We are in a deer reduction zone, which means the season starts a couple weeks before Thanksgiving and ends January 31st. Normally, I only gunhunt, and it's during Thanksgiving week. I nearly always get one or two deer, even though I'm not a very strategic hunter. A lot of that is because we have too many deer in central IN. Thus the deer reduction zone concept came into play the past few years.
Oftentimes between getting behind on firewood and at the office, I don't get as much time to hunt as I used to. This year worse than average with only 3 or 4 hours available in the deer stand during Thanksgiving week, and up until Christmas only another hour or so. My son was visiting for the holidays from Montana and managed to get a couple deer, as did my son in law who lives next door. But as the Old Guy I had yet to even see any deer.
Since it's coming up towards the end of our extended season, I tried to hunt Saturday which was when it started snowing here. It was beautiful in the woods, although I didn’t think the deer would necessarily be moving. Fortunately, 3 does came up behind my deer stand and we're gradually coming around to where I could take a shot at one from a nice close range. The wind was favorable and I was on the other side of the tree just taking my time.
Then my phone makes its loud submarine-diving-alarm noise that is for emergency pages from patients. I thought I had shut it off but I guess I don't know enough about iPhones to make sure everything is off unless I just power the phone down, which is what I should have done. I normally don't worry about it, because although I have five or 600 patients I'm responsible for, and I'm on call for all of them 24/7/365, I only get about 6 or 7 emergency calls per year, patients are able to text me as well as computer message me, and most are smart enough that if it's something truly emergent, they simply go to the emergency room. Otherwise, they will text me and allow me a couple hours to respond, if it's something like a necessary medicine refill on a weekend or a question about dealing with a respiratory infection, or whatever.
So the does take off, and with their loud wheezing noises, I knew I wouldn't have any more luck and it was starting to get dark.
I find out that the page was one particular patient who is notorious for demanding to see specialists, initially doing what the specialist wants, and then after a while insisting that the specialist change medications to suit her. When the specialist justifiably refuses (what she wants is not rational, much less even safe), she fires the specialist, then insists that I take over prescribing and change everything to whatever weird or dangerous regimen she decided to insist on this time. Needless to say, I'm not inclined to do that, much less feel it is an appropriate topic to address without a real sit down talk at a real office visit.
So anyway, I chalk that up an unusual chance and spend the rest of the evening playing with the 3 toddler age grandkids who were over for a 'camp out' in the living room getting ready to enjoy the blizzard coming the next day.
So we deal with the blizzard and the kids have fun and I plow the driveway, which was interesting since there was 14 inches of snow, and that's really too much to just push to the side in places where the driveway is lower than the ground on either side. So it involved a lot of front end loader moving of snow before the scraping could even start.
Anyway, even though I decided it wouldn’t be very likely to succeed I figured I would try stalk-hunting after the blizzard peaked, but it was still snowing. I figured it would at least be a pleasant walk in the woods where I could kind of pretend I was really roughing it. We live in a little valley that has hills about 350 feet above the lowest level where our house is, and we have a circuitous trail up the hill that is an old logging road, which goes onto neighboring property and loops back, taking about a mile to finally get to the highest point back on our property. Without snow shoes, walking that in 14 inches of snow was a lot of exertion, but I went slowly so I could be sneaky.
About 80% of the way up the grade, I saw tons of tracks leading into a thicket area where my son had thinned trees about 15 years ago. There were definitely deer bedding in but I was unable to sneak up on them due to the wind and the terrain making me visible. I did wind up spooking three does there (maybe the same ones I'd dealt with 600 yards or so southwest of there in my deerstand the day before). I kept climbing and got to the peak, where I could look out over the floodplain and fields to the north, and see the snow blow UP as the wind pushed it into the bluffs.
The next part of the walk was slightly downhill, and back towards the house. I checked by phone to make sure everyone was inside in case I did need to make a shot < … foreshadowing hint ... > and started going forward trying to combine wind-sense, reduce visibility via topography, and not fall and bust my butt.
I'd taken my 35 Remington Marlin XLR instead of my 'normal' 44 Mag Marlin 1894, since I thought I'd be more likely to need to shoot 100-150 yards or so, and wanted the flatter trajectory in exchange for the smaller hole. Sure enough, I come upon a doe about 130 yards away - farther than I'd like to shoot my 44 Mag carbine, but reasonable for the 35 Remington rifle. I am even able to kneel, as the doe Is looking the other way and I have a tree partly concealing me. I leave the scope set on 4X (it goes to 16), because I have a really good sight picture and steady rest on my knee. I slip back the hammer, aim at the heart, and start to squeeze the trigger.
