Trouble with targets in Texas
What the heck had gone wrong?
The question rattled around inside my head like a bee in a jar as I replayed my errant shot at the highracked Texas trophy. With the crosshairs centered firmly on the buck’s shoulder at a range of 120 yards, I had squeezed the trigger, confident that now, after four visits to the Lone Star State, I would finally fill my Texas tag on that elusive wall-hanger. But when the shot rang out, the outcome was not what I had expected.
If the 139-grain Hornady bullet fired from my 7mm-08 caliber Remington Model 7 bolt action rifle had struck the intended aiming point, the buck should have dropped dead in his tracks. Instead it raced away post haste with no sign the bullet had hit home. Dumbfounded, I reviewed that moment of truth over and over in my mind. How could I miss? Brain freeze? Buck Fever? Target panic? It was hard to say.
It was the afternoon of the first day of our Texas whitetail hunt. On stand that same morning I had passed up chances at two great bucks (it was just the first morning of a four day hunt after all), but finally succumbed to temptation when big brother showed up at a different stand later that day. After pulling the trigger, I waited half an hour before exiting the shooting shack, then searched the area for any indication the shot had connected. If there were any clue, I sure couldn’t find it, not a single trace of blood or hair and no sign of the deer itself. The buck had charged out of sight from my right to left, so I followed through a tangle of prickly pear, mesquite, hackberry, and a host of other sharp, spiny, thorny plants as my eyes scanned the scene to no avail.
I retreated to the shack and texted our outfitter, Steve Ford of Big Game Management, to report the shot and puzzling miss. With daylight failing, he assured me we would scour the area in search of the buck after sunup tomorrow. Meanwhile, another possible explanation for the miss occupied the back of my mind: the fact that we had yet to check the accuracy of our rifles following our flight from Philly to Dallas, a concern because my gun case had suffered some serious jostling in transit.
We mentioned this to Ford Sunday evening when we first arrived in Albany, but with all the pre-hunt preparations and darkness falling, sighting in our rifles would have to wait until later the next day. Ford wanted us all on stand well before daybreak on Monday morning, and the timeline wouldn’t allow checking our firearms prior to that. As noted, I saw plenty of bucks that first morning including two borderline shooters, but held my fire. One member of our party, bartender Tom McAndrews of Ridley, downed a beautiful eight-point buck that morning; everyone else passed up shots on smaller bucks.
But processing McAndrews’ deer, including the requisite photo shoot, took up a considerable amount of time, as did transporting the buck to the out-of-town butcher. By the time we finished lunch we were running late and it was time to shuttle us to our afternoon stands, some as far as 30 miles away. This left us with no time to visit the rifle range. Plenty of deer were sighted, but no one else would take a shot that afternoon.
After dinner that night, Ford shared the game plan for the next morning’s hunt. As per usual, we would all be on stand well before first light. Following the morning’s hunt, Ford and his guides would pick us up around 9:30 or so. After that we’d have the chance to double-check our rifles for accuracy. We’d also send out a search party to look for my buck. I sat impatiently on stand that morning and spotted a dozen different bucks. At least one was the equal of the whitetail I had taken a shot at the previous afternoon. But I was not about to try another attempt at a buck unless we determined I had cleanly missed the first one and until my confidence in the accuracy of my rifle was restored. I would pull the trigger that morning only if I crossed paths with a coyote or hog.
No coyotes or hogs showed up, and later that morning we finally got around to shooting our rifles. The results were not encouraging. My Leupold scope’s horizontal settings were perfect, but the verticals, not so much. The slugs fired from my gun grouped a good five inches below the bullseye at a range of fifty yards. Extrapolate that out to the 120 yard shot I had taken the day before and you might conclude that the bullet passed beneath the animal’s brisket, a clean miss which would explain the absence of any blood or hair at the site.
