This story reminds me of the absolute fact that in every hunting camp across this great land the same stories are told over and over and over. Pieces are maybe added, or embellished, or forgotton, or exaggerated but the stories go on and on.

Only the second year I was muzzleloading, I showed up to join a large group of guys for a day of late-season deer driving. Looking back I don't know why we did that so often, we had terrible luck.

Anyways, we all piled in three cars and drove to a parking spot about 1/2 mile from the woods we wanted to drive. All the way there, the 3 guys in my car ribbed me for showing up with a ML (they all had shotguns). I took a ton of flack for showing up with a "one-shooter", though the exact insults escape my memory now. I just shrugged it off and said "my one hit is better than your 5 misses".

As we got out, my gun was in the back of the trunk so I was the last to get to it. Guys were ramming in slugs when someone called out "Hey! Look at that stupid deer!". Sure enough, there was a doe tearing toward us at full speed, obviously spooked out by someone else. She was on course to cross about 100 yards in front of us.

Four guys opened up with their shotguns offhand once she was within 200 yards as I slipped my Traditions Deerhunter from its case and calmly reached for a speedloader to cap it. I looked up and gauged the range she'd cross as 110 yards, and looked down to cap the gun. By now at least a dozen slugs had been launched at her with no hits. I took a knee, pulled back the hammer, and found the deer in my sights as the last of the four guys emptied his shotgun with the deer still running. By now she'd cut away and was crossing at about 140 yards. There was a moment of silence, then the crack of my ML and smoke. Half a second later the deer tumbled over on her left side and was still.

I calmly looked up at the nearly dozen guys staring silently at me, blew the smoke from my barrel and said "five shots don't help if you can't shoot worth a damn".

I got a hell of a lot of respect after that -- I'm still running on the mileage from that one, more than fifteen years later.

I have to say I would not take that shot today, but back then I got a ton more practice with shots like that and had no problem taking running deer. I would not trust myself to do it today.

One more, though some of you may remember this one as it was one of the first posts I made on this forum.

Two seasons ago, I was hunting a creek bank about 400 yards from another ditchline. I was not very familiar with the property so expected the deer to run the creek.

It turned out they liked that other ditch better. I spotted some does bedded down on it, and at one point a nice buck stuck his head up, then went back down in the ditch. It was mid-morning, I was having no luck so it was either go after that buck or go home empty-handed.

I had my long range Omega and X7 both with me. I would have to crawl 1/4 mile on my belly through corn stubble to get to him, so I wanted the X7 with peep sights to shoot him on the run when I jumped him up close. However, if he got up while I was halfway across and presented a shot it would be useless. So I left it behind and took the thumbhole.

A couple does ran through as I crossed, but I let them go. It took me over an hour to work myself across that field and about 40 yards up the ditch from where I'd seen the buck. I realized it was just as likely that buck was gone as still there, I would not have seen him go.

As luck would have it, my sling broke and I turned left to catch the rifle as it fell from my back. I saw 3 does running up the ditch at me, and decided to shoot one as the buck was likely gone and I needed the meat. However they crossed the ditch, so I did to. By the time I got up on a small rise they were grazing on corn stubble. The biggest doe, the matriarch, was lying down. I waited patiently for awhile until she got back up, at 209 yards. The scope was already dialed up, so I shot for the shoulder and she dropped. The other two deer ran in a circle but, as their leader was obviously not disturbed and lying back down, they calmed down and went back to grazing.

I rolled on my back and reloaded on the ground. When I rolled back to shooting position, I ranged the second doe at 180 yards. I backed off the elevation on the scope and fired, and down she went. I rolled on my back and reloaded again, and the third one was still there. I judged her to be a yearling, too small to shoot, and let her go.

