The story......I took him up in Mendocino county outside of Boonville. If your are not from California then you will be surprised how early we hunt. For A Zone where I hunt, archery starts in July and the general rifle season starts mid August and goes to Mid September. Needless to say it is generally very hot during most of the season. Well....it was the last weekend of the season and there was a very unusual and brief low pressure system that came through. For about 8 hours the temp dropped and their was a light drizzle and the deer started moving around, bucks on he heals of does. It was just about 4:00pm and I was working the edge of a large meadow. As I came around a tree I saw a doe out at 85 yards moving right to left past a 15 yard break in a group of small trees and brush. First one doe then a second....both obviously trotting away from something. I set my Contender on my shooting sticks and watched the action through my scope.....a third doe came trotting by with a 3x3 buck 4 ft behind her with his nose close to the ground. He was passing through the 15 yard gap quickly and at that distance I was not going to get him to stop, so just as he was about to step behind a small tree I dropped the hammer and he dropped immediately. When I was able to get my sight picture back after the recoil I could see just his hind legs, his momentum from the trot carried him about a step or two behind the small tree.
Now the wound you see in the picture was my second (put him out) shot. The first shot actually hit the spine just behind the left shoulder and angle out at spine level above the right shoulder. The deer dropped but was very much alive when I got to him. The second shot was at about 1 foot........which brings up a good topic of discussion.........for me I have very rarely walk up to an animal who is not already dead or dies in very short order. I can't remember the last time I had to put a finishing shot on an animal. For me the obvious issues are that a finishing shot at close range are generally very destructive to meat. At that moment my shot placement seemed to be the least destructive to meat but in an area with lots of blood vessels, and he did bleed out and die very quickly after the second shot.........were would you put the killing shot if you had the deer in front of you?
