More bang for your buck

Antlers do the trick, lure buck

The writer used a 10-year-old set of antlers and his favorite rifle to bag his first buck of the season Monday in Grant County.

The writer used a 10-year-old set of antlers and his favorite rifle to bag his first buck of the season Monday in Grant County.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

He was my consolation prize for an uneventful deer season, a big 9-point buck that I didn’t shoot.

I found his remains in the waning minutes of the 2003 Missouri gun deer season as I left the farm I was hunting near the Osage River community of Mary’s Home. I cut through a cedar thicket, dropped into a rocky hollow and found a white tailed buck skeleton lying in a dry creek bed.

It was picked clean, with no trace of hide, but it looked fresh. The antlers were still smooth, shiny and ivory colored. They would have scored somewhere in the 120 range.

They were the only antlers I saw that season, and I’ve had them ever since. My wife uses them as models when she paints white tailed deer. I have used them in half-hearted attempts to lure in bucks, but never successfully.

Until Monday.

This has been a strange deer season for me. I zeroed in muzzleloader season. I had great hopes for modern gun season, but I always zigged when I should have zagged. Exhausted from a fruitless road trip to the Ozarks, I sat out the first Wednesday of the season.

That was the day when deer moved all day in our part of the country, and hunters killed some impressive bucks.

A member of my club invited me to hunt from one of his stands.

I gladly accepted. As an afterthought, I stuffed my Missouri rattlers into my backpack, along with a full Thermos of pecan praline coffee from a nearby gas station and a couple of packs of nacho cheese flavored crackers.

The solunar tables in the Outdoors section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette listed a major activity period at 11:05 a.m. and a minor activity period at 5:15 p.m. I swear by those tables, so I had a leisurely morning and got on the stand about 9 a.m.

I brought my favorite rifle, a Ruger M77 chambered in 6.5x55 Swedish, and some special handloads featuring 140-gr. Sierra GameKings powered by 44.5 grains of IMR-4831.

That’s a hot load that shoots accurately from that rifle, and it’s designed for better bullet expansion at long ranges.

The morning was clear and cool, with a bright azure sky and a slight breeze that murmured through the pines, kind of like the female voice that whispers through the bridge of John Lennon’s No. 9 Dream. The scent, the light and the sharp bite of the morning air filled my chest and made my neck tingle. It was pure Arkansas autumn, my intoxicant of choice.

I saw movement in the ditch way down the road to the right. I looked through my Leupold Mojave binoculars and saw a turkey. I saw another, and yet another. There were six, all hens. They came straight down the middle of the road, their blue heads glowing like pool hall neon.

They veered off the road in front of me and evaporated into the woods.

At about 10:50 a.m., I got bored. This day was shaping up like all the others, so I figured it was time to make a play. I jimmied the Missouri rattlers out of my backpack, stuck them out the shooting window and did a full rattling sequence.

I started subtly, clacking the antlers together tentatively like a pair of bucks sizing each other up. Then, I rammed them together hard, and then again. I twisted them, wedged them and clattered them. I disengaged them and rammed them again. I lifted the noise to a combat crescendo, loudly disengaged them and put them on the floor. The whole sequence lasted about two minutes.

Five minutes later, a legal buck strutted out of the pine thicket to my right. I wasn’t ready for that. I expected a deer to come from the left.

He crossed the road and drifted into the pines on the other side before I could get him in my sights. About 10 minutes later, he came back out about 120 yards to the left. He paused long enough for me to get a good look at him through the glass. The time was 11:10 a.m., right on schedule according to the solunar table.

When the buck started walking again, I put the cross hairs just in front of his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The Swede roared.

The buck bolted.

You have got to be kidding me. How could I have missed? I went to where I last saw the animal.

There was no blood and no hair. All I found was the buck’s hoof marks in the dirt where it sprang away.

With nothing to trail, I mentally partitioned long ribbon into sections and searched each square thoroughly. After going about 125 yards, I was about to give up. So I said a little prayer: “Lord, if that deer is dead, please take me to him.”

I walked a short distance farther and saw a shaft of sunlight shining on a downed deer like a stage light. Its antlers gleamed. I said a prayer of thanksgiving and went to get my game cart.

The shot was perfect. It passed through the body and punched both lungs, but the exit wound was not much bigger than the entry.

A shot like that often turns the lungs to jelly. These were intact. It was one of the cleanest kills I’ve ever seen, and the reason the deer was able to run so far.

As for the Swede, nothing matches it for efficiency.

Touch the trigger, and a deer goes in the freezer.

The Missouri rattlers are back in the pack, ready for another round. Ten years later, the circle is complete.

Sports, Pages 27 on 11/24/2013