Big Ed

Mauser06, I was just wondering with the antler restrictions in pa how did your dad manage to get a button buck?

LeeinVa1

it was opening day of hunting season and my buddie and i decided to go hunting for the day, we hit the woods at the crack of dawn and were sneaking up a stream, walking on the rocks along the way. a branch happened to be in our way and when my buddie pulled it back, in front of us was just the head of a deer showing, like it was mounted. i handed the 30-30 to my buddie and told him to shoot it, he handed it back and told me to. this went on for a few times, finally i told him to hold the branch back and i shot. the deer disappeared. we both ran up to the spot and the deer was laying behind a small knoll. when we attempted to gut it, the deer would kick and we would shoot it again, all in the head or neck area, kicked about 18 times, shot with 30-30 once more and with a .22 rifle the rest of the time. we finally got the thing dressed and started draging it out of the woods to the railroad tracks, we would walk ahead first, break a trail, leave the guns there and go back for the deer. on one of our return trips to the deer someone yelled out " hey, what you guys doing" we hauled arse, leaving guns and deer. finally we heard someone laughing, it was my brother. took us from 8 in the morning until two in the afternoon to get the deer to the tracks, then i hiked home and got my buddies father to give us a hand. that was 53 years ago and i was 12 and my buddie was 14. oh, it was an 8 pt buck, 204 lbs.

benhuntin

25 years ago, 13 years old. I was camping in a cabin on the Apalachicola river with a buddy of mine. We got up shortly after daylight and walked down a logging road by the cabin, parrallel to the river. We got to a spot where a small trail crossed the road so I decided to sit there while my friend continued down the road.
Aparantly this little 4 point was laying about 20 ft. off the road and about 1 minute later as my friend got out of sight and hearing distance the buck jumped up and crossed the road 30 ft in front of me. I shot him twice with my 20guage semi auto with #3 buckshot. As my buddy and I were admiring the buck we heard the sound of dogs a few hundred yards out in the swamp. We both ran down the road and spread out and a few seconds later a spike ran out for my friend to shoot. I have had many memorable years but this one always sticks in my mind.[:-]

A.K.A eastwood

huntnma said:
huntnma-

i have got to hear you explain why you were barefoot.

KoBear

my first buck story is good.

i had been hunting for 2 years, so now i was 12 years old. i had shot 2 does, but no bucks. me and my father went to our usual spot in peapack gladstone NJ. its like 20 degrees and like 7 with the wind chill. instead of going to our usual double tree stand, the old guy we hunted with told us to go to his stand, all the way in the back of the property in the cedars by the field. i go to the treestand and my father goes to the ground blind used by the old guy during snow. getting in, their is ice all over the steps so i take my gloves off to get a grip, drop the glove and spend all morning with one glove. about 8:30 am my father walks over to the stand with some hot coa-coa. as i am drinking, i hear a commotion and look up. its a golden pheasant. i didnt feel like shooting it with a 20 gauge slug. we leave at 9 and drive through the local watershed that boarders our property. on the way out, my dad stops and yells " buck!" he takes pictures of it standing in the field before it takes off running towards our property. we went home to sleep. we got to our property late, about 2:40 in the afternoon. at 3:15, i look up toward the watershed, and here comes a buck at full run and it jumps a log and stops dead still. i dropped him in one shot and we did the whole dance and yelling and hi-5' s etc. my dad almost cried. lol. it was a nict 8 pointer with a 16 1/2" spread. 3 months later when i get it back from the taxidermist, i am sitting on the couch and looking at the pictures. the pictures my dad took of the deer in the field on the watershed was the same deer i shot 8 hours later. talk a bout a coincidence!

