My brother, dad, and friend were conducting our final still hunt of the weekend, I looked at my watch to see that I was 15 mins late to the meeting site, but decided I didn't want to rush. I was getting close to our rendezvous point when a movement back and to my left caught my eye. I looked back to see a buck was feeding with 3 other bucks up the ridgeline about 70 yards away from me! He was quartering to me slightly, I checked to make sure he was legal, saw a fork, brought my rifle up, this is when he saw me and stared right at me, centered the peep on his chest and "BOOOOM", my 7x57 mauser barked and I saw the buck jump straight up into the air, the other 3 bucks scattered back down the ridge into a thicket of alders. I took a knee and tried to shake the adrenaline rush that had hit upon firing, then walked over to the spot where he had stood.To my dismay I saw no blood on the ground within about 75 yds, only tracks that showed he was running hard. I replayed the shot in my head, it felt good, really good at that. I did a few more circles around the area and radioed my Dad and Brother to come meet me. When they got their I told them I had missed a nice buck, and wasn't sure quite how that had happened. From there we all searched around some more for signs of blood with no success. We sat and after some apparently well earned jabs at my shooting ability by my dear old dad, decided to push the alder thicket back to camp and call it a weekend. I wanted to my brother tracks as we headed to our side of thicket, so I am showing him and telling him how nice the buck was and as we were walking I look up and see a deer lying dead.
Wow! Here he was about 125 yds away from where he stood where I had shot, not a single drop of blood on the way down to him. The 175 gr RN had entered just to left of his left shoulder, and did not exit. It was a perfect shot through the center of his heart and the top lobe of his left lung. I am elated! This is my 3rd, and biggest buck to date, and what makes it even better is that I took it with my great grandfathers rifle!
I learned a good lesson from this: Keep looking! Trust yourself, if you think it was a good shot trust that until you have absolutely proven it wrong.
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