The very large muley buck is standing on the hill below you.  The very cold morning moutain air is frozen and small crystaline flakes are falling like snow.  There are no clouds in the sky.  It’s like a magic show with pixie dust as the main player.  Your nostrils freeze as you take a deep nasel breath and prepare to calm yourself before the shot.

Your week long stubbly beard is covered with ice from your frozen breath.  You are locked in on the big buck and how your shot must be made.  This is no time for failure.  Everything must work perfectly.  The buck does not know you are there.  It is calmly feeding on a sage branch tip.

You analyze the antlers.  Counting every tine…one, two, three, four, five, six and long eyeguards.  How wide is it?  You cannot tell from this angle, but the mass of the antlers at the base indicates a very heavy set and so width is not in the equation.  You have made up your mind.  This is the buck of my dreams.  My dreams and no body elses.

Slowly you slide to your left and find a clear lane through the cedar trees through which you can shoot.  Your eyes are glued to the bucks vitals as you must concentrate on the point of impact and not on the trophy size rack on the bucks head.  Concentrate.  Concentrate.  You take your eyes off the buck long enough to find a good stable rest for your rifle.  A rest that will steady the sights from your ever increasing pounding heart.

Back on the target your eyes settle as you slowly and deliberately draw the hammer of your cap lock rifle back to full cock.  Click!  Click!  Goes the sound of the hammer cocking.  To you it was very loud in the still morning air.  The buck raises it’s head and looks in your direction!  You think to yourself, “Have I been busted?  Does the buck see me behind this dead cedar?”  You don’t move a muscle.  The longest minute goes by as the buck is searching the hill for whatever made that sound.  A sound it has never heard before.

Your heart is pounding so fiercely now even with the rest of the dead tree to steady the sights they are still moving off target.  You find yourself breathing harder and harder.  Again, you tell yourself to calm down.  The buck drops it’s head back to its feeding and takes a small step forward.  You can not see the bucks head, only the full shoulder and back to its rump.  You breath another deep nostril breath and this time you do not notice the freezing inside your nose.  It’s now or never for your shot.

You pick up the front sight and slowly settle it into the rear slot, like you have done so many, many times before at the range.  This time your target is a large mottled brown and gray side of the largest mule deer buck you have ever been this close to in your life.  The sight picture is placed perfectly, slightly low from center to account for the rise of the bullet as it travels down hill toward the animal.

You are locked into this moment.  Nothing else is on your mind.  Your dream is about to become reality.

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So, how does this story end?  Will the cap go off?  Did he even put a cap on?  Will the powder charge go off?  Afterall, the powder was loaded the day before this hunt began and he has been carrying his rifle through rain, snow, dry times, the heat of the vehicle and the cold of the vehicle at night.  HMMM.  Can you finish this story?

Just click on “leave a comment” below and tells us how this story ends.  Thanks!

Bears Butt

Nov. 2011