I'm still flying high from the weekend and wanted to share my story.
Let's preface all of this by saying that I am 100% an amateur hunter. I have hunted grouse, rabbits, and a little bit of geese in the past, but big game hunting is very new to me. I'm a firearms instructor for pistol/shotgun/carbine as a side hustle, so i feel like I have a good handle on shooting in general, but shooting at big game at longer ranges is foreign to me. I also want to start by saying I have little to no interest in hunting for trophy, and that my motivation for hunting is to fill my freezer.
I am lucky enough to have a friend let me hunt on his property, and I have been taking full advantage of that. Thanksgiving day I did a quick stalk on a deer near a cutline and dropped a doe at less than 100 yards to fill one tag, so for this weekend just past it was my mission to get a buck. I knew that saturday was going to be rainy and miserable, and had no idea how that would impact my likelihood to see any deer out and about, but I gathered up my gear and headed out before first light.
My usual sit and wait spot is the corner of a rather large alfalfa field that the local deer congregated at in the morning, making it a great spot (apparently) to hang out. I parked my butt and waited for an hour or so with no luck, so I grabbed my rifle and walked a trail that split a couple other fields farther into the property, but I had no luck there either, so back I went.
After sitting and walking a few times I was getting discouraged, and since I was getting cold and cranky I decided to take a longer walk. On this walk, waaaay on the far side of one field I spotted a lonely 2 point (1.25 point?) buck. He wasn't a trophy buck by any means, but he was young and made of food, so I wanted him regardless.
I pushed the treeline and got as close as I could before I would be walking right out into the open, and was uncomfortably far away still. I am terrible with ranging accurately with just my eyes, so I always keep a range finder on me. My heart rate was jacked up and I was breathing heavily so I had a hell of a time steadying my rangefinder, but I finally got him ranged at 340 yards. Now, with being an amateur hunter and generally inexperienced with longer range shots, this was troubling to me. I know enough about ballistics to know that the 150gr federal power shok softpoints out of my 16.5" barreled Ruger Gunsite Scout in .308 with a 3-9x40 Vortex viper w/ dead hold BDC reticle was not ideal for this, and that my experience with shooting at living things past 100~ish yards was next to zero. However, I also know good shooting fundamentals and that I have a good mechanical zero on my rifle with a properly calibrated scope.
I did a little math and knew that I had lots of wiggle room with it being such an open field, so I decided to make the shot work. I used a tree and some barbed wire to support my rifle from my kneeling position, dialed my scope up to 9x, and got my reticle centered on him just between the 300 and 400 hash marks. He wasn't facing me, nor was he broadside; he was a mixture of both, but 2/3 of the way facing me I'd say, so I knew I had a good opening at plenty of effective spots to hit depending on how he was standing.
I waited for him to move his head in just the right way, kept taking deep breaths to calm down, and I squeezed off my shot. I lost the sight picture as the rifle recoiled, but picked it up again in time to see him stumble a step or two, and his entire back end sink down almost to the ground. I looked up from my scope to see him run about 20 yards, then he went down. As I crossed over the fence and started walking toward him, I could see his head was still up and looking at me, and my heart sank. My biggest fear is having an animal needlessly suffer, and I was heartbroken to see that this was now happening. I started jogging to close the distance and he spotted this, got up and tried running again, and this time he went down for good.
Once I got about 80 yards or so from him, I could see his head was down and that he wasn't breathing, but still was not 100% sure if he was dead or not. A mixture of not wanting to have him suffer and also not wanting to get kicked by a deer made me choose to put a round high on the neck, just behind his ear to be sure he was dead, which I know believe he was.
As I approached him felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I had connected my first shot, and that whether he was alive or dead by the time I hit that last shot, he was definitely dead now, and I had claimed my first buck. It took a while to find the entry wound, and there wasn't an exit wound. I found out while field dressing him that the round entered high up between his neck and left shoulder, dropped in a bit, and exited between two of his ribs on the opposite side, with the bullet finally stopping in a thick cap of fat just on the inside of his fur.
I spent some time yesterday getting him butchered and vacuum sealed, and between the venison stew we had last night and all the rest of the meat we got off him, i'm looking forward to enjoying him throughout the winter, and the memory of the day long past that.
After this incident I have realized that I'm too dependent on the pre set hash marks on my BDC scope, and will be changing that for something in mil/mil so I can have more confidence and control of my longer shots.
