December 16th Deer Season Journal

This was muzzleloader week here in West Virginia so Ryan and I headed to our property as soon as we could after school and work. We wanted to be there before dark to try to catch a doe in our hayfields. The first thing we did when we arrived was load our muzzleloader and start looking around.

In a short time we noticed deer in our garden food plot. The deer saw us and trotted through the hayfield. When we started trying to sneak up on them, all but one ran over the hill to the right. The other, a doe, ran into the hayfield in front of us.

Ryan took the shot and hit her in the back hip after which she ran over the hill into the bottom part of the hayfield.

I scrambled to re-load the muzzleloader. I’m glad no one had a clock on me. It seemed like it took me forever.

After my “speed-loading” we found the doe still laying in the hayfield. I wanted to try to get another shot on her so I told Ryan to sneak around into position to get a shot at her chest. Ryan wasn’t comfortable shooting the heavy barreled muzzleloader while standing so he handed it to me.

As I tried to get into position she got up and headed straight away from me so I followed.

I figured that she would lie down and die if we left her alone but I was afraid that it could take a while since she was shot in the back hip so I followed her into the woods.

Eventually, as I was following her in the woods, she went down and started rolling down the hill towards me. I took the shot and she was done.

She was a nice healthy doe weighing 85 pounds, which ties for the heaviest doe shot on our property over the last ten years. We removed her jaw to age her but it’s a tough one. Right now we’re sure she was an old timer but we’re not yet sure just how old she was. We’re going to compare her jaw to some others we collected the last couple of years and see if we can pin it down better.

Here is Ryan with his doe. We forgot to take pictures before we removed her bottom jaw to age her so it made picture taking a little difficult.

The next morning I took a walk out the logging road to see what I could run into. I was hoping to find that old doe that got the best of me last week.

About 100 yards before I got to the feeder and middle food plot I spotted a set of ears. Very shortly afterward two other sets of ears got up and all three ran off.

When I got to the old house there was a deer at the feeder but I could only see the top half of it. I put up my binoculars and couldn’t tell if it was a doe or button buck the first time it looked up. By the time it looked up again my glasses had started to fog and it walked away over the hill. I’m still not sure if it was a doe or button buck.

The rest of the day Ryan and I put our cameras back out, filled the feeders, took down treestands and removed Ryan’s deers jaw to age her. The weather was beautiful; it was a great day to be outside.

We have one more week of doe season Christmas week so we hope to give it one more try. I’m shooting for that doe at the old house but she may be a little too smart for me.




Return from the December 16th Journal to the 2006 Deer Season Journal Index.