So it was no surprise that Ron Dill’s rifle, stored with mine in the case for the bumpy flight from Philly to Dallas, was also hitting five inches low. Both of us made the appropriate adjustments to our respective scopes, fired a few more shots zeroed in just above the fifty yard bullseye, and left the range with renewed confidence in the accuracy of our firearms.
So now it was time to seriously search for my buck. While the dearth of blood or hair suggested a miss (as did my wayward scope), Ford, an outfitter since 1993 thus well versed in such circumstances, suspected the reaction of the buck implied just the opposite. Had I missed, the deer likely would have paused to access the situation before scrambling for cover. The fact that the buck instantaneously raced away at full speed indicated he’d been hit, most likely in the chest, but far beneath the aiming point. Now I realized this resulted from a skewed scope, not operator error.
Sure enough, Ford’s theory proved correct. An intense search of the area revealed no blood or hair, but Ford nonetheless managed to find my deer. The buck had initially run from my right to left, but once out of sight, had turned at a right angle and charged directly away from me for over a hundred yards before collapsing among a tangle of underbrush. I had been searching in the wrong place, but Ford’s sharp seasoned eyes fortuitously spotted my downed buck before the coyotes discovered it. “The shot was low all right,” confirmed Ford, “just clipped the bottom of the heart. Not a drop of blood anywhere except right where the deer went down.”
Two lessons were infinitely evident here. The first: follow up each and every shot, exhausting all possibilities until the game is recovered or you’re absolutely convinced of a clean miss. Second: take time to double-check the accuracy of your firearms before heading afield, especially after transport when they’ve been out of sight and in the possession of potentially reckless baggage handlers for extensive periods of time.
In the end I was grateful to put my tag on an awesome Texas eight-pointer, even if I had to spend a sleepless, worrisome night before finally recovering it. During the rest of the hunt I went on stand in search of hogs and coyotes. Over that time I spotted at least 60 nice whitetail bucks (that would have been shooters by Pennsylvania standards), scores of turkeys, and a herd of black fallow deer - descendents of exotic escapees from a high-fence hunting operation. On the final morning of the hunt I nailed a coyote at 175 yards, evidence that the once reliable accuracy of my new 7mm-08 had been fully restored.
By the time our hunt concluded Thursday evening, other members of our crew had also scored on coyotes. West Ches- ter’s Brian McFadden, Ron Dill, Ron Koch, and McAndrews had all filled their tags with nice bucks. Koch also scored on a pair of Rio Grande turkeys. Team leader and trip organizer, Harry Kidd of Broomall, passed up dozens of chances at bucks “you would have shot” and ultimately returned to Philly empty handed.
Before leaving Albany we settled our accounts with Ford, took the deer to the meat processor with instructions to donate most of the venison to the local food banks, and dropped the racks and capes off at Rocker B. Taxidermy for mounting. In the end, the Texas hunt put a giant exclamation point on my deer season, one where I had traveled some 1,500 miles from home to score my best firearms buck ever while collecting my best archery buck back in October less than a mile from my house. This came after two previous trips to Texas and the last two seasons in Pennsylvania where I never fired a single shot or launched a single arrow.
In terms of hunting karma, maybe I was due. BIG GAME MANAGEMENT » For more info on hunting in North Central Texas with Steve Ford’s Big game Management guide service, check out their website at http://www.biggamemgmt. com/ or give him a call at (325)762-4441. LICENSE INFORMATION
» The first time I visited Texas we had to take time out to purchase our nonresident hunting licenses at the True Value Hardware Store in Albany. But this year, planning ahead, we all bought our licenses online in advance from Texas Parks and Wildlife. Incidentally, the current cost of a Texas General Non-Resident Hunting License is $315.00 and comes with three whitetail antlered or antlerless tags, one whitetail antlerless tag, one mule deer antlered or antlerless tag, one mule deer antlerless tag, and four turkey tags. Hunters may also take game birds such as quail and doves along with unlimited numbers of predators like coyotes as well as feral hogs.