Many moons ago in a Central Ontario hunt camp, all of the old guys decided to stay in camp in the late afternoon. Me being the young pup loaded up my 30-30 with 3, yes three shells. My motto then was, 1 shot 1 deer, 2 shots maybe a deer and 3 shots no deer. This theory has since been revised. lol

Well anyways, off I go by my lonesome. Back to place we called the old farm. It was distinguishable by a pile of rocks, nothing more, just a pile of rocks. Well I git to sitting and here comes this buck with a really nice rack. I eyeballed that rack as I let three shots fly. That danged deer kept on runnin and I was empty!!! I went to where I was shooting and saw no hair, no blood, nothin but tracks. I went back to camp for more bullets[:@]and some help in tracking as I was pretty green in that department. Well the fella's come out and I show them where I was and where the deer was when I shot. They found 3 very nicely trimmed branches about five feet up (about the height of the top end of antlers) and a set of 4 hoof tracks in a space of a teacup. So it was deduced that I shot high and slightly in front of the buck. Got some ribbing that night.

Lessons learned..... Don't look at horns while shootin and if it will take 7 shells, load 'em up.

The second deer I see a couple of day's later. It was a yearling doe. Same rifle (with a lot more bullets) at about 70 yds broadside. I shoot and the deer does an end for end and buggers off. I'm thinking nothing good is going to come of this. I try to track and find nothing. The dogger comes through and I tell him and we both look around and still nothing. Well I'm sure I hit that deer and I start looking some more and lo and behold I find her!!!!! Wooooo hoooo my first deer. Now I've never dressed a deer before so I fire off a couple of shot's in hope that the dogger will come back and help me out. No luck there. So I did the best I could gutting andwalked out and got some help to drag her out.

I can remember every deer I've shot. We don't get to shoot a deer a day here or 10 a year. We see 1 while hunting you best have the hammer back and ready to rock and roll cause you may not see another. Make sure it's legal and get down to buisiness.

I still get a quick breath and a fast heartbeat, but I save the shakes for after. Mostly