Hi everyone, I've not been very active lately on this forum- I haven't shot much at all in the past year because of 60 hour work weeks and lack of a shooting range close by. So I went back to visit my parents and to take advantage of Ohio's new early muzzleloader season this week. I hadn't shot my muzzy's since December, so I dusted them off to sight them in. I started off with the Wolf that I bought for my dad. He would never take a shot past 100 yards, so I don't worry too much about pinpoint accuracy for him. I shot 2 shots, then made a sight adjustment and fired one more. It seemed good enough for his purposes:
I then went on to my rifle. I really wanted to take out my Knight Vision this year, now that the firing pin issues have been corrected. But I didn't have a lot of time to be working up a load from scratch, so I picked up my old trusty CVA Hunterbolt. I've never missed a deer with this rifle, so I consider it lucky. I shot 2 shots, made a sight adjustment, shot 3 more, made another scope adjustment and then 1 final shot:
So it was then time to hunt! We went down to our land on Friday to bowhunt. Both of us passed up a deer on Friday (mine was a marginal shot, and my dad's deer was too small) so we stayed at our cabin and got out early Saturday morning with the muzzys. I went out in an area of our land that has open grass fields (former strip-mined land). I sat in a nice spot with my back to a large mound of grass/bush that gave me pretty good concealment from my back and sides, but still had a nice field of view:
I had some shooting sticks in case a longer shot presented itself. I was expecting a shot opportunity in the 80 - 150 yard range, so I was very surprised when about 10 minutes after the beginning of legal shooting time I saw a deer to my right less than 50 yards away. I brought my rifle up, saw that it was a decent-sized deer, and as soon as it stopped walking, took the shot.
It ran down into that draw and didn't come out the other side. I waited a bit, enjoying the beautiful day, and then went to find it. I found some hair where it was standing when I shot, and laser verifed the range at 45 yards. There was no blood for the first 30 yards or so, but then I picked up a very nice blood trail that a child could have followed. It ended up going about 70 yards total after the hit. When I found it, to my surprise it was not a doe, but a spike with very small antlers. In the low light conditions, I did not see any antlers when I made the decision to shoot. The early muzzy season is antlerless only, but if a spike has less than 3" antlers, it is considered antlerless- this one was right about at the cutoff.
Somehow I ended up hitting it a few inches farther back than I was aiming - the shot felt good, so I have no idea why- maybe he was taking a step right as I was pulling the trigger. In any case, the bullet took out the liver and made a complete pass thru, leaving a great blood trail.
We packed the deer up right away because of the warm temperatures and headed home (my dad didn't get a shot at anything). That night I cooked up some delicious tenderloins after marinating them in some wine. Yum! Tomorrow we debone the rest of the meat. We weighed it in at 110 pounds after field dressing. Anyone know what the live weight might have been?
Anyways, it was a great hunt and lots of fun!