by David E. Petzal

A little while back I spent an hour at the range helping a friend of mine mount a scope and get a rifle sighted in for his young son. Everything worked, and dad took the boy to Pennsylvania to hunt deer. As it turned out, they didn’t get one, but the father was nice enough to send me a photo of the kid in his stand, and the expression of joy on his face is unmistakable. I e-mailed my friend that whether or not his son goes on to be a serious hunter, that deer hunt will be pure gold for the rest of the boy’s life.

Small contributions like this can make a very big difference. If you are a hunter/shooter with some experience, there is a beginning hunter/shooter out there who can use your help. These are not easy sports to break into; there is an immense amount to learn. Questions lead to other questions, and the number of people who have the answers is shrinking.

by David E. Petzal

I’ve just returned from a non-triumphal hunt in Texas where four of us, in an area that is swarming with mule deer, went at it for five days and did not see a single shootable head. We saw spikes in battalion strength, regiments of forkhorns, and brigades of little four-points, but nothing with antlers out past its ears that had lived more than a couple of years. The big deer, who knew what was what, had vanished.

A local game biologist said this was a general condition in the area, not just on the ranch we were hunting, and that the rut, for some reason, was late this year, but that was all he knew for sure. My own guess is that the mature bucks had gone nocturnal; they simply hid until it was pitch dark; God knows there are plenty of places to hide in the high desert.

by David E. Petzal

This past week, in Wyoming, I was watching deer come into a field of winter wheat, looking for a nice eating buck. At just about the last minute of shooting light I saw one, facing me at 125 yards. I put the crosshair on the center of his chest, pulled the trigger, and he ran like hell with not a sign of being hit.

Usually the center-chest shot is instantly deadly. Last year, I hit a whitetail buck in Maine in that spot and he simply sagged sideways, deader than meaningful tax reform. But this buck ran off into the dark, surrounded by half a dozen other panicked ungulates. I sat and waited the customary 5 minutes, took out my flashlight and went to the spot where he had his collision with a rapidly moving object, and looked for blood. Nothing; not a drop.

The other two hunters in my party arrived, and they didn’t see any signs of a hit either. But I was sure I’d gotten him. I had a good, steady rest, and when the gun went bang the little green dot* was right where it was supposed to be. So we looked, and after 10 nerve-wracking minutes we found him, piled up about 125 yards from where he’d taken my bullet.

by David E. Petzal

My writer friend Bob Robb—international hunter, raconteur, member of the 300-Stitch Club—informs me that there is now a Fantasy Hunting League, wherein hunting “experts” wander the landscape and kill big game in teams, as I understand it. There is a website for the League, and people are invited to pick a Team and follow it. If they pick the team that gets what it’s after, they win prizes, including $60,000 in cash. Bob, upon learning of this, said that his gut reaction was “…something akin to the way it feels after eating rotten possum.”