Daniel Kunkel

I got pretty excited because usually the does come out first and I only had a buck tag. But it went into a big patch of pines a ways away. About 2 minutes later Dad saw saw the same one come out again. It was headed to a swamp to our right. It was too dark to use my 20 gauge because it doesn’t have fiber-optic sights. So Dad gave me the scope muzzle loader.

Dad grunted at the deer and it stopped. It was through some brush so I started to look around for a clear shot. The deer started to walk again so Dad grunted again and it stopped. I started looking around again but didn’t find a hole to shoot through. The deer started walking and got behind a bunch of brush. When it got to an area where it wasn’t so brushy, Dad grunted at it and it stopped. Again I started to look for a clear shot.

I found one, only it was about 5 yards in front of the deer that was about 80 yards away. The deer started walking and Dad grunted again. The deer stopped perfectly in my hole that was about 3 inches. But my hole was about 15 yards away so I could see about half of the deer. Then I just put the crosshairs on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. I hadn’t shot a muzzle loader that season yet so of course I look up and all I saw was gray smoke.

The wind was blowing towards behind us to our left, the deer was in front of us to our right and Dad was sitting on my right. So I closed my eyes and mouth and turned my head as the smoke blew by. Dad however didn’t get much smoke in his face and he saw it run into the woods where the swamp is. He also said it was running pretty good. So we got out of our stand and started to look for tracks and blood. When we walked up to look we flushed a deer but it wasn’t the one I had shot at.

It was pretty dark so it was hard to see. Even though the ground was covered in about 1 inch of snow, it was a CRP field about 1 foot high so it didn’t cover all the ground. Then we went back to the car, put away the guns, drove out in the field and shone the car headlights into the woods. We started to look in the woods and after about 5 minutes we found a lone pair of tracks in the snow. The snow had fallen within the past couple hours so they were fresh tracks. There was no blood and it looked like it was running fine.

We went out to where I had shot it and started to look around. I was going slow and looking hard. But Dad went a bit faster and ahead of me. We had only looked about 45 seconds when Dad yelled “WAHOOOO.” So I knew he had found something good. What the deer did was; after I shot it, it ran into the woods then a bit further down it ran out of the woods and died, but we didn’t see it. When I found out he had found my deer. I started running over there.

When I saw how much the rack was off the ground, I knew it was pretty big. At first I thought it was a 6 point, and then I started to think it was an 8 point. I picked up the rack and started to think it was a 10 point! I saw the drop tine on one side and said “Dad it’s got a drop tine!” I reached 6 on one side and thought “this is a big deer!” It was an 11 point deer! Also, half of its right rear leg was missing, and we think that its front right leg was broken; which made unique antler growth on the left side. I’m very thankful that I have such a good Dad that is so kind. I also know that the Lord helped me a lot. Like helping me find a hole to shoot through, helping me shoot it good, and helping us find it to. This was my first buck with a gun – AWESOME!!!!