This would have been the fall of '82 I was a freshmen in H.S. and we lived along a small river bottom in NW Iowa. I had bow hunted and all, but never shot a deer. I asked Mom if I could go hunt pheasants with her old Ithaca 20 guage single shot. (break action, looked like a lever action '94) I grabbed a handful of shells we had left from years of misc. hunting and went out for a walk.
I walked the ditch down to a waterway in the field and kicked around there for a while, not finding any birds I took a different grassy path back to the grove, when I got to the fence along the field I was in I saw a squirrel jump on a tree about 20 yds away along a small ravine that runs through the wooded area leading back and down to the river. I was close enough and figured I could hit it with a shotgun, so pulled up quick and shot the squirrel. With the report of the gun 3 deer stood up directly behind the squirrel on the far side of the ravine 50ish yds away, two ran away and the other stood looking at me. These were the three deer we had watched all summer a doe and two fawns that were hardly strangers to us. So I yelled and waved my arm and the last one ran off to catch up to mom and sibling. I kept hunting through the grove and when I came back toward the house there was a deer laying by a brush pile breathing very strangely. I leaned the gun against a tree and lifted the deer to its feet and it ran ten yards and fell, I then ran up to the house to get my Dad. He came out and we carried the deer to the barn, I went to the house and called the game warden ( I had just had my hunters saftey class two or three weeks before... go figure) telling him we had a sick deer that was acting very strange. It had strange lumps on the top of the head and I thought it was hurt from a car or something.... (button buck duhh) While I was on the phone my mom came in and said the deer died, so I told this to the warden, he said he would come by the next day to see the animal.
When I went back to the barn we rolled the deer over and there in the middle of the rib cage was a single spot of blood. Dad looked at me and I all of the sudden had the "OH NO" look and took Dad out to show him exactly where I was, the squirrel was and the deer stood up. He asked me what shell I had used and I showed him, it was a BB goose load.(black marker on the primer, he and my uncle knew what was what.)... OK so I go pick up the gun and head back to the house and call the warden to explain what we just figured out had happened. He said he would want to see the exact area the next day. I don't think I even helped Dad gut or skin it I just remember him telling me when he had it done that he found two BB holes in the deer one in the ribs and one on the rump.
I was a young kind of un-experienced hunter but I learned a lot from that experience. I am very lucky it wasn't one of the cows the landlord kept there. I never even gave the far side of that ravine a thought, I also never thought anything except that the deer was sick or something- until that drop of blood on the ribs......
I don't know for sure that Dad believed me or not that it was and accident, But this is the actual account of my first deer.
Now my second deer thats a more normal story we were set up for a drive in northern MN I had my 700 remington 25/06 and........
thejanitor