Well, I went back to Ohio to spend a couple days with my family this past week. By some huge coincidence, it happened to coincide with the Ohio muzzleloader season. So I had only 1 day to hunt (that is 1 day to hunt this whole year). As luck would have it, it was going to be 65 degrees and very windy- not the greatest hunting weather.

Anyways, Saturday morning found me 20 feet up in a tree stand sweating in my jacket. I saw nothing except 2 coyotes that I didn't have a shot at. About 10:30am, I was about to get down from the stand when I saw a big doe booking it towards me.(Turns out, my hunting buddy had walked through a bedding area and spooked it right towards me)

I readied my gun and saw that it wasn't going to come all that close to me. When it was about 90 yards away running, I yelled once, twice then 3 times to try and get it to stop. Finally, it stopped, right between 2 trees so I had a clear shot. At the shot, it spun and took off down the hill. I felt pretty good about the shot, so I got down from the stand and reloaded, walked over to where it was. I didn't see any blood, but I saw where it had headed. After about 30 yards there was some blood, and then a really good blood trail for about another 40 yards, and yup, there it was. Except the "she" was a "he" that had shed his antlers prematurely.



It turns out that it hadn't completely stopped running when I shot- so instead of hitting it in the shoulder where I was aiming, I hit about 10 inches back right through the liver. The deer only ran about 70 yards total though, after the shot, and left a good blood trail. What was more interesting, was that the deer had been shot earlier, in the neck- probably a few weeks ago.



It was just a flesh wound- the bullet (or arrow) sliced out part of the skin & hide, but didn't penetrate through much, if any muscle. Kinda nasty- some pus in it- probably part of the healing process. The stress of this might have caused the buck to drop its antlers earlier than usual. Then, time for the fun drag through the swamp to the truck[:@]



Overall, I was very happy and felt blessed & lucky to get a deer in 3.5 HOURS of total hunting time this year. So sometimes it is better to be lucky than good

Technical details of the hunt/shot:
.45 cal CVA inline
95 grains T7 FFFG
200 grain .40 cal XTP w/Harvestor sabot
Range: about 90 yards

Bullet missed both the paunch and from what I could tell, the lungs (although it might have clipped part of the back of 1 lung). The X-Ring was the liver, which looked like it had been put through a blender. The bullet completely passed through, exited the ribcage, but did not exit the deer. I found it lodged under the far-side skin.





The XTP performed superb (as usual, per my experience) - the problem this time was the shooter, or the fact the deer was still moving forward.

So I got a late Christmas present! A late Merry Christmas to you all too!