Let's preface all of this by saying that I am 100% an amateur hunter. I have hunted grouse, rabbits, and a little bit of geese in the past, but big game hunting is very new to me. I'm a firearms instructor for pistol/shotgun/carbine as a side hustle, so i feel like I have a good handle on shooting in general, but shooting at big game at longer ranges is foreign to me. I also want to start by saying I have little to no interest in hunting for trophy, and that my motivation for hunting is to fill my freezer.
I am lucky enough to have a friend let me hunt on his property, and I have been taking full advantage of that. Thanksgiving day I did a quick stalk on a deer near a cutline and dropped a doe at less than 100 yards to fill one tag, so for this weekend just past it was my mission to get a buck. I knew that saturday was going to be rainy and miserable, and had no idea how that would impact my likelihood to see any deer out and about, but I gathered up my gear and headed out before first light.
My usual sit and wait spot is the corner of a rather large alfalfa field that the local deer congregated at in the morning, making it a great spot (apparently) to hang out. I parked my butt and waited for an hour or so with no luck, so I grabbed my rifle and walked a trail that split a couple other fields farther into the property, but I had no luck there either, so back I went.
After sitting and walking a few times I was getting discouraged, and since I was getting cold and cranky I decided to take a longer walk. On this walk, waaaay on the far side of one field I spotted a lonely 2 point (1.25 point?) buck. He wasn't a trophy buck by any means, but he was young and made of food, so I wanted him regardless.
I pushed the treeline and got as close as I could before I would be walking right out into the open, and was uncomfortably far away still. I am terrible with ranging accurately with just my eyes, so I always keep a range finder on me. My heart rate was jacked up and I was breathing heavily so I had a hell of a time steadying my rangefinder, but I finally got him ranged at 340 yards. Now, with being an amateur hunter and generally inexperienced with longer range shots, this was troubling to me. I know enough about ballistics to know that the 150gr federal power shok softpoints out of my 16.5" barreled Ruger Gunsite Scout in .308 with a 3-9x40 Vortex viper w/ dead hold BDC reticle was not ideal for this, and that my experience with shooting at living things past 100~ish yards was next to zero. However, I also know good shooting fundamentals and that I have a good mechanical zero on my rifle with a properly calibrated scope.
I did a little math and knew that I had lots of wiggle room with it being such an open field, so I decided to make the shot work. I used a tree and some barbed wire to support my rifle from my kneeling position, dialed my scope up to 9x, and got my reticle centered on him just between the 300 and 400 hash marks. He wasn't facing me, nor was he broadside; he was a mixture of both, but 2/3 of the way facing me I'd say, so I knew I had a good opening at plenty of effective spots to hit depending on how he was standing.
I waited for him to move his head in just the right way, kept taking deep breaths to calm down, and I squeezed off my shot. I lost the sight picture as the rifle recoiled, but picked it up again in time to see him stumble a step or two, and his entire back end sink down almost to the ground. I looked up from my scope to see him run about 20 yards, then he went down. As I crossed over the fence and started walking toward him, I could see his head was still up and looking at me, and my heart sank. My biggest fear is having an animal needlessly suffer, and I was heartbroken to see that this was now happening. I started jogging to close the distance and he spotted this, got up and tried running again, and this time he went down for good.
Once I got about 80 yards or so from him, I could see his head was down and that he wasn't breathing, but still was not 100% sure if he was dead or not. A mixture of not wanting to have him suffer and also not wanting to get kicked by a deer made me choose to put a round high on the neck, just behind his ear to be sure he was dead, which I know believe he was.
As I approached him felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I had connected my first shot, and that whether he was alive or dead by the time I hit that last shot, he was definitely dead now, and I had claimed my first buck. It took a while to find the entry wound, and there wasn't an exit wound. I found out while field dressing him that the round entered high up between his neck and left shoulder, dropped in a bit, and exited between two of his ribs on the opposite side, with the bullet finally stopping in a thick cap of fat just on the inside of his fur.
I spent some time yesterday getting him butchered and vacuum sealed, and between the venison stew we had last night and all the rest of the meat we got off him, i'm looking forward to enjoying him throughout the winter, and the memory of the day long past that.
After this incident I have realized that I'm too dependent on the pre set hash marks on my BDC scope, and will be changing that for something in mil/mil so I can have more confidence and control of my longer shots.
