What If?

Psalm 103:2 "Bless the Lord all my soul, and forget not thy benefits"
" Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all they diseases"

Read that twice, it will do you good. What if? What if, I don't get a buck this year? Well first of all I will be dissapointed in myself and secondly I will live to hunt another year. When you get to be my age, the method of taking a buck sometimes, exceeds the satisfaction of just shooting another buck. A mentioned earlier in my BLOG in another post, I gave a nice buck a shave and a haircut opening day around 9:45AM by taking some hair off his brisket. If I had carried the Ithaca 12 GA Storm mdl that morning instead of the TC Encore, the outcome would have been different. See my other post for details. I did not end up taking that buck home, but the thrill of the encounter was still there. I had the crosshairs of my Mueller Red Dot 2X7X32 scope on a nice doe an hour prior to that opening day for about 30 seconds and did not harvest her either. She kept looking back over her shoulder craning her neck, and I felt there was a buck behind her, so I kept the scope on her, but held off until she had enough, and in two bounds she was into the thick stuff. Had I not held out for the buck that did not materialize, and had I pulled the trigger 1/2 second later on the buck at 9:45AM, I would have filled my buck tag and my doe tag before noon opening day.

I would have been happy to have the deer, and sad at the same time, since I just like being in the woods and having an opportunity to hunt. I am not unlike a lot of you folks, in that, sure I want to take a 150 class buck with double drop tines and a lot of mass and a 21 inch spread. I know the old adage that, "You can't take a big one home, if you keep shooting lesser bucks". I know that is true and if the opportunity arises for the 150 class buck, I will do my best to bring him home. In the interim, this year it is late in the season in NY, and if I put my scope on a crotch horn and/or a nice doe this coming weekend, I will do my best to put the deer down humanely and quickly.

We have one weekend of shotgun left in NY, and then next Monday, muzzleloading season opens and extends to the following weekend. Hope springs eternal and part of the fun of hunting is you just never know. My brother's scouting, food plots, and personal sightings this season, gives me the knowledge that there still are some very nice bucks out there. I may just get fortunate and connect with one of them. That is why they call it hunting and not just shooting. Dan http://www.gunsandoptics.com/