We lost our first deer of the season!

[Tarpon4me]

Well, not a good way to start off the hunting season. I got a phone call from my father in law the day before yesterday telling me to rush over to help, that he had just shot a deer. My oldest son and I rushed out the door and made the 10 minute drive over to his house. As soon as we arrived, Jim and I loaded up on the 4 wheeler and we took off behind my very excited son to where the deer had been shot. On the way up the trail, my son yelled "there's a deer right here on the edge of the woods!" and about that time the deer darted off into the thick brush never to be seen again. That's an important piece of info for later on in the story, so note to self. We arrived at the deer stand and there was no deer. Jim didn't understand, he shot the deer the first time in the head and he droped, then, shot him a second time with his 20 gauge shotgon and it dropped the final time. We found the puddle of blood where he had fallen and I tracked that deer for 30 minutes and the blood just stopped. I couldn't believe it. It was getting late and the light was just about gone. After a few more minutes of trying to pick up a new blood trail, we gave up. On the way back to the house, we stopped where My son had seen the deer earlier on the way to the stand. I got out and sure enough, there was 2 drops of blood, and two drops only where that deer had paused when it had seen us earlier. I looked for another 30 minutes from that point on and never found another drop of blood. I couldn't believe that we had lost that deer. The next day (yesterday) Jim crawled back up into the deer stand and then realized what had happened. He could see where the majority of the BB's from the shot had hit the surrounding tree's and not the deer. Obviously, the deer wasn't mortally wounded, or else we would have found him as far as we tracked through the woods. What a crappy way to start. LOL, that would have made some good sausage and cubed steak. We'll get him next time though. I'm going to give her a try myself this weekend. I'm getting out the old SKS with iron sights and see if I can't plow one down this friday.

Anyone else had any luck with the furry critters this season? I know the season has been started for a while, I just like to wait until it cools down a bit before I get started. I'd love to hear some stories.[cool]
[signature]