Hunt #31 was the magic one. I've been out 28 times with a bow and yesterday was my 3rd rifle hunt and a good day it was. I brought my 1958 vintage Remington 721 30-06 with some of my own loads 165g Hornady SST / 55.2g IMR-4007-SSC.

I came here in February wanting to learn to kill deer and I've had an incredible amount of help from so many people. Everything from making deer loads to sighting in my bow ... Just want to say thanks to the 30 or 40 folks on here that made this day possible for me. Especially I_hate_poachers whose land I killed it on

Anyway, we'd been out that morning and bumped several does and a couple of bucks (one mature) on the way in. We didn't see anything once we got setup though so around 11 we went scouting. We found an several areas with lots of sign. I ended up selecting an afternoon stand sight on a grassy step in front of a steep boulder filled rise. Several patches of fresh raisenets on the ground nearby

We came back around 1PM and I picked a pretty large tree and climbed about 30 ft up. I put my face a little to the right of the rise and into the wind and sat back and waited. Around 3:45 i hear this commotion off to my left about 75 yards. I search the area for a few minutes then I see a group of 18 turkeys walking up the holler to my left. I thought that if the turkeys were ok with me being there then maybe I'd get lucky and the deer wouldn't detect me ...

At 4PM straight up I'm alternating between scanning the area then closing my eyes and listening. I open my eyes and way up the face of the rise I see some motion. Then a group of does appears coming straight down the rise directly towards me. I range them at 120 yards and sit tight, waiting until I can resolve all of them and pick the largest.

At 100 yards I can see which is the largest and I put the range finder away ... raise my rifle up and start tracking her. She is in the back of the group and the lead doe is about 10 yards in front of her. I track her for two good minutes with my scope and at one point it began to fog up. When it cleared up she had stopped right at 80 yards behind a tree. I put my sight on the tree and waited.

after a few more seconds she moved forward and I had a perfect shot at her quartering away. I was about to run an SST in her tail up through her heart but she had other plans and turned broadside and obscured by another tree. Finally she came out the other side of that tree quartering towards me ...

My BDC is set for the top bubble at 50 yards and 2nd bubble at 100 yards. I put the 2nd on here and lowered it just a hair. I take a deep breath and brace myself ... I'm not nervous, my heart is not pounding, all is good to go so I pull ... BOOM ... FLOP ... she dropped dead in her tracks. Doesn't even kick, like she just passed out on her feet and fell.

One of the other does takes off like a bottle rocket but one of them just freezes. Now my heart is pounding and I'm sweating, I line up on the 2nd doe and squeeze off a round. Oops, I used the top BDC bubble ... not thinking clearly. Unbelievably the doe remains so I line up again and my sight starts fogging up. I squeeze the trigger and miss, this time she takes off down the mountain after her sister.

First thing I do is send a text to I_Hate_Poachers so he will know what is going on. Then a text to my wife to let her know I scored, then a text to Irbs who has encouraged me not to quit after so many hunts.

Irbs walks me through the steps of what I need to do ... I let her sit 15 minutes. I'm 80 yards from her so I climb down and pack up my climber and other gear. I got out my 'Success Kit' which consists of a knife, a butt out plug, a latex glove (which I discard), and a harness for dragging. I take the harness and my rifle and it takes me a good 10 more minutes to climb up the rocks to her. This is how I found her :









It doesn't take long to drag her back to my stand site. I pulled out the butt out plug and yanked her bag out. It came out all in one piece thankfully. The bullet went in on her left side just a little above and to the left of her heart. It came out on the right side of her rib cage and Oh My ... how devastating that SST was, there was a huge pile entrails and liver hanging out her side and a broken rib sticking out.

Field dressing would have been uneventful but her gut sack caught that broken rib and tore. That crap started spilling out into her chest cavity so I turned here and just scooped everything out with my hands as fast as I could. I turned her back over onto her back and she started filling with blood again ... good thing, I used that blood to wash out the rest of her gut spillage ...

Dragging her out wasn't all that bad as it was mostly down hill. Plus I_hate_poachers and his friend Dakota shared the load ... much thanks to them.

I still don't have a truck so I loaded her into the trunk of my Acura. It has a 5" deep rubber liner so it didn't make any mess I couldn't easily clean up.

Backwaters Outdoors in Gurley was on my way home so I stopped there to turn her in for processing. There was another guy there with a 4 year old boy cleaning up two large does. After talking a bit I tell him that I'm 51 years old and this is my first deer. This guy's face just lights up and he asks me "Do you post on the Alabama Deer forum?" ... LOL It's McNinja and his boy ... What a treat to meet another ALDEER member at the processor. Thx for taking the photos below man, it was a pleasure meeting you and your son.

Note that this 4 year old boy got his first deer on this day too and his father was obviously very proud of him

What a great experience guys, thanks so much for helping me get here!

Paul

Congrats

Congrats

My heartiest Congrats to you!!!

You earned that one!

First of many.

Congrats

Congrats rocket! Now we will go get you a buck!

And i fully agree with your whole story except the part were we had an uneventful morning i saw a red fox and us walking rite up on top of that mature buck before daylight was pretty exciting!!!!

or it was to me anyway. ha

Congrats brother

Good story! Congrats!

Congrats. My dad is in his 60's and has never killed one. That is my sole goal this year.

Congrats Paul! I hope you kill many more of them but you'll always remember that first one!

Congrats!

Congrats, I admire your patience and perseverance!

Congrats man! Thanks for the write up.

Congrats great story.

Thanks!

I don't know if it really is tradition to do this or not but I didn't want to disrespect her so ... uh ... yes I tasted her blood and painted it on my face LOL. Not a bad taste

Congrads rocket, don't know you but I've really been pulling and hoping you would harvest your first deer soon. You put your time in and deserve it. Hope for many more.

Awesome!!. Glad it finally happened for you.

Nice job. No matter how many you shoot, it's still fun. Glad you got that first one out of the way

AWESOME! Congrats!!!!

That's awesome. Using your own handloads only makes it better!!!
Nice rifle BTW.