By Friday I had not yet laid my eyes on a deer. The highlights of my hunt up to the point were spending time with my good friends, finding a shed moose antler and stumbling across a bear’s den (Seemingly vacant, but admittedly I didn’t look too closely!!!).
The deer watch that I drew for Friday afternoon was not known to be a producer and upon arrival I found that the once clear view from the tree stand to now be a virtual wall of young tag alders and poplar slash. So rather than take the tree stand, I half-heartedly positioned myself on the ground inside a tiny island of pines among the slash, offering me an opening slightly larger than a living room.
No sooner had I gotten into position, when one of our hounds barked and a snowshoe hare dashed by me in a blur. With the dogs on a rabbit I was just about to relax my grip on my rifle when the woods suddenly exploded with deer!
Before I knew it, two deer sped by me in the thick cover, offering me no shot even if I had been fast enough to draw on them. Then a small buck suddenly burst into my little clearing, coming straight at me at full speed!!! He was only ten paces away when I pulled the trigger on my .308 pump action and braced myself for impact with the deer.
Fortunately the deer dropped in his tracks.
Just then a bigger buck came barrelling in from my right side, leaping over the first deer. I took my first shot while the buck was in the air, my second shot when his hooves hit the ground, but it was not until I took my third shot, just before he entered the thick slash, that that I saw the second buck crumple.
At that very same moment the first buck started to kick so I ran up to him, gun at the ready, and found him dead in the second it took me to get there. I then turned my attention back to other buck, only to discover that he was gone!
A few minutes of worried searching ended when I spotted him only 10 metres farther into the poplars, but he was lying with his back toward me, making him virtually invisible on the forest floor. His antlers were tangled in the remains of a 3 centimetre diameter sapling, snapped in half by the force of the deer’s collision.
With two bucks on the ground in seemingly the blink of an eye, my heart was pounding, my head was reeling and I felt the need to sit down to try to make sense out of what had just happened. Now I know full well that liquor has no place during the hunt, but I must admit that if somebody had been there to offer me a shot of whiskey at that moment, I just might have taken it!
Back at the camp, after the bucks were skinned and I had had a hot shower, I did finally have that shot of whiskey. And perhaps a few more
.
My double on deer: Fork-horn and 8-pointer.
Way to drop 'em!! 
Congrats on your double 
