WIll's First deer Hunt 2013

Fredi and I went to a hunting hole that Fredi had only discovered last week and not yet hunted, so we had mixed expectations of what would happen.  We had to trek about a quarter mile through thick brush to get down to a clearing where a stream runs through.  As we walked down the last few yards and the clearing was opening before us, Fredi came to a complete halt and started waving me over.  It was still only 6:30 in the morning and the sun had barely even broke the sky but sure enough there were two beautiful does standing on a small island in the the middle of the stream about 80 yards out.  Fredi is now frantically waving me over saying with urgent whispers "Deer! Deer! Deer!".  I quickly step in front of him and kneel to steady my shot.  The does are both facing directly at us and at this point have taken notice of our commotion.  Just as I fired my shot the does turned to run away!  Fredi yells out "you got it! you hit her!" and I was virtually certain I did as well since their attempt to run gave me a side body center mass shot. This all happened very, very fast though...

Despite Fredi exclaiming that I hit the doe, she still ran at least 30 yards into a thickly wooded area and disappeared over a small hill.  We tracked down to the island and started to look for the blood trail, but there literally was no sign at all.  We walked down the stream bank 50 yards and still saw nothing, realized we had gone more than far enough, so we tracked back to the island where the deer originally were standing.  Astonished at having no sign of a wound whatsoever, we concluded that I must have grazed the deer or completely missed. It was still not yet 7am so we decided to sit down fairly close to where we lost the deer to face back up the stream and wait for another one.

At that point the downward spiral of missing a really really good shot set in.  Not only that, but this was my first shot at a deer I'd ever taken and I felt like I had missed THE golden opportunity.  We sat there and quietly waited, Fredi shared a story about missing deer to make me feel better, and I basically prepared myself for my next opportunity.  Then suddenly after 30 minutes there was a rustling sound right next to us in the shrubs which caught both of our attention.  Fredi slowly stood up to look around the thick shrubs and see if another deer was approaching.  To my incredible surprise Fredi starts saying "Holy crap! It's your deer man! She's just sitting right here!!"  I JUMPED to my feet and sure enough sitting in the shrubs not even 4 yards away from us.  She was clearly hurt but there was still no blood around her.  I finished the job and when we inspected her for the first shot we found that it entered in her hind and had done substantial damage to her muscle but didn't hit any vital organs.

So the hunt went from utter failure to complete success in about a second, or 35 minutes, but still an amazing hunt and an amazing experience with Fredi.