I stood up for the first time in an hour and a half, and decided to sneak 30 yards down the ditch just to find where the buck had been hiding. Fortunately, I dialed the magnification on my scope back to minimum. As I approached where the buck had been, he exploded from an impossibly tiny piece of grass and my feed. He and about 6-8 does blew across the ditch and into the open field as I frantically shouldered my rifle and looked for him in my scope. I found brown, managed to identify the front shoulder even at 3X and 20 yards, and fired. He rolled, and I started to reflexively reload. He made a move to get back up however, so I jumped across and used my Glock for good measure (wasn't really needed as it turned out). he was a nice 8-pt.

Very happy with the day, I went and took 20 min to locate and mark the does on my GPS. Then I returned to the buck. As I crossed the ditch, I noticed 2 does back across by the creek where I'd started my crawl. I dropped to my belly and ranged the largest one at 338 yards. There was virtually no wind, so I dialed my scope up to the appropriate elevation and took aim (for those unfamiliar, I regularly practice out to 400 yards with this ML). I carefully squeezed off the shot and the rifle barked. I had time to recover from the recoil and see the impact through my scope, she went right down.

The property owner, already on his way over from the other side of the property to help with the other deer, said he heard the impact first and the shot a full second later.

The best part of the whole story is there way a guy about 300-400 yards away in a treestand who watched the whole thing, from the crawl until the last deer. He knew I was hunting on a conservation officer's land so he could not figure out what I was shooting that far with (rifles illegal). He went around and waited by my truck for an hour to find out.

He must have spread the story like wildfire, within a month the property owner told me he'd heard the story come back around but the range had stretched to 800 yards!

Back about 1984 my hunting buddy Ray and I were drawn for a primitive weapons hunt at Chickasawhatchee WMA in south Georgia. On the morning before our departure I asked my wife if there was anything that she wanted me to do before leaving. She asked me to clean out the barn. She has been asking me to do this for about a year. I told her that I would and she left for work.

I had all day to do this chore and took my time. Ray was to pick me the next morning and we were going to ride down in his truck. I began pulling junk out of the barn and loading it into the back of my pickup to haul to the county dump. There was an old set of bed springs, a lawnmower frame with no engine and three wheels and other assorted junk. When finished, my truck was nearly full. I finished at about 4:55 that afternoon and it was too late to get it to the dump because it closed at 5:00

The next morning Ray pulled into the driveway and I was starting to put my hunting gear into his truck when I noticed something dripping from under his engine. Upon looking we noticed that his water pump was leaking.

I told Ray that we could just take my truck although it was full of junk and thats what we did. We made the trip in a little over two hours. It was on a thursday and we had a little over a half day to scout for the Friday and Saturday hunt. We were allowed to check in early so we could go directly to the woods that morning.

We found an area with deer sign and put up our portable climbing stands and returned the next morning before daylight. We hunted all day without any luck. We returned the next day and decided to hunt untill 2pm and start back home.

Saturday I came off my stand, packed it up and began walking back to my truck and Ray was there waiting on me. There was another pickup truck parked behindmine. Just before I reached the truck we heard a shot close by from the opposite side of the road from where we had hunted. We waited a few minutes and a lone hunter emerged. He told me that he had had surgery the week before and asked it we would help him with his deer. We agreed . I field dressed his deer and we drug it out of the swamp and loaded it into the back of his truck and he left. we put our equipment in back of my truck and left a short time later.

When we went to check out the barrel bellyed game warden asked if we had any luck. I told him no and he replied that I had traces of blood on my hands. I explained what had happened and he asked who it was and I explained that we didn't ask his name.

The Game warden walked up to my truck and announced that he wanted to search my it. I said,"Aw, you don't want to do that." He stated ,"Oh Yeah, we're gonna search that truck!"

He and another game warden started pulling junk out of the truck and it was about 80 degrees and humid. They worked about 30 minutes and were sweating so bad that neither had a dry thread on them . When finished he told the other warden, "Well,the're clean." All of the junk was piled up in a high pile behind my truck. I asked him, "What about all of this stuff" pointing to the junk pile. He sneered and said " you can load it yourself if you want it. I told him that I did not want it and we got in the truck and started driving off. As we were driving through the gate he was screaming, " HEY, HEY,YOU COME BACK HERE!"

