My wife is taking a few days off next week for the early ML (antlerless only) season which starts this Saturday. She told me Sunday afternoon that she wanted to shoot her .54 Perc. Hawken a few times prior to the season but we both had irons in the fire so we waited until I came home from work today. I got home a little after six and hustled around to gather up the necessary accoutrements and put up a target. After wiping out the bore with a few alcohol patches I walked out onto the back deck to snap a couple caps off prior to loading. There was a big doe feeding on the back yard about 50 yds. from the deck and I figured "oh well" I don't have time to wait her out so I snapped off a cap. She raised her head and looked but didn't seem too concerned. I placed a second cap on while she watched and held it over the deck rail so I could see if the muzzle blast moved the grass when I squeezed the trigger to make sure all was clear and ready to load. She then turned and slowly trotted off the yard into the neighbor's cornfield. I wiped the bore out, loaded the gun and my wife proceeded to settle down onto the sandbags for a 40 yd. shot at the target. Just as she got settled in for a shot, out comes 4 more deer, Mama with two young ones and another about 1-1/2 yr. old (probably Mama's from last year still tagging along). We gave them about 5 minutes to feed and wander around on the yard and then finally I shooed them off because the younger two kept wanting to wander back behind our line of fire. With patched .530 RB's and 70 gr. of Pyro RS, my wife placed two shots about 1" apart at 1:00 & 2:00 just outside the bullseye so we called it good enough. Makes you wonder how some deer manage to live as long as they do.

BPS