp. In two hours we got all the blinds put away, all the gear packed up and the water drained back into the cistern. I’ll have a minimal amount of work left when I go down next weekend and button up camp for the winter. Angus did a really good job helping out. By this time, my right leg was really singing.

We pulled out at 1500 EST, stopped in Lenoxburg to pick up the buck on the way out, and then fought our way through Bengals traffic when we hit town. We made it home just before 1800.

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