Thread: After the Kiwi left Arkansas……

Our deerless hunting continued for a couple days…then the weather cooled off considerably. It was mid 20s F as I headed to the pop up blind in the dark…perfect morning.

Lots of squirrels and birds working in the woods this morning. I could have shot a pot full of squirrels right in front of the blind…they were busy breaking into the hickory nuts that covered the ground…acorns were getting scarce. About 8:30 I saw a couple deer moving down the road that comes thru the food plot. It was a doe with a good sized fawn. As they got closer I could see that the fawn had nubs on his head and I could also see that the doe had a bum leg. Really had no intention to shoot a doe, but decided to take her before the coyotes did.


Eventually, the doe got broadside at about 45yds. The red dot settled just behind her front leg and the gun went off. At the shot both deer spun to leave…I lost track of the doe for just a second….one deer ran back up the road the other crossed the foodplot and started to run up the hill. That was the doe..she tipped over backwards and fell over as she started up the hill…never got out of sight. She was done!




First deer I’ve taken with my contender pistol, it has a 14” 30-30 barrel and I’m loading it with Barnes TAC-x 110gr copper bullets. If you look you will see that the joint on her front leg is swollen, that leg did not bend at all. Not sure what happened..didn’t look like it was a bullet wound. Impressive results for a 110gr bullet and an old time cartridge. So…more meat to process!


A few days went by with no deer movement. That hog was all cut up and resting in the tractor shed freezer…and the doe was chilling in the cooler. We kept hunting and I moved to different spots hoping to see some deer. Raye had hunted all of muzzle loader season and all of rifle season and didn’t see a single deer in the daylight. We saw lots of deer after dark at the feeder below camp when the motion lights came on.


One afternoon I decided to go to the blind we call the skybox. It’s a box blind sitting in the corner of the first foodplot we established on the forty and it’s on the highest point of the property. We planted clover there last year and had a failure…this year it is only winter wheat and some turnips. It was a beautiful afternoon but nothing was moving…

The clock was ticking and I had about 15 minutes of legal shooting light left…I was about to gather my gear get back to camp when I spotted a buck on the far side of the foodplot. He was feeding along slowly moving parallel to our boundary fence. Because of the wind direction I had closed the window on that side of the blind earlier… I needed to get the window open and get my pistol in position…moving as quietly as I could…I managed to open the window without him spotting me. He had moved enough that he was now broadside for a decent shot at about 65yds.


At the shot, I knew he was hit..but about 4 big leaps and he was over the fence into the neighbors pasture. I have a good relationship with my neighbor so retrieval wouldn’t be an issue. When I got to the spot he had been standing…I didn’t see blood but it was getting darker by now. Putting on my headlight at the fence crossing showed lots of blood…I crossed the fence and followed a massive blood trail down the hill…the buck was laying dead on the edge of the woods. To get the buck back to our place was going to be a slight uphill drag of about 70yds. Being old and slow…I called Ken to help drag and headed down the hill to warm up the tractor.



Over the years I couldn’t count all the times Ken and I have tracked, dragged, skinned and gutted critters we have both shot. It’s great to have a dependable hunting partner to help with the work part of hunting! Anyway…tractor retrieval and in no time the buck was hanging to cool.

So that’s the way things went after the Kiwi left. My deer hunting for this year is probably done…unless I get tempted to do some late season bowhunting.