Insert obscenity of your choice

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Stepped into the stand about 4:45 yesterday. It was a good day to hunt.

A few minutes of 7, I saw way down in the bottom. Movement. AHA!

Yes indeedy, a deer was slowly making it's way to me. Calm. Not in a hurry. No rush.

It came in and started feeding. Under the feeder, he raised his head, banging his rack into the bottom of the feeder. That scared him a bit as he jumped back. Not enough to leave as he kept feeding.

Eventually he worked his way around to me and clear of everything. I slipped the smokepole out.

He saw me. No idea exactly WHAT was going on, but he knew there was something.

I lined the sights up and a 209 primer ignited 100 grains of WhiteHots under a 250 grain PowerBelt hollowpoint.

This being a black powder firearm, I had no idea where I hit him. There was a 10-foot cloud of thick smoke between me and the deer the instant after I pulled the trigger.

When the smoke cleared, I got out. Found blood. A good sign but also not a good sign. I was aiming for his neck. A neck shot should have floored him right there.

A moment or so after the shot Clint & Stacy saw the deer walk past.

Not going to give you gory details, but the deer was hit.

We tracked that deer for more than a mile, It circled around and around. I have never tracked a deer that twisted and turned like that one. Eventually with batteries running VERY low and us having only a marginal idea of where we were, we called it quits. We came out of the woods about a mile from the stands and two miles by road.

The deer is dead now. Has to be. The amount of blood we found tells me he's dead.

While searching for the deer I also lost my cell phone, which had my driver's license and library card.

Somewhere a squirrel was busy making calls to 1-900-GO-WILD until I had the phone shut off.

Go find it you say? How? It's on vibrate and in the middle of a dry bottom. We marked the trail as best we could, but that was last night. No telling what happened to the trail markers.

So, DL and phone are replaced. Phone is charging as I write. If you have my phone number and want to be in my contact list, call me sometime in the next few days. Just not this evening please. At my daughter's request I also added texting, but if it is the PIA it was last time, it's coming off.

Regardless of that I'm still extremely upset about the deer. I believe in a quick, clean kill. He didn't get that. This was the second deer I've lost in my hunting career. The first was the very first deer I shot.

I'm not happy about either one.

Before you decide to rip my head off, I point out deer die painfully every day of the year in this nation - hit by cars, starvation and disease. Compared to some of the ways a deer dies, even with the poor shot I delivered, that deer died quicker than many others.

I only take shots I know I can make. I knew I could make that one. I'd take the same shot every time and will again. I don't know what happened.