Deer Tales: Humor in Hunting

His Nephew's Gun
Every hunter knows other hunters, many time our own friends and family, who provide us with some unique "Deer Tales" with their hunting adventures. You know which ones I am talking about. The ones who always kill the biggest buck, see the most deer, or those whose stories are almost too hard to believe, yet you know they are true. How do you know that they are true? You know because you hunt with them and sometimes have been a witness to these interesting "Deer Tales."

Have you heard the one about the hunter who kept falling out of trees? After breaking his back on three separate occasions while deer hunting, his wife grounded him from hunting, literally.

Having been high school sweethearts and married for many years, Sarah had seen her share of Mark's hunting mishaps. The fall that got him grounded for life was in a remote area on top of part of North Carolina's section of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Mark had originally planned to go hunting alone, until Sarah found out. She finally agreed to him hunting in his tree stand on the mountain when his cousin, Gary, agreed to go hunting with him.

Their stands were situated a slow thirty minute walk each, in opposite direction, to stands on hilltops across from one another, overlooking a steep grass covered mountainside to a valley below.

They parted before daybreak from the truck parked at a barn in the meadow below. Mark's stand was an old wooden platform about twenty feet off the ground. As his luck would have it, Mark's stand broke through as he was getting settled in, sending him crashing to the ground and breaking his lower back. He knew that he would have to get Gary's attention, but he had to wait some thirty minutes or more until the sun came up.

When it was light, Mark fired his rifle into a bank about fifty yards away. He then placed his orange toboggan on the end of his gun barrel and waved it back and forth as best he could. Gary could see the orange toboggan and rifle barrel through his binoculars and knew that Mark had to be lying on the ground below.

This was Mark's last hunt off the ground. How Gary got Mark off that mountain in a 4-wheel drive pickup up a hill no other 4X4 had ever gone before is another story in itself. Now, on to what happened with his nephew's gun.

Once Mark recovered from his broken back and had healed up, it came another hunting season. He had no problems setting up ground blinds at various locations, usually at one end of a chicken house. Mark, Gary, and John (Mark's brother) all farmed and kept broiler houses, as well as did many other farmers in the area. Mark had already killed his two buck limit at his and his brother's chicken houses. A nice 8-point and a heavy racked 10-point.

John's youngest son, Logan, was just starting to hunt with his dad's old .243 Remington. Logan was a good shot, yet being only 10 years old, was only allowed to hunt with an adult from ground blinds.

Since Mark was out of buck tags, John asked him to take Logan to his chicken house blind behind John's house. This was the same place that Mark had killed the 8-point buck. Mark could doe hunt while Logan hunted for a nice young 4-point buck that John had seen on several occasions in the small grass field behind his chicken house.

After lunch, Mark and Logan spent the afternoon rifle hunting behind the chicken house. Logan carried his dad's ols .243, while Mark carried a fairly new rifle that he had bought the previous season. I can't remember what caliber Mark's gun was now. All I do remember is that he had it zeroed in perfectly and had used it to kill the two bucks he had taked earlier in the season. One other thing I remember about Mark's rifle is that it had a 3-position safety.

Mark and Logan began seeing deer right away, including four young does and a nice cowhorn spike. Mark asked Logan if he wanted to take the young buck, but Logan declined. He was waiting for the 4-point that his Dad had seen so many times. Mark figured that he could hold out until last good shooting light and kill a doe if they had no other luck.

The spike and young does hung around for quite a while, making themselves at home in Mark's bait pile, until getting their fill and wandering off. It started to get a bit dim and hard to see, yet still legal shooting light. At least that was Mark's version, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, they had decided if the previous herd came back, Mark would shoot a doe.

No sooner than they decided this, out stepped two of the does. They milled around for a minute or two, nibbling on corn as doe number three came out into the small grass field. All three does kept looking behind them, as if watching the last doe or spike making their way to the clearing. Mark was getting the biggest doe in his sights, since he knew that if any other deer came out, it would be one of the other two deer he had seen earlier that afternoon.

Just as he was about to slide his safety off, out stepped the forth deer. And it was not any of the deer they had seen earlier. It was the biggest racked buck they had ever seen on the hoof. Mark had quite a collection of nice bucks on his wall, yet he knew this one was far better.

Mark's light was just starting to fade in his scope, and he could just make out the crosshairs placed perfectly on the buck's front shoulder. He eased off the safety and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He racked the gun and repeated the steps. Still nothing. He racked another round into his chamber with the same results. He didn't even know that this newest rifle to his collection had a 3-position safety!

Still not understanding what was wrong with his rifle, nor why the monstrous buck continued to keep the same broadside pose throughout the commotion. The buck was standing there 125 yards away. Mark reached for Logan's rifle and brought it to his shoulder. He placed the crosshairs once again on the buck's front shoulder, eased off the safety, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a sound of a solid hit and a perfect mule kick from the deer, followed by them watching the buck take two leaps into the woodline. Mark mentally marked the spot that he last saw the buck. Now all he had to do was get out there and find his blood trail.

Mark and Logan lost no time in getting to where the buck was standing when Mark fired his shot. As they approached they could see the white belly of a deer lying on the ground. But that was impossible, they had both seen the buck run off.

When they approached, there lay Mark's deer, a doe. In the week that followed Mark could still not believe what had happened. He did learn that his gun had a 3-position safety that caused him to mess up his own hunting. John told him that the four does were now down to three, so they figured the doe was the mule kick Mark had witnessed. With it being so late when he shot, the brothers guessed that the doe walked right beside the buck and blended in with his silhouette.

Mark saw the buck one last time about a week and a half later when his good friend and neighbor, who lived a quarter of a mile from where Mark had been hunting, shot and killed a massive 11-point buck.

Maybe Mark thought that with all of his bad luck the deer was "sent" to him. Myself, I think karma was trying to tell him that he didn't have any buck tags, and that he got what he deserved for taking away his nephew's gun.