Knight Mountaineer 2-4
 

Long post!

Took the Knight out for Shotgun season and for Late muzzleloader. During shotgun season I fired it at a doe, unsure of the distance and had a clean miss. I'm blaming it on me not being prepared lol. I just bought flip top mittens and it is difficult shooting with the mitten on.

She came running out and stopped if I had to guess 150 yards away and I shouldered and went to put my finger on the trigger and then I realized I couldn't pull the trigger. Flipped the mitten back and I was rushing and I pulled the shot. MISS #1

A week later on a Friday evening hunt I went out and sat in the freezing drizzle. I got cold within about an hour and I had an hour and half of shooting left so I decided to walk some. I walked up a hill behind some hay bales headed to the north. At the end of the bale row I sat and started looking around and spotted a doe but didn't know how far. I pulled my range finder out but it wasn't wanting to work I judged the distance at 150 yards fired. MISS #2.

I walked down to make sure it was a clean miss and walked around the property edge and decided to head back to where I left my backpack and seat. As I was crossing a hay field I seen a buck running across the top of the cut corn field. I hurried down grabbed my things and followed the bottom of the hill until I thought I was a head of the deer. I popped up and there he was 75 yards straight in front of me and spotted me. He trotted back the way he came and I hunkered down and hustled beside him and when he stopped I popped up and shot him at 120 yards and ended up hitting his spine and clipped lungs and he died with in 30 seconds. Entrance hole wasn't real big and I didn't see an exit. we didn't butcher this deer some I'm not sure what the holes look like.

2nd deer I shot I took my 5 year old girl and 7 year old son with me to sit in a blind (1st time deer hunting) it was getting to be show time when I seen deer come out 265 yard (according to the range finder) and I let the kids watch them through the binos. Neighboring cattle and horses would scare the deer back into the draw but they would comeback out after about a minute. I asked them if they wanted to try and stalk them. They eagerly said yes.

We snuck out of the blind and followed a fence line and we came up to a pond 2 draws from the deer but we could see the deer and we startled them and the ran back into the draw so we got up and hurried around the pond and up to the next draw when they started coming back out. We crawled up to the end of the draw when they got spooked again so I had my son and daughter get up on their knees and watch them, which they got a kick out of being within 100 yards of them. That's when I noticed two does not 50-75 yards away coming towards us! My son wasn't in the best position to see them since the tall grass was in his way so we scooted over so he could see them. I asked them if they wanted me to shoot and they practically yelled yes! I told them to get read and I put the cross hairs on her shoulder and shot after the smoke cleared I seen deer running.
Between the fading light, smoke and 4 deer running I couldn't tell which deer I shot. We got up and looked for hair and blood but didn't have the light with me since we left it in the blind and I didn't think I hit her. I looked over and just in the woods I seen white but looked like a bucket but decided to check it out and it was the doe and my kids got super excited. They helped drag it and gut it (I done the gutting they held the legs) and then we took it down to my parents and hung it up.

I butchered this deer and the entrance hole was about .5" and the exit was less than that and elongated. The hole into the rib cage was pretty big. I did find the mushroomed copper with no lead in it. I was shooting 300 grain SST with supplied jacket with 100 77.7 grains weighed BH209. I'm kind of disappointed with the performance of the bullet. I'm going to be switching bullets before next season. I'll try to post pictures, and i'll be starting a new thread a little later on about bullet recommendations.

Not many people post on this forum anymore!!
But your story was 50% good 50% bad. The good was awesome and great for the kiddo's. I'll bet there still smiling and enjoying the time in the woods!! Congratulations!!

As far as the bad??? Maybe to blame is excitement maybe not??. In my opinion depending on load you could never need to worry about shooting out to 200 yards without your rangefinder. I used to do it all the time, with my load was three inches high at 100 yards. I then remember it was three inches low at 200 yards. So even 225 was no problem. Just something to try if you want to make hunting a little easier.

sounds like your kids will never forget your hunt sounds like a great day. congrats on 2 deer

Thanks guys. They still talk about that night lol. I haven't had a chance to upload any pictures yet. I need to do more shooting, I ended up putting a Nikon slughunter scope on it now so I need to get it sighted in again.

The part that had me hooked the most was the kids!!! This experience will stay with them for their lifetime! Great story and get some new bullets and get more range time. That alone will be a lot of fun.