Birdshot and backlashes

There it goes. Deer season came and deer season went. Sixteen days. Some hunters hunted every day. Some only on weekends. Some only on the first weekend. Some hunters were successful and got their deer right away. Some hunters were successful and got one later on. Some were successful and didn’t get one at all, thus did not have the mess of dressing it out, dragging it out, skinning it out and cutting it up. Enjoyed the hike to the woods, the fresh air and sunshine but no mess.“Aha!” a hunter might say, “But you didn’t get any venison to eat.”True. But while deer meat is quite palatable, I have never had a deer steak that came anywhere close to my wife’s fried chicken.STRANGE DEER STORYLinda Fryer at the Chamber of Commerce has a very interesting deer hunting tale. Linda had an operation on her shoulder and had one arm in a sling. So all the hunting she could do was one-armed. It was her left arm, so her shooting arm and right hand were OK, but certainly limited.In any event, so Linda relates, she drove her pickup truck down a logging trail and headed for her deer stand in the early morning on opening day, rifle slung over her good shoulder, lunch in a pack on her back. She hiked to her stand on the edge of a cutover while it was still dark. With her flashlight, she got seated, put her pack on the ground and placed her rifle on her knees. With one hand she loaded the rifle and then enjoyed a cup of coffee.Shortly after daybreak, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Holding her breath, she waited, rifle barrel balanced on an adjacent tree branch. Down the trail came an enormous buck, a 12-pointer of massive proportions. The only trouble was, a big doe was walking with him, on the side toward Linda. She had the rifle up, looking down the sights, but all she could see was the big doe. Both deer moved slowly, stopping often until they were directly opposite Linda, feeding on the rim of the cutover.She could not figure out how to get off a killing shot without hitting the doe. As she looked on with desperation, she noted a big granite boulder directly under the doe. Actually, the doe was straddling the boulder while feeding. Linda, when she has two good arms, happens to be a very skilled pool player. She studied the scene and determined what she felt was a possible billiard shot, banking the .30-06 slug off the granite rock and into the heart of the buck.Sizing up the shot and the angle, she carefully squeezed the trigger. “Never should have tried it,” Linda admitted later. “A rifle slug does not act like a billiard ball.”The slug ricocheted off the rock but missed. Both deer jumped and raced away. However, the ricocheting slug whined across the clearcut and nailed a forkhorn buck, which Linda hadn’t even seen, that was apparently feeding about 100 yards away. The forkhorn jumped, mortally wounded, and took off running, vanishing into a clump of balsam brush. Linda waited a few minutes, then tiptoed over to look for the buck. She found blood and began to follow the trail, wondering what to do if the buck jumped because she could not shoot offhand with only one arm.In any event, the blood trail circled around to the logging trail and, lo and behold, ended up behind her station wagon, with the buck almost lying against the tailgate. The deer was small enough that she could dress it out and shove it into the pickup truck with one arm.But that was not all. A grouse had been feeding on the logging road behind the pickup truck. When the buck came staggering around behind the pickup truck and fell down, one antler speared the ruffed arouse. So she got a deer and a grouse with one shot. Unfortunately, no one was with her to verify the story, but Linda’s word is good enough for me.