Here's a two-parter from when I was probably around 10 years old or so. This was on a South Texas ranch my dad had leased on the Nueces river. Dad wanted to sit in a pretty tight spot up in a skinny tripod and offered to let me sit in a big box blind alone. I was scared as it would be my first time but I knew the drill and was educated, he promised he wouldn't let it get dark. This was in the 80's so most people didn't have all the gadgets and headlamps and stuff. He dropped me off with my Win 70 youth 243 and headed out in the truck. Pace was 6,000 acres and his spot was a ways away. I still remember watching the truck go as far as I could see them watching the dust trail rise. I guess about an hour goes by and I see this giant body round the corner, it was Bubba the old mean Brahma bull. This place has tons of cattle but Bubba had a reputation. I'm way up high in a blind so no big deal, until Bubba decided he needed a back scratch and came up and started scraping on the blind legs. I thought for sure the blind was gonna fall over, almost shot that bull but I kept thinking about the trouble I'd be in. He finally quit and walked off.
So fast forward to roughly sunset, dad packs up and heads my way. Along the drive he spots a very large mature doe alone without a fawn and she trots off into a thicket where she thinks she's covered, dad creeps up to the fence line and shoots and she drops. He can hear her bleeting over and over non-stop. There's nonroad over there and he'd have to hop the fence and walk, but it's quickly getting dark and he's worried about me in the blind. He figures the doe is spined and likely going to expire and decides to haul butt to pick me up and then come back. He comes flying up to the blind telling me to hurry up we've gotta go out a doe down. We get over to the fence line and dad, myself, and stepmother hop out of the truck and go walking in. Dad has two knives and a mag light, stepmother and I only have some latex gloves and such. We all walk in there to where the doe was and she's not there. We can see some drag marks and blood trail so dad figures she's dragging herself with her front legs and feels terrible about it so we take off following these drag marks. He's the only one with a flashlight so we're close behind him. Walking through this thick stuff with sort of a trail corridor we start seeing eyes flash at the edge of the brush, flash on our right then a couple seconds later flash on the left. Eyes are sort of paralleling us as we walk. We come around a bend in this trail and there's the doe, sitting quietly with her head up and eyes glassed over like she's mentally checked out. I remember her neck was really shiny in the light, shiny from chin to shoulders and thought it looked really strange. Dad hands me the light and tells me he's gonna go cut her throat and stresses the importance of keeping the light on this deer and not moving it while he's trying to put her down, the eyes were still around so he knew I'd be moving the light around. So I hold the light and dad walks up to this deer, got the knife ready and reaches for her head. Right as he reaches for the head the most blood curdling scream rips out right next to us in the brunch, freaking mountain lion scream so close it was like it was screaming directly into my ears. Stepmother is running in place and making weird noises, I'm holding the light on the deer's head with the willpower stronger than an oak tree, Dad's got the knife in fighting position yelling at me to shine the light on the lion, it was chaotic and somewhat comical. Dad pulls us in and says keep our backs together so we're standing in formation, slowly backing out back down the trail with our backs all together. Once we get out of the thicket we turn and walk rapidly back to the truck. We get to the truck and stepmother loses it and starts crying and I'm silent sort of in shock. Dad puts us in the truck, grabs his freaking 380 pistol and says y'all stay here I'll go get the deer. WHAT?!? Yep, that nut walked back in there by himself with a 380, slit the deer's throat with his knife and gutted that deer where it sat and said the whole time the eyes were circling around the edges of the brush. This little opening was maybe 10 yards across from thick wall of brush to thick wall of brush, wasn't much room to breath. After what seemed like eternity we finally see his flashlight slowly making it's way out of the thicket and into the opening.headed back to the truck dragging this deer, dragged that thing all the way to the truck and wouldn't let us out of the truck to help him load it. He got back in and nobody said a word all the way back to camp. I never even got to tell him about how Bubba almost killed me..