"Beernk, beernk, beernk...!" goes my !@^&*@#% iPhone - AGAIN...!!!
The deer literally startles and jumps as my trigger is fully taken up and the gun fires.
1. What are the odds that that would happen at that exact second, during a two and a half hour walk and hunt...???
2. What are the odds that it would be the same patient with the same question that I had already said no to the day before...???
3. What are the odds that I would have been stupid enough not to power down my phone after checking to make sure everyone was inside the house...???
(...well I guess odds on #3 are about 100%...
)Anyway, the doe took off downhill out of sight and I couldn't tell for sure if she was hit although felt the odds were likely.
The snow was deep, drifted, and the kind of powdery stuff that's great for skiing but terrible for walking, so as I went to the point of impact, I did more sliding than walking. My phone got wet to the point that water was under its allegedly waterproof cover, although at that point I was unhappy enough with the phone I sort of hoped it would die. When I got to point of impact, there was definitely some blood but I was worried it just be a flesh wound. The deer was making huge 12 foot bounds Down the hill and then up a gully and down and up again. It was snowing heavily enough that I thought I should at least get an initial read on where it was going before giving it time to bleed out.
Fortunately there was more blood sign, and it was a fine splatter that was often 3 or four feet to the side of where the deers footprints would be, making me think it was probably pulmonary splatter. The terrain was so steep that I wound up slipping and sliding and buried myself and the gun in the snow several times. I was not only getting a little bit snow-soaked at my wrists and neck from falling, but I was starting to sweat a bunch from the exertion. I took my gloves off to try to text my son-in-law that I shot a deer and might need tracking assistance, and when I touched my gun's barrel, the flesh of my finger stayed on the cold barrel instead of my finger, so things were unpleasant, but I guess I was having my Old Man Adventure, kind of a lame version of Jack London's "To Build a Fire"...
I decided to head all the way back to the house (a whopping 500 yards or so from where I currently was), still necessitating several steep inclines and eventually going down the middle of a ravine with logs down across the creek you have to decide whether to go under or over, and every once in a while stepped into a foot of snow that turned out to be THREE feet of snow...
I get back to the house and thaw out, and put my gun and binoculars and cell phone in the furnace room where they can dry out and dehumidify and warm up, then run a hot bath, taking a quart Mason jar of hot coffee and cream with me to warm the inside simultaneously.
After that, my son in law and I get ready to go retrieve what we hope will be dead deer, and I take my Wraith-equipped Ruger Charger 'SBR' (it has a brace/stock so it's a tax-stamped Evil Short Barreled Rifle
) in case we need to scan a hillside for a warm carcass. We go retrace doe's path only to find it less than 50 yards where I had turned to go back to the house. It was up a super steep ravine I would have not been able to negotiate directly anyway.Ironically, even though it seems like this was huge adventure, and in my mind I was traversing the Alaskan wilderness, several days travel from the nearest habitation, the doe had tired out and laid down in a sheltered area behind a steep hill. That 'steep hill' was actually the berm behind the 100 yard row of gongs at our shooting range...!
So it was a very easy sled drag-down to the shooting range where we usually field dress our deer, because we put a trail camera up and leave the guts at about the 50 yard line, so we can see what kind of critters come to dine on them. Later we put the skeleton there as well.
Upon examining the entrance and exit wounds, she had probably propelled herself about 1 foot horizontally and about 4 inches vertically as I squeezed the trigger, but the bullet went through both lungs as well as the diaphragm, and exited the far side.
It seems like the pneumothorax is much more dramatic with 44 and 45 caliber bullets versus 30 or 35 caliber, and 22 or 24 caliber doesn’t seem to make enough pneumothorax to bring an animal down very quickly. Of course, all of them cause internal bleeding that will be lethal, but it’s nice when they drop without running far. The 22 and 24 caliber bullets driven at high velocity pretty much create a shock cavity and destroy the lungs outright, so the pneumothorax is not as important. The 44 and 45 caliber bullets, usually driven much more slowly, don’t seem to destroy the lungs as completely, but render them useless because of the huge pneumothorax. In between, it seems like the 30 and 35 caliber bullets do a little bit of both lung destruction and pneumothorax, depending on the bullet design.
It was a tiny doe, but at least a successful year in the sense that the Old Man did harvest some venison...
