Switcharoo Of the Rut . . . Of All the Years!

For the past several years now one of my favorite traditions has been the New Year weekend hunt with one of my dearest friends in the world, David Hooper.  David has been inspiring me since about 2007 when an interesting chain of events placed us together on his sail boat on one of Texas' crown jewel lakes, Lake Travis.  Years passed and one day he was clear to make a trip out to my small ranch near Del Rio, TX.

David is relatively new to hunting and shooting sports.  He quickly became astute regarding firearms in general and in rather short order became very skilled at the art/science of reloading ammunition and bringing the very best out of his guns.  In this regard, the student certainly became the teacher in our relationship.

One of my greatest desires has been to take David out to the ranch and tune him into the same frequency of joy that I have enjoyed for over a decade. I wanted him to get out and hunt and experience a successful harvest.

Each year that we would go on our New Year deer camp retreat something would happen;  The deer just aren't moving, It rained the whole time, the rut was over, an so on.  Poor David just couldn't catch a brake. David hunted harder than anyone I know.  He would sit in the stand all day, he truly deserved (an still does) a big buck.

Fast forward to 2016.  A year earlier, in our 2015/2016 hunt (rained) I came to the "Ah-ha" that he was coming too late in the season.  By the time of his hunt the rut was over and the bucks were just laying up.  I told David "Next year let's move your hunt up some.  Let's try to time it to when the rut is occurring.  So we did.  We waited, we watched, and at the spur of the moment I felt that the rut was due and we needed to make our weekend trip now.  We loaded up, we hunted hard, we saw virtually nothing!  Skunked again!

A couple of weeks later we are approaching New Year weekend 2017.  Well, you can bet that I'm going hunting.  I ended up extending an invitation to an old friend from church, Noah Mingus, who has never been hunting.  It was wonderful catching up with an old friend and sharing the ranch experience.   As much fun as we had and as much as I like Noah, this story is about something else.  This is the story of the damnedest timing snafu of all times.

Noah and I arrive in the middle of the night on early Saturday morning.  We hunted Saturday morning and evening and saw nothing. On Sunday, the real story begins!

Sunday morning Noah is up and at 'em and heads off to the elevated box stand that was built for and in honor of David Hooper.  He sat patiently from sunrise awaiting a shot at a buck.

My stand was simply the back porch of the cabin.  It offers 200 to 450 yard shots with the majority in the 250 range. I set up on the back porch in my jammies, with a cup of coffee and my trusty dog Pepper sitting in the chair next to me.

About 8:45 or 9:00 a.m. I saw movement way out at about 400 yards. As I began to glass the area I was able to make out a buck. The buck made haste getting to the end of the canyon ridge that we call the saddle.  Now he's about 235 yards and ready to be scoped and shot if I like what I see.

BOOM!!  Nothing.  Boom!!  Nothing again. Now I am starting to see multiple bucks chasing one lone doe!  They are everywhere!  My 7mm-Mag and I just can't get a shot to connect.  I'm talking about relatively easy shots over sand bags.  After much disgust and about 6 shots, nothing!  I hit nothing!

I am disgusted with myself and with my gun at this point.  All the deer were gone.  Interestingly, the largest buck, my target, stayed on task and continued after the doe.  They disappeared into the thick and headed toward Noah.  I hoped to hear a loud boom coming from his stand. Nothing.

After an ample amount of time I headed over to Noah.  He tells me of this doe walking by and how he got his binoculars out to observe her.  Afterword, I mentioned that when you see the doe, get the gun ready because there is possibly a buck right behind her.  There was indeed a buck right behind her; the one I had missed.  He stopped broad sided to Noah, presented him with a few shots and moved on.  Noah learned something firsthand on this hunting trip and he is now a better hunter because of it.  In lay terms, the buck walked right over to Noah, hooked him in the ass and then went and got laid.  Noah and I then proceeded on around to the saddle area to do due diligence in looking for blood.  Nothing.

We got back to the cabin.  Noah and I walked out onto the back porch and set my other gun up, a Mossberg Predator in a little .223.  It's my favorite gun and I can shoot it well.  Not 10 minutes after we got sat down, the buck that had been chasing the doe, that I had missed and that had hooked Noah and I both in the ass earlier that morning shows up returning from his booty call.  He popped out about 250 yards across the canyon.  Now, at 250 yards one shouldn't be shooting a .223 at deer unless you really have the shot down.  I'm on a bench, I have sand bags and a mill dot scope that I trust.  I put the cross hair just above the skull with the intended point of impact to be the base of the skull and neck. This way I'm hoping for a super clean kill or a total miss.  Deep breath, squeeze the trigger, BOOM!  The deer drops like a sack of feed.  I think I'll retire that 7 Mag.

OK.  So, I got a deer this year and on the last day of regular deer season.  Yay!  But the "Hell of It All" factor is that this was going to be David's weekend; the one year that we changed his standing dates.  I built the deer stand specifically for David.  A decent buck walked right past his stand.  The rut pulled a total "SWITCHAROO".

Damn the luck!