Buckeye Mike

My thirteen year old got a nice 8 point during youth season with a ML and his older brother got a doe during the Ohio ML season. The doe was taken with our Omega 50cal using a 250 grain Shockwave and 100 grains of Back Mag 3.

My son shot a doe at 7:30 am at about 75 yards and knocked her off her feet. She was with a large group of deer (probably 10 or so) and dropped on the spot. She lifter her head and kicked a few times and then just stopped moving. I thought she was dead for sure and started to slowly reload because several otherdeermoved intothe area and I wanted to take a second. While I was reloading he had the glasses on the doe and said she was not moving. Then, after about 10 minutes sheet got up and then fell back over. I handed the gun back to him and told him to shoot if she got up again. She did and I heard the dreaded "click" but no boom. I FORGOT TO PUT IN A CAP! By the time I got a cap in she moved off with two other deer and eventually left the property. We found lots of blood where she went down and a little more in the direction she went but it seemed to trail off and there was no recovery. The only thing that I can think is that he hit her above the lungs and below the spine and while it shocked her and probably paralized her for a while it was not a lethal shot.

He was not to happy and but I told him that we should sit back down and see what else happened. About 30 minutes later we heard a shot nearby and I told him to get the gun up because that was likely to get them moving again. Sure enough another doe came tearing across the field right at us and did not stop even when I called and waived my arms. She went into the woods about 10 yards to our left at a dead run. A second doe followed and stopped about 50 yards out. He took the shot and immediately said he missed. I noticed that she didn't seem to move too fast in leaving and I told him to give her some time and then we would go look. We waited 1/2 hour and found her about 75 yards down the hill. He had hit her a little far back. The reason he thought he missed is that the gun went off before he was ready. He had his sites ont he deer but did not take off his glove and when he was putting his finger in the trigger guard (the Omega has a pretty small opening) it went off. In any event, he felt a lot better after we found the second deer.

We both felt bad about the one that got away and I don't know if she died or not. I do know that the farmer will not be upset because he has a big deer problem (there were 3 bucks and 3 does taken out of this field this year and we saw 17 more in the field on the day my son shot the doe).

cayugad

Tell your son congratulations on his deer. As for the one that got away, well that happens. We all have probably had one that we shot and did not recover or was beat to it. There is always next year.