Deer hunt with Bonus!
Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 8:19 am
On Thursday evening I sat in a box blind near a cow pasture with a feeder in it. It is late season doe and spike time in South Texas. One lone doe came in and my 81 Woodsmaster in 300 Savage sent a 165 grain Speer BTSP into her shoulder at 100 yards. The deer ran towards the 4 - strand barbwire fence so I got the front bead back on her and fired again. The barbed wire represents the neighbors property so I left the deer until morning so I could let the neighbor know I was going to look for it. As long as I was going out there in the morning I figured I'd sit in the stand again since I had one tag left for a doe/spike (figuring one was for the deer yet-to-be found). As the sun came up I did not see any deer, even after the feeder went off. As I was about to get out and find the doe from the previous evening I noticed movement. Imagine my surprise when I saw and axis buck sneeking across the pasture! There's no season on exotic game and even though this one was not a big shooter that you'd take on a high fence ranch I figured any free-range axis buck was just fine! Again the 300 Savage rifle spoke and the deer ran a short way and piled up. I took photos of myself, using the timer feature on my camera. Then I looked for and found the whitetail doe from the night before. I was so caught up in the axis that I forgot to photograph the whitetail doe and I remembered when I had it already skinned. That night I took a young man that is my friends's son to the pasture and put him in a stand while I went into the box stand again. Nothing came out on my side but the teenager saw a hog and a bobcat, both out of range. As I left the property and turned onto the road I knew why I didn't see any deer on my side. My headlights lit up at least 75 deer across the street on the neighbors land where he had a commercial sprinkler system running. Oh well, this year ended with one tag unfilled but the axis deer served the purpose of meeting the goal of 6 deer that were donated to the Alsace Mission Food Bank. Here's the axis buck with the Model 81 (1947 vintage) that I used.
