Two for opening day.
by Max August
As opening morning drew near, time slowed down. Anticipation of the legal shooting hour was once again high and I could not wait till then. I carefully checked my rifle and made sure all was ready for the opening day festivities. As the sun rose and my eyes became accustomed to the dim light, my senses became more acute. I noticed a quiet stillness in the air. Unlike some of the other years, there was little wind and a soft white covered the fields from a light snowfall.
I carefully watched the fields for any movement as the first half of an hour of shooting passed uneventfully. Suddenly from my left I caught sight of movement in the tall grass. It was a doe moving slowly 50 yards in front of my blind. I carefully put the gun on its rest and found the deer in my scope. I panned the field behind her to see a deer slowly following with its head down. As I watched this deer through my scope, it raised its head to display a nice basket shaped rack. I counted quickly the points to see what I was dealing with and there were clearly 8 points showing. I took the safety off very slowly and still not having been observed by either deer I decided to wait until the deer entered the area of the field that I had mowed down earlier in the year to provide me with an unobstructed shot. As the deer entered that part of the field, I squeezed the trigger. Time really slowed down this year. I felt and heard the gun go off the bullet hit with a thud and I did not blink as the bullet impacted just behind the front shoulder. The deer hunched down at the force of the hit and trotted 40 or 50 yards began to stumble then fell and did not get up. My conditional tag was filled.
I slowly stepped back away from my rifle and was satisfied with a great rush of adrenalin. I watched the doe that the buck had been following bound through the swamp and fade away in the tall grasses. I could see my buck lying about 80 yards from my blind and was in no hurry to go and get him having another buck license and two doe permits in my pocket. As I sipped from my coffee cup there was movement about two hundred yards out in front of the blind. The doe had decided to return to where she had come from and was now running hard. I carefully scoped her and panned once again behind her there were more deer slowly following her. They were not in a big hurry but were moving steadily across the field. Five in all, a large doe and four smaller ones, I scoped each one and decided for some reason not to shoot. I once again backed away from the window and began to drink my coffee. Just after the does exited the field, another deer appeared. I quickly put down my cup and focused in on the deer with my scope. I was shocked there stood another buck. His rack was very mangled and had obviously been a fighter and was very deformed. The shot I estimated at 300 yards and I held high just behind the shoulder and the bullet found its mark. The deer lunged forward and immediately went down rolling across the field finally coming to rest. Now I was very excited. In the span of five minutes and just a half of an hour into the season, I had filled both my buck tags.
As the day progressed my dad came out to the blind with the tractor having heard me shoot twice he figured one had hit. We cleaned them, loaded them up, and took them back to the house to hang. I left the next morning for home to get them processed. I stopped at the D.N.R. check station and had them checked. The test reports came two weeks later and both were fine. The freezer is full and I had one of the most memorable but short seasons ever.