We didn't get a half mile down 62 hwy before he had us pulled over. Ended up getting a sheriffs deputy there . I explained my side of what had happened and he asked the G.W. if thats what had taken place. The G.W said "Well Yeah" they walked back to the deputies car and talked a few minutes. The deputy walked beck to where we were standing and told us we were free to go.

We laughed all the way home and to this day have not been back to Chickasawhatchee WMA

Me and a couple buddies decided to try a bunch of different cover scents and buck attractants one year and pool our learnings on whether they were any good or not. One guy was doing a few of the animal cover scents. One day he took a seat 20ft up in a treedstand with his bow, doused in coon pee. Just before light, he hears scrabbling on the tree below him. Up come 2 coons, intent on making him their woman. He kicks at them, still they try to climb in. Finally, he ends up stabbing at them with an arrow until he gets a good piece of one and it howls. Then they finally left. I told him good thing he hadn't picked cougar pee.

OLdNew
That not a story but a true story but you have to know the people involved. Both are always right.

This was in 1980, Early November and on private property. It may have been Turkey season anyhow. Cant really remember that far back. I have read other stories in this forum about taking game out of season and "I" am not the one that shot the Turkey. I believe this thread was about unusual hunting experiences. Dont mean to ruffle your feathers but, lighten up. Please dontpee all over my parade. But, if you like, you can call the NY State Department of F&G and let them know that a Turkey MAY have been taken out of season in 1980 and they can launch a FULL investigation. I dont poach, never have.

Quote:

I dont poach, never have.

Not even eggs, or fish???

This story is not muzzleloading, but if you'd been there you'd understand why its locked in my memory banks. The year was 1978 and I had booked a moose hunting trip with a group of friends in Canada. As my luck would have it, I broke my leg a few months before it was time to leave. So I was on crutches. I was told that thegoing was brutal and I might want to cancel, but being stubborn, hard headed, and having paid my way, I was going.

After a lot of driving, and boats, and hiking, we finally made it to the base camp. I had a 30-06 slung over my shoulder, and on crutches, butwould hobble around, climb in boats, etc. But the story started on the morning of the third day. I woke up long before everyone else. It was freezing cold outside, but when mother nature calls, you better pay heed.

So I pulled on some clothing, and slipped out of the tent on crutches. I was kind of desperate to find a spot to deposit my morning treasure, and being on crutches, itmade going through the brush kind of hard. So I walked a game trail until I came to a tree that had fallen across the trail. I looked at it, and smiled. A perfect spot. Natures toilet in my book. So I dropped clothes and made a morning deposit in mother natures great outdoors by hanging out on the other side of the log.

After the deed, I happened to examine my mess and felt guilty putting something like that in the woods. So I decided to camouflage my mess. I gathered some leaves and carefully hid my deposit so mother nature would not be insulted. After I was done with the leaves, it was almost as perfect in appearance as when I first found this wonderful spot.

I then crutched it back to camp, stoked up the campfire, got the coffee on, and sat down and waited for all to wake up. Not long after, the old guide came out of the tent. I asked if he wanted coffee. He said not yet. He headed down the same trail I had walked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. The other three came out of the tent and were getting their first cup of coffee when we heard the old guide screaming and swearing. What ever could be wrong...

Minutes later he came back to camp with my toilet paper stuck to his waffle stomper sole hiking boots. And he was mad. He proceeded to tell everyone that some dirty [:@] son of a */-*/** took a dump on the other side of a log in the trail. The toilet paper on his shoe told us how he found the treasure of the wild. He then screamed ... and then he camouflaged it, covering it with leaves too. He then wanted to know which sick blank... blank... would do such a thing on a game trail?

As all the guys fell to the ground holding their stomach laughing, he wanted us to know that this was serious. The more he complained, the more we all laughed. I of course owned up to the deed, which got everyone laughing more. I even apologized. But that guide never forgave me for my deed I believe.

That's the way some people are. If someone else had steped in the poop pie, the guide would have thought it was funny.