This is a story about my first (and so far only) muzzleloader buck.

In muzzleloader season of ' 99, my father and I headed north (I was living downstate at the time) to do some hunting. He had bought himself a nice little T/C white mountain carbine, but I had no ML to hunt with, so we stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up a CVA staghorn for $90. It was the cheapest model they had, and I was low on cash.

The next morning we awoke to a blanket of fresh snow. Normally I wouldn' t go hunting with a gun until I had practiced with it, but circumstances didn' t allow for that so I had to make do. I loaded it up with 90 grains of pyrodex and a buffalo bullet, paced off to about thirty yards and fired at a knot on a stump. I was happy to see the bullet hit it' s mark perfectly! I reloaded and put my hunting clothes on, then headed into the woods.

My father decided to head up on top of a ridge, and I had a spot in mind where I had seen good buck sign earlier in the year. It was a natural funnel connecting the thick cedar swamp where the deer like to bed, to a saddle on top of the ridge that also acted as a funnel.

I had a good feeling about that day - I seemed to sense I would be in for some excitement. When I reached my spot and was getting situated, a deer started blowing at me. It was very close, and I was caught off guard. I couldn' t see it, but something told me it was a buck. I grabbed my call and started blowing a few doe bleats, hoping the deer wasn' t too spooked yet. I immediately heard footsteps heading in my direction, so I grabbed my gun and got ready. The deer came trotting right through the funnel, and I saw that he was a nice buck! I stopped him with a pathetic sounding grunt from my mouth, then I lined up the open sights behind his shoulder and touched it off. Through the cloud of smoke I saw the buck drop, but he was struggling to get back up. I started frantically reloading my gun - powder, bullet, ramrod. In my excitement I failed to push the rod in to the point where I had marked it off. I walked up to within 10 yards of the buck, aimed behind the ear, then pulled the trigger. POOF! The bullet dropped out of the end of the barrel! I had only one pre-measure load left, so I decided I had to make it count. This time I was careful and took my time loading the gun. This time the gun fired and the deer was dead instantly. As I suspected, my first shot had been too high and hit him in the spine. My father was not far away, and by the time I had fired the third time he had been just out of sight. He came over and asked if I had shot. My wide grin gave it away " Yeah, got a nice 8 pointer!"

The drag out was easy, since it was all downhill and the snow made the deer slide nicely. I had him out to the road within 15 minutes, just in time to see my father pull up with the truck. At the tagging station we threw him on the scale - 185 pounds dressed, not bad for so late in the season. Before the rut he undoubtedly would have been well over 200 pounds.

This is the only picture i still have of that buck......it' s not the greatest but I thought I' d share it with you guys anyway. This was back when I had long hair hehe........don' t laugh