rednekhuntr

I was 15. It was my first year deer hunting, and it snowed about 20 inches on opening day, and the morning of day 2. At aroung 10 am on day 2 the guys I was hunting with decided to call it quits for the day. It stopped snowing around noon, so I decided to take a walk in the bush behind the camp just in case. I cut a track almost immediately, so I followed it for about an hour, then i stopped to take a crap. I followed the track for another hour and a half or so, and I came up on a little forkhorn. I shot it behind the shoulder like Dad said. Nothing happened. I thought all right you son of a b@#$$. I shot him in the head, he dropped like a rock. I shook like a leaf for a couple of minutes, took several attempts to get the tag out of my pocket, and finally made my way over to my deer. Well I' d managed to blow one antler completely off, along with a large part of the deers head. I reach into my pocket to get out my knife to gut the poor critter, and the knife' s not there. It fell out of my pocket when I stopped for a dump. Okay, no problem, I' ll just drag it back to camp, and gut it there. Oh but I don' t want to get blood and brains all over me, so I decide to drag it by the hind leg, backwards, in 2 feet of snow. I never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I managed to drag this extremely heavy 100 pound deer to camp by around 7 pm. I have never, to this day, been so completely exhausted. All the guys at camp were great, patting me on the back, congratulating me, but nobody offered to clean it for me. Oh, the first shot destroyed the heart, I just didn' t know enough to wait a little. I few years ago I measured the distance I dragged that little deer with my GPS, it was just over 3 kilometers.
Would I do all that again? Absolutely.

skeeter 7MM

Great stories all. Mine wasn' t the way I had dream but it is anything but a typical first buck story. Ok to set this up, it was my first year able to hunt big game, I had drawn a mule doe tag which I filled on the first morning quite effortlessly, so meat was in the freezer, knotch in the belt and the first deer was out of the way...time to get serious. My uncle and dad said it was now time to test my patience and ability to listen, they told me not to shot a deer but a deer with horns. Ok no problem I can do that. We headed up to the bush for the annual family moose/deer hunt, it was a tradition I was not able to partake in until that year. I was pumped, I mean couldn' t sleep for days. The 4 1/2 hour drive I was reminded of safety and of course the no doe rule. First morning we awoke to a huge snow storm, hunting was poor the entire day, next day I finally saw a deer...it was a doe and I never shot...I can do this I thought!!!! The next day was colder than all be and I only saw 2 does with fawns all day...no shots fired...I can do this!!!! The final day of my trip I was up and at em' early, I decided I would drink some coffee to get me going. Morning was gone and time to head back to camp, without seeing a deer in 4 plus hours...discouraged I sauntered back to camp about half way the call of nature came...ooooo darn coffee[X(]. Being fairly close to camp I decided to head into the bush a little so nobody found my treasure. I found an appropriate log and did my business. I just finished up when I heard a snap and then another, frozen with my pants undone still[]...I reached for my pea shooter. Once in hand I looked around to try & locate the noise maker, when all of a son a flicker of movement drue my attention. I stared long and hard, knowing it was a deer but looking for them horns. Then he moved, revealing an antler beam, raised my gun and he gave me a shot. He then bolted forward and crashed down in short order. Pants still undone I started to move until, well so did they(pants), i did up my belt and found my prize. He was a nice 4x4, I then tried to gut him as best I could and began the drag. My uncle had heard the shot and came to see what had taken placed. First thing he said was congrats on your first buck and your barn door is open[]! In the excitement I forgot to zip up my pants[], so of course I had to tell the real story, not the modified story of how I sneaked a buck in his domain[:' (]. Still get ribbed about that event, but it does make for a memorable occasion.

JoshKeller

I shot my first buck when I was 14 years old. I was hunting in a ravine through the center of a cut corn field, intersepting deer as they crossed from feeding to bedding areas. Opening day I saw a ton of does, however no bucks. I sat in that treestand motionless for 14 hours. Go home, go strait to bed, and up at 4 am the next day. In the treestand again. See alot of does the first hour and think its going to be like the day before. I see what I think is a small forkhorn. He goes over the ridge and the guy I was hunting with shoots him. I think I miss my chance. I' m begining to really think that this day will be like the day before. WRONG! I see antlers in the brush. I blink and it seems like the deer is halfway across the corn field. BOOM! The deer falls. I get my stuff together, and look towords the deer and see he is walking away! BOOM! One more shot anchors him for good, and I unload my gun, get down, and do a dead sprint through the cornfield. I grab his antlers and thank god. My first buck! a Perfect 8 point rack. 3/8" of total deductions. It made the 17 hours of hunting well worth it. After lots of handshakes and congratulations, we check him in, and drop him off at the processors. I do have pics of the deer, and if anyone can help me upload one, I' d appreciate it.

benhuntin

HUNTINMA, I would love to videotape one of your hunts. Barefeet and all. You are a true florida hunter.

Taxman003

My first buck story is from last year (2002) so it’s fresh in my mind and I love telling it.

