When I went to bed the night before, The temperature was near freezing, and I was assuming a very cold morning. When I got up near 4:30, it was almost 10 degrees warmer. I took a quick shower and headed out to Mike's ranch. I easily found my tree, got my climber up to an appropriate height (overlooking the second ravine behind Mike's house) and snuggled down to wait for light. After about 40 minutes it started to get light. Predictably, as the day got lighter, shots started to be heard, but probably less shooting than in some years past. Shooting started to slow down considerably pretty fast, but I had no deer sightings until around 10:00 when a deer was seen way off to my right. It wandered away from me and was never close enough to shoot. At noon, as I was eating my raisins, another deer was running down the hill in the same area, grunting wildly all the way down the hill, I can only assume this was a buck, but I never could be sure. It wandered in the same direction as the first deer. At around 2:00, a doe came by quickly to my left and crossed the creek, followed very close by a small buck smelling at here heels. I put the crosshairs on the buck, but decided it wasn't worth shooting, given the longish shot and odd angle. The deer was on the move to, and it was probably the correct decision. These deer were quickly followed by a second spike buck.
Later in the afternoon, three does came from across the ravine to my right. They were followed by a decent buck with a VERY white ~8 point rack. They milled around for quite a while and moved alternately closer and farther for a long time, eventually working behind me. I alternately put the crosshairs on the deer, but never liked the angle and distance until they were directly behind me, working towards me. Eventually, the smallest doe was right behind me, with the buck 75 yards from me. Since the other two doe were not in a good place, I thought hard about the smaller one, then got a little greedy, and seriously considered the buck. He worked closer to me and I put the crosshairs on him. At this time, the does smelled/saw/heard me and bolted. Since the buck was just standing there, I took the shot. It ran about 30 yards directly across behind me and stopped. I was shooting a Thompson Center ProHunter (single shot) but got reloaded with enough time to take a second shot. The deer reacted as only a hit deer does and ran. After a few minutes, I slowly got out of the treestand. It was very windy, but thought I had heard the deer crash, and I knew he was hit. I spent about a half hour looking for the deer, followed by alternately looking for the deer, and blood sign. Eventually well after dark, I headed home realizing further looking in the dark was not a good idea.
I called Mike the next day to make sure I could cross into the neighbor's property. Melissa and I went out to look, Mike joined us after an hour or so. We all looked alternately for the deer or blood sign. Neither was found. I did find the tree that my first slug hit. It appeared to have red around it, suggesting a decent hit.
I know the second round connected, so I was very baffled as to how a deer with two 12-gauge slugs runs any distance. Never found any blood on the ground, nor the deer. I feel really bad. This is not how opening day(s) is supposed to turn out.
Plan now is to let things quiet down overnight and Monday (November 14). I'll head out Tuesday afternoon again. The good thing, is I'll have plenty of time on the stand to think over what happened and what to do (and not do) both this season and for the future,
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