As I said, my Dad was hoping to come out hunting. He WY right after work about 1415 mt, and arrived here at 0500 ct. He slept for a few hours while I washed his stuff in Scent-a-way. We were going to wait until 3 to head out to the stand, but about 1300 or so we were bored and just kind of sitting around waiting to go, so decided to walk out. Walking out we kicked up 3 does (I think, couldn't tell what they were while running). Watched them a minute and it didn't look like they were going to stop in this county and probably not the next, so walked the rest of the way to the stand.
As soon as we got up in the stand and before I had even got sat down, I looked up and there was a doe going around the outside edge of the woods at about 120 yards. I got her in the sights but wasn't happy with any of the shots presented between the trees and she walked. Looking at the time it was 1400. We both got situated and started looking around.
A little later Dad spotted a deer just stepping out of some trees. I turned around and got sighted on it and waited for it to step out. Dad says "I think it's a buck." Looked to be around 100 yards, maybe a little more. He stepped out of the trees and walked to the fence line, I pulled the trigger, and he didn't move. I watched him for a second, it was a clean miss so I hurried and started to reload. (It turns out another advantage to the stand we built is that I can crouch down in it to reload and be mostly concealed.) Dad watched the buck while I was reloading. Instead of running off, he turned and began to walk up the fenceline towards us. By the time I was done reloading, he was about 40 yards from us and slowly walking up the fence line. Due to the angle he was at, it was either too severe of a quartering angle or else there were trees in the way. He finally stepped into a small opening broadside at about 20 yards and I let the Encore go to work.
The bullet entered behind the front shoulder, destroyed the heart and lungs, then exited behind the off side shoulder. I was shooting a 300 gr. SST in a Harvester smooth black sabot on top of 65 gr. Re7. While I was cleaning him I found I must have initially hit the point of his elbow, as that was gone. It started the bullet expanding and the entry and exit wounds were both about 3"!!! While cleaning it, we literally poured the chest cavity out! He turned out to be a little fork horn. Time after the shot was 1443.
Initially I was a little upset the first part of the hunt was over so quick, but I'm glad it worked out the way it did. It was the first deer I've killed since 2009, the first time I had hunted with my Dad since 2007, and the last deer we saw while hunting.
We spent Friday in the stand, then Saturday morning at a friends house while he showed me how to process my own deer, then Saturday afternoon Dad had to leave. It was a great weekend and made me realize how much I miss hunting with my Dad. I was going to call it a season and be done, but I think now that one morning this week I probably should take my 5 year old son out for his first hunt and hopefully someday hunting together can mean as much to him.
I have a couple pictures of the buck and I'll get those up a little later. They're still on my wife's camera and I don't dare touch that thing. I'm smarter than that.