There's No Such Thing As An Easy Shot

I missed. I blew it. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.

While deer hunting this week near my hometown of Emmetsburg, I had a great chance at a trophy buck. He was right in front of me. But I missed. I still can't believe it. How do you miss something as big as an elephant? How does that happen? How can you blaze away at close range and not hit anything? How does that happen? Here's how.

Wednesday was the last day of Iowa's first shotgun deer season. (Iowa has two, five-day shotgun deer seasons. I always go first season.) Normally, I hunt with my cousins and a couple of friends. Normally, we have all eight of our tags filled after two or three days. This year was different. After three days we only had two deer! Pathetic! Everyone was finished hunting though, except for me. I was determined to get a deer. I get a buck every year, and I had two more days to get it done.
Tuesday, I was close, but I wasn't quite close enough to make the shot count.

On Wednesday, I was hunting alone again, and honestly, I wasn't really expecting much success. I only had a few hours before I had to head for Cedar Falls and home.  As I said earlier, I've always hunted deer with a group.  But I soon found out that hunting deer alone is a lot like hunting turkeys.  It's a challenge trying to outsmart Iowa's turkeys every spring, and I found out it is just as challenging to try and outsmart Iowa's big game species, the whitetail.

Sure, I love hunting with my friends and family and sharing stories of the hunt with them at the end of the day, but I think I learned to like stalking whitetails, one-on-one, just as much. Just being in the woods at sunrise, playing the waiting game, or walking through a patch of tall switch grass, or sneaking up on an isolated grove or slough. That's what's it's like when you hunt deer on your own.

The day started out okay. I spotted a few deer as I drove to the piece of timber I was planning on setting up in for the first couple of hours. I was hopping to catch a deer traveling along the river, but after almost  two hours of trying to stay still in nearly sub-zero temps, I was practically frozen and ready to try something else. I decided to check out an isolated slough I knew of and had permission to hunt. I was able to walk up on the spot quietly and I told myself to take it slow through the snow-covered dense grass and thick cattails.

We had kicked several deer out of this same slough during pheasant season, and on the second day of deer season, we had missed a four point buck at this same spot. On my own, I took my time, trying to be as quiet as I could. I had the wind in my favor, and I was hoping to catch a deer napping. It was close to 11 a.m., and deer like to lay low in the middle of the day. Half-way through the patch I stopped and waited. I was trying to see into the dense grass all around me. I was hoping to spot those deer ears, or maybe a big rack through the tall grass. But nothing was there. I stood there for a full minute, maybe more. Nothing. I was about to move on, as I tried to imagine a deer in the thick grass about 30-yards ahead of me. Suddenly, about 10-yards to my left, the grass and cattails erupted.

The buck launched himself hard out of the brush, and he was headed almost straight away from me. His rack looked huge and wide, at least 10 points, and he was charging out of that slough, like a Sherman tank, right in front of me.

I knew he was mine. I brought my gun up and took dead aim and fired. ...... I missed. I aimed and fired again. I missed. Again. I missed. He was gone. Over the hill and out of sight. I never touched him.

How does that happen? It looked like the easiest shot in the book. How can you miss a shot like that? When it comes to shooting a trophy buck, I suck. I've thought it over a 100 times already and I think I know now what I did wrong. I hope it never happens again.

Maybe I should just stick to turkey hunting. But then, I've missed sure shots for turkeys before too. That's another story.