Last week I had some vacation time and I visited my parents. I had a couple days to hunt with my dad, so last Wednesday we went out for muzzle loader season. My dad has a muzzleloader, but I don't. With only one gun between us, we decided to sit in the stand together and see what we could see.
When we arrived at our field of choice, we pulled the SD card out of the trail camera (which works about 50% of the time, sometimes), and put the SD card in our digital camera to see what creatures had been around. On the tiny one inch squared display screen of the camera, we saw these two monsters:
![Image](http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s396/Broadside2/IM000303.jpg)
![Image](http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s396/Broadside2/IM000321.jpg)
The first guy had been there two days ago, and the second buck had been there the night before. There was just the one photo of each of them, and both of the photos were at night time. Still a very good sign!
It was around one o'clock when we climbed up the mossy ladder to our rickety stand (no joke), loaded up the old smoke cannon, leaned back, and waited. And waited. And waited... Not a bluejay to be seen, or even one of those annoying squirrels.
After about an hour and a half, I fell asleep. No excuse, I just fell asleep. I woke up about half an hour later, still holding the half-cocked nose-loader. I didn't miss much during my little nap, but I felt fresh! My vision was sharp. Nothing could escape my gaze as I scanned the forest.
About three hours after getting in the stand, with daylight just starting to fade, my dad whispered "There's a deer!" and I followed his eyes to the far right corner of the field, where I could see a deer slowly making its way towards us from about 130 yards. I lifted the gun and used the scope to get a better look. My dad decided to get his binoculars out of their velcro case, but the velcro was made better than our trail camera and refused to lend access to the visual aid without a noisy protest, so I passed him the gun to look through. "No antlers."
The deer kept stopping and looking to its right (our left) every once in a while. It continued to slowly make its way towards us, and I watched it, scope still raised, for about ten minutes before noticing movement to my left. I whispered "movement left" and shifted the gun to get a better look. I could see what looked like the front end of a deer, but there was foliage in the way and it wasn't moving. I watched it for about thirty seconds before it moved again, and now I was sure it was a deer, but there were too many branches to get a clear look. Another thirty seconds, and the deer took five steps out of cover, maybe 75 yards away, and I saw antlers. "Antlers! There's antlers!" Another play-by-play from my dad.
I set my aim and thumbed the hammer, locking it into the rear-ready position with a loud click. The buck stopped all movement and stared what I'm sure was through the scope, directly into my right eye. I pushed off the safety, then moved my finger back to the trigger, and began to - BANG!.
The trigger pull on my fathers muzzle loader is ridiculously light.
Anyway, here's our buck:
![Image](http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s396/Broadside2/IMG_0820.jpg)
Looks like the guy from one of the photos above! The recovery was only about 30 yards, and dragging him over the snow was easy. Nine points! My personal best
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Thanks dad!