Oops. (Part 1)

You can't take a bullet back. Once the hammer falls, it's gone, and whatever is in front of it, is going to be gone too. You just hope it's what you wanted to shoot.

I killed a button buck yesterday. Yeah, I killed Bambi.

The only excuse I have is that I left my binoculars in the truck because where I was sitting had a limited range, and therefore, or so I thought, I wouldn't need them to discern the sex of a questionable deer at hundreds of yards with the 10X50's. Besides, I had the Marlin .444 topped with a Vari-X III 1.5-5x scope, so If I needed to, I could check the head for nubs, and count tines, whatever.

Well, I checked the head for antlers, and didn't see any. I know that. At 5x, there wasn't a thing showing. At 10x, I know I would've seen the little brow buttons, but "the twins" were in the truck. So, I settled the cross on what I thought was the doe's shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.

At that moment, two unexpected things occurred simultaneously. One, the hammer dropped, clicked loudly, and nothing happened. The "doe" looked up and stared at me. The other unexpected thing was that I flinched like a beginner anticipating the recoil. Two things I couldn't believe would happen to me, brett mothershead, had just happened.

I thought I had forgotten to chamber a round after pulling the rifle from of the truck to hunt, but I knew I had. So I levered the rifle open and out spilled a .444 cartridge, with only the slightest dent in the primer. So I quietly levered a fresh round in, all the while watching the chamber to ensure a well fed cartridge and the "doe" making sure "she" was still there.

Of course, by now, "she" was aware of the big, clinking bush I was trying to be, and was acting flighty, as if "she" were about to raise the white flag and bolt. So, now, quartering to me, I put the cross on her shoulder/armpit area, and this time, ignoring the impulse to hurry, slowly pulled the trigger, took the recoil like a man, and was amazed to watch "her" run off into the woods.

My Marlin's hand-loaded .444 cartridge is topped with a 265 grain hunk of lead-jacketed copper with only the metplate still showing lead. It shucks out at about 2200 feet per second at the muzzle, and if I had hit "her" where I thought I was going to, "she" should have dropped in "her" tracks. I knew something else was up, so I muttered to myself and made a decision.

Rather than sit until the last legal light, I decided to get up and make sure "she" was squarely hit, find "her", and make sure we could get "her" out quickly after the other guys were done hunting as well so we could all get home before 8:00 pm--a must for the hunter with a wife and kids.

And at the point of impact, Instead of bright pink lung tissue and rib bone, all I saw was meat and hair on the ground, and my heart sank. What that meant was I hadn't put my bullet through the "boiler room". I hadn't done my job like I'm used to doing. I visualize the shot again, sitting here at the keyboard, and the only thing I can figure is that quartering to me, a hair's width to the left or right, line of sight, translates to a couple or more inches on the deer's body, fore or aft.

It meant I shot "her" a little behind the heart lung area. It meant I had better start tracking "her" before the sun settled behind the hills along side the Dan River. It meant "she" could run for days perhaps. Luckily, I found a bright red blood trail that was indicative of eminent death if not a well-placed shot. I knew "she" couldn't have gone far, and sure enough, piled up in the bottom of a creek bed, there "she" was--little over thirty yards from where "she" took the bullet.

Only problem was, "she" was rather small. And, of course, "she" had a raised eye-brow look to "her" that only meant one thing. I muttered, "Fuuuuck," under my breath and rubbed the hair out of my eyes, and hated the feeling I had. Now I was the shit-heel.

I hated that I'd killed a future monster buck. Especially since the unwritten rule for the land I was hunting on was "no little bucks". Had he been the tiny doe i thought, I could have chuckled it off with the rest of the guys, but this was serious. A button buck...I don't even like writing it now.

Right then and there, I hatched a plan...