I was assigned a watch in an area that I never hunted before. I climbed one side of a hill overlooking a really overgrown valley. I could see directly across to the other side and down on one alley on my left. As well I have a fairly decent view over to the left but absolutely nothing on the right and almost nothing below. One of the seasoned hunters later tells me that he felt sorry for me once he climbed the hill and looked back. [:@]

The run was supposed to take an hour and a half. After only fifteen minutes, I heard some rustling.[] The sounds continued and they sure as hell weren’t some chipmunk or something. I knew for sure that it was not a dogger coming and thought I saw something directly across from me on the other side of the hill. I lifted my gun and looked through my scope. Be damned if there wasn’t a deer standing right in the scope. I couldn’t see it for the trees though until it jumped out of my scope and out of my sight.

I couldn’t believe that I was looking right at it and couldn’t see it. The bristling sounds continued so I knew that my chance wasn’t over. My heart was absolutely pounding and the adrenaline was flowing. The sound ventured to my left and suddenly I heard a “Blah” sound. Looking back at the original spot I saw another deer (without the scope). Through my scope I could see that it was a buck. I fired my first shot. No reaction. I stood up and fired another shot. This time, I heard the deer fall. Unfortunately for him, he was at the top of a hill and I listened as he tumbled all the way down. [:' (] I hit him! I was watching straight ahead but saw something in my peripheral and watch the last bounce of the other deer heading up and over the hill. No chance for a shot. The rule now is to sit and wait. It was the longest time of my life. I figured that it was a doe that I heard first and the buck came out after a while once everything seemed OK. After a few minutes, I could hear movement again and thought it was the doe coming back to see what happened. I waited and listened but the movement stopped. My heart was pounding once again. After 20 minutes of silence, I radioed my buddy and indicated that I was going to look for him. I went in the bush the first time with no luck. I came back out to my spot and set my compass and went straight back in. This time, I found the landing spot with no problem. There was plenty of blood and kicked up leaves, but no deer. I figured he took off and was the secondary noise that I was hearing earlier. I radioed my buddy again and he advised that I go back to my watch until one of the doggers got there.

Sitting there was absolute murder. I waited and waited and I was happy as a pig in sh&t. I couldn’t wait for the others to get there and start looking. I re-examined my shot through my scope and noticed a broken branch in my field of vision. I lifted my head and saw the rest of the branch blown up into a tree a few feet off. My first shot had barely made it twenty feet before it hit the myriad of possibilities of deflections and the like.

An hour later, one of the doggers finally shows up. We begin to track the deer, but there isn’t a lot of sign again. The direction of travel is the same as the noises I heard afterwards when I thought the doe was coming back. It must have been the buck trying to get away and trying to find a safe place to lie down. I can’t believe we can’t find it and I start thinking that we’ll never find it. I keep going back to the last blood sign and circling out once again. Finally, I notice what appear to be tracks (no blood, but tracks) heading off in the proper direction based on my earlier sounds. Within 1 minute I find blood again and turn around a tree to find my deer lying under a bush. I called out “Here he is” to which he raises and turns his head but doesn’t move. I raise my gun aiming for the neck. I fire and the deer jumps up and starts towards us but falls down. I jump backwards much to the dogger’s amusement and try to fire another shot. I have no idea if my gun jammed or not, but we finally circled for a clean shot and put the animal away.

MY FIRST DEER!!! [:-][8D]

Turns out that when I shot, I hit him in the jaw by mistake and simply pissed him off. But he was hurt too bad to run away and really couldn’t move. My first shot entered his back and stopped in his leg. He was a young nine pointer (one brow tine broken off) and was 182 lbs field dressed. I got some help field dressing (as I’d never done it before) and it was only 20 or 30 yards off the old trail which made pulling it out easy.

It was an absolutely thrilling time for me. It will always be my first buck and I have the bullet casing, fragment at home on the wall as well as that branch that suffered the wrath of my .308. It was the first kill for that rifle in probably 15 years as it was my dad’s. He stopped hunting around 1987 and died in 1998. So this one’s for you dad!

Finally, I also shot my second deer/buck ever just three days later. A beautiful 10 pointer came down off a hill from behind at about 40 yards. I was alerted to it by the sound of “cornflakes” and turned to see it. He dropped at the first shot and when I saw him lift his head moments later, a neck shot at 20 yards sealed the deal. It scored about 130 B&C and only had 5/8” deductions. I sure hope I see bigger and better, but others have told me that this could be the biggest I see. Bring on next year!