Well, I haven't scored yet this year. So all I can do is retell last year's story of my first deer with a flintlock. It's a little long, but something to read if you have nothing better to do.
\Friday evening, 20 Nov 09: “Turn DAMMIT, turn.” I was screaming inside my head. But the 8-pointer standing out there on my food plot just wouldn’t turn to give me a broadside shot. He was nervous as all get out too, staring at two does under the corn feeder. I knew he didn’t like being out in the open like that because the first time he trotted onto the field he dashed off without stopping. I couldn’t believe he was back.
I was three miles north of Greensburg, Louisiana, in St. Helena Parish. The folding camp chair in which I was sitting was positioned on a rise twelve feet above the plot. In front of me was a screening pile of branches - yaupon and pine that I had cut only an hour earlier. The forend of my .54 caliber Lyman Great Plains flintlock was steady on a camera tripod rest I had cobbled together just for this hunt, and the butt was on my shoulder. But that darn deer just would not turn.
The buck was facing me head-on and farther out than I would have liked. The front sight was planted at the base of his neck and even though I felt steady as a rock I was hesitant to take the shot. I really wanted him to turn an offer a nice heart/lung shot from the side.
Then, without consciously doing so, I touched her off. KA-BOOM! That distinctive black powder report echoed through the surrounding woods. Even through the cloud of smoke I could see him wheel around and head for the tree line at the rear of the food plot. The two does he was “checking out” disappeared somewhere to the right.
Man, I felt sick – he didn’t look hit - he was too far out - the angle was wrong. Then I pulled a rookie mistake that I have a hard time admitting. With only twenty minutes of daylight remaining, I left my gun and pack right there and pushed my way through the brush onto the plot to look for signs of a hit. I didn’t find any hair or blood where he was standing at the shot. I didn’t find any blood on the plot where he entered the woods. Things were NOT looking good. I entered the woods right where I thought he had, and started walking a straight line away from the plot. After slowly covering about 60 yards through the darkening woods I spotted a big pool of blood. I looked up ahead and THERE HE IS, lying on his side not 30 feet away.
The buck weighed 168 lbs. The shot turned out to be 88 yards measured with a laser range finder. The ball entered the chest cavity through the brisket cartilage, destroyed part of the right lung, exited the chest cavity between the second and third rib while clipping the third rib a little and cutting a "half moon" from the side of it. A fitting kill for the flintlock's first blooding.
(PICTURES ADDED `CAUSE RON WANTED THEM.)
Last edited by Semisane; 11-23-2010 at 07:48 AM.