Story - Daniel's First Buck

Daniels got his first buck during muzzleloading season. The two of us went out and climbed trees about a hundred yards apart. Daniel was shooting my scoped muzzleloader and I had the one with open sights.A while after shooting light I saw some legs moving through the woods and got the binoculars out. It looked like a small forkhorn until I saw it scratch his head with his rear hoof. By the time I got the gun around he had continued into the bushes. About an hour later I saw a doe walking away from where Daniel was hunting. (I think at this point in life I was still horn hunting. My philosophy of buck hunting or deer hunting shifts back and forth I think depending on how much meat we have in the freezer.) I wasn't going to shoot her, but was really watching her. About that time I heard Daniel shoot. The doe was only about 70 yards from him. She casually looked that way and then went back to eating and slowly walked off. Deer are crazy. Sometimes a twig snap will clear out every animal in the country, and other times (like this) a point plank gunshot doesn't phase them. After a while I got down and met up with Daniel. We went and looked for blood, but couldn't really find any. I told him that he might have missed. He said if he missed that shot, rested at 10 yards, that he was done hunting. We walked uphill to look for a body instead of a blood trail and found him about 40 yards away on the other side of the thicket. Last but not least, when field dressing a deer, know how to tell the stomach from the belly muscle.