Blackpowdersmoke

That's exactly the reason why I passed up an opportunity to take a doe this morning. When I asked my wife last week which rifle she planned on using during our early ML season she said... " I'd like to use the Scout rifle", which threw me a curve because I thought she would opt for her go to gun, her Cabela's Hawken .54 percussion rifle. That said, I got out the scoped .50 Scout rifle, (I also have a scoped Scout carbine) wiped it clean of any oil, checked my load data and then sat down for a shooting session last Friday. The rifle was spot on with the 70 grain load of FFF black, and Maxi-ball bullet over a bore button.

I got up early this morning but not with the intention of hunting as I had an appt. scheduled for vehicle inspection at 8:30 am. Shortly after 7:00, I looked out on my little food plot and there were two deer standing there feeding. Being an opportunist, I thought... HMMM...that Scout is loaded (but unprimed) and ready to go, I can take a deer now if I want. I slipped on my muck shoes and threw on a jacket, grabbed the rifle and capper and headed out the back door. I walked from the back door to the back side of my garage, eased on out to the corner and peeked out. There stood Mama and a yearling nonchalantly feeding about 50 yds. from me. I stepped back, eased the hammer back and capped the rifle. A minute or so later they stepped out into plain view now at about 40 yds. and I had my pick of which one I wanted. I leveled the crosshairs on the yearling, as I would rather leave Mama alone to breed again and hopefully make it through this season's gauntlet. Finger on the trigger and ready to fire, I hesitated long enough to think about it and then decided not to shoot. Why you might ask? Well, it just didn't feel right. I wasn't holding a rifle I would normally hunt with and it just didn't seem ethical because as far as I'm concerned it wasn't "fair chase" so to speak. I eased the hammer back down and slipped back around the corner of the garage to uncap the rifle.
I went around to the front of the house and went back in so the deer could continue feeding unmolested. When I got inside my wife asked, "why didn't you shoot"? I told her "not with this gun and not from the yard".
Maybe I'm just getting soft in my later years, when I was a kid I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. Had I been sitting in the treestand beyond the brush lot this morning holding my flintlock, I'm sure the outcome would have been quite different. We watched Mama and her yearling disappear into the brush lot about fifteen minutes later.

BPS