Hunting mistakes……

[416Jonny]

While I can’t match Carl’s exploits in the woods, this is a story of my hunt at Black River Plantation in Claredon County, SC.

Black River Plantation is a hunting preserve in the South Carolina lowlands about 45 mintues off of I-95.

I went on a boar and deer hunt with my friend Aaron Pollak in October of 2006. I let Aaron shoot my pre-’64 Winchester Model 70 in .30-06 built in 1954, while I had my trusty Winchester 1885 High Wall in .45-70. So, least to say, we were sufficiently armed for our adventure in the swamp.

In three days, Aaron never saw a creature. I had the chance to shoot a very nice doe on the first hunt, but there was a spike horn buck that just wouldn’t leave me alone to take a shot.

On the second to last hunt, I’d had about enough, and was ready to take down anything that moved. I had my opportunity about 15 minutes before sunset. An equally nice doe to the first one I saw came out of the swamp to investigate the patch of corn laid down roughly 40 yards away from me.

This is the part where my ego got waaaaaaay ahead of my shooting abilities. Okay, alittle more detail is really needed. My rifle is roughly 49” long with a sight plane of about three feet. In the dark that front sight post looks awefully tiny. Now, my hunting load (I handload all my ammo, haven’t bought a box of ammo in almost three years) is 418 grain round nose cast lead, 46 grains of Hogdon H4895 powder, Winchester Large Rifle Magnum primers and loaded to COL of 2.54 inches with taper crimp. Okay, this load has got me down to be able to shoot minute of angle groups out of a 32″ barrel consistently.

Something I’ve never done before is shoot out of a tree stand 15 feet in the air. Or at dusk. Or at a distance less than 50 yards (I spend most of my time shooting between 50 to 300 yards because that’s the distances my range had in North Carolina). Something else I’ve never done is shoot a deer. I’ve killed other critters, but not deer.

So the doe walks out. I aim. Things get quiet, except for my heart, which is going all out. I try to slow my breathing down, slowly squeeze the trigger like I’d done 500 other times on the range. BOOOM!!!! Of course, I didn’t hear a thing I was so crazy from (doe) fever. What I did hear was a loud “smack” from the impact. The doe took off in a sprint forward. I was sure that I’d hit the doe. When the guys came by to pick me up, I told them what had happened and we set out with the flash lights to look for the animal. 45 minutes of wandering around the swamp with flash lights came up with nothing, not even blood. We returned to the sight where the doe had been standing. The guide with a slightly annoyed tone showed me where I had gone wrong.

Laying on the ground was a tuft of hair probably an inch across in front of a 5 foot long crater left by that 418 grain cast lead bullet skimming across the doe’s back at 1500 fps and exploding in the wet clay. 😡

So, the closest I’ve come to shooting a deer was made not at some long range that I’d preparded for, but at a distance that I might as well have just thrown the bullet at it.

Jonny B.

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