Robbie Kunkle

At 7:40, I saw a buck 150 yards in front of us walking a ditch bank, slowly working away from us. I debated whether or not to shoot him, as he was what looked like a 6 point in the rain. I kept whispering to my Grandpa, “Do you think I should shoot him? I know it’s a long shot, but he looks like he might be big enough…”. (I was hoping for a bigger buck, because we knew there were a couple of them in the area.) My Grandpa replied, “I don’t know, yeah, let’s shoot him.” I promptly brought up the gun, and made the shot (at 170 yards) as he was walking towards the neighbors property.

Immediately after the shot, I tried to put the scope back on the deer, to see where he ran to, only to find the scope looking at a bunch of weeds and brush. I asked my Grandpa, “What happened? Where did he go? What was his reaction? Did I hit him?” To which he replied, “I don’t know, I couldn’t see him when you shot.” I got on the 2-way radio and started talking to my Dad, and told him, “I just shot a buck, what should I do? I feel really confident about the shot, should I go look for blood, and see if I hit him?”

My Dad replied, “What did he do when you shot him?” When he learned that we didn’t know, he said, “I’d give it a while if I were you, but you can go out there when ever you want.” I talked with my Grandpa, and we decided to wait at least a half-an-hour before going to try to recover it. About 15 minutes later, my Dad called in and said, “Hey, if another buck comes by, make sure that it has at least 4 points on 1 side if you shoot him.” (In Michigan, you can get 2 buck tags, but one of the deer that you shoot has to have at least 4 points on 1 of the sides.) 2 MINUTES after he said that, I looked out the window, and at 120 yards, and moving away from us was a big buck.

I brought up the gun, looked at him in the scope, and saw all that I needed to see. I didn’t take time to count the points, I just saw that he had a lot of them, and after my Grandpa whistled at him to slow him down, I pulled the trigger when he was 155 yards away. He immediately went down, and I turned to my Grandpa and said, “He’s down, and he’s big, let’s go get him.” As we walked out there, I radioed my Dad, and said, “Dad, you are not going to believe this, but I just shot my second buck this morning, and I’m not joking.” My Dad told me later that all he understood was, “I’m not joking.” As we walked up to the 2nd buck, we could see the 1st buck lying not 20 yards away from the 2nd.

As it turns out, they were both 8 points, and I had dropped them both! The first buck did not move a muscle after I shot him, which accounts for us not being able to tell where he ran. I couldn’t believe it! They were both on the ground by 8:00 A.M.! The second buck weighed (field-dressed) 200 lbs., and it was a 4 1/2 (at least) year old deer. My Dad (roughly) scored the bigger buck, and it will score around 120 with a nice 16 1/2 inch inside spread. The smaller buck was one that I would be thrilled with, but next to the bigger buck, he doesn’t look as nice as he really is. We hunted the rest of the day, but nobody else got anything. So, after an hour of hunting, I have now been promoted (demoted? 🙂 to official deer-driver. 😀