On a Saturday morning Dale Moore, Harry, and I loaded into my old 1954 Chevy truck for a day trip to Henry’s Creek to hunt for deer. The deer season had opened the week before, but none of us had used out tags as of yet. The weather was nice for October, just the right amount of crispness in the morning air. The trees were changing their colors to red and yellow. We had started out early in the morning to be in the Henry-s Creek area by the time the sun came up. The sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon, as we started up the creek where we wanted to hunt. There seemed to be a lot of tracks in the road of deer crossing over in both directions. We figured it was just a matter of time before we found something to shoot at. A couple of miles up the creek, we parked the truck in a wide turnout then spread out around the hill to see what we could scare out. We checked all the timber pockets and brushy draws in our path, but not a deer could be found. After several hours of walking, we all reached the main road at about the same time. We decided to go back to the truck to drive on up the road to another place.
We were within sight of my truck, when a large four-point buck came off the hill into the road in front of us. Dale was carrying his 30.06 Weatherby Magnum which is very large for hunting deer. The buck stopped in the middle of the road to look at us. Dale was in the best position to shoot first but as I l○○ked down the road l could see the truck was in direct line with the deer. I started yelling for him not to shoot until he was out of line. Dale let him take a few more steps then took a shot. He must have flinched a bit, because the bullet hit him far back and gut shot him badly. The shot did not even knock him down. All he did was to hump up. The buck started off and I have never been one to want to Chase down a wounded deer, so I shot him in the head with my .30-30 and he dropped in his tracks. I gave Dale a bad time about gut shooting the buck, all in fun. We proceeded to clean him out and found quite a mess・ There was water running in Henry’s Creek, not far away, so we took him to the deepest hole we could find to wash him out. There is not much meat on the ribs anyway, therefore, we would cut off any bad places.
We had just finished the clean-up job when here came a guy running down the road towards us. He had heard us shoot and must have thought we had run into a herd of deer, or something. The guy was not wrapped too tight anyway, from the way he was acting. Dale knew him and assured us he was harmless. He talked for a few minutes then on down the road he ran. Why he was running we would never know. His big flat feet were kicking up a large cloud of dust. I walked down to get the truck since it was not very far away. I backed up to the buck, then with much puffing we loaded him in whole. Cutting a deer in two pieces always gets a lot of hair and dirt on the meat that has to be cleaned off later at home. This was a nice buck and would be good eating during the winter.
With lots of day left, we decided to have some lunch before going out again. After finishing off everything edible we drove up the creek, a couple more miles. There we started up a small hill from the road.
Suddenly, a two-point buck went bounding up the hill in front of us. He had been down to the creek, for water when we happened to spook him out from the willows. Harry quickly put him down with the first shot through the heart. We pulled him down to the flat ground beside the creek to clean him out. We have found that trying to dress out a deer on a steep hillside is not the easiest thing to do. It only t○○k us a few minutes to clean this little buck out and he was not a big mess inside to contend with this time.
We had just finished the cleaning job, when here came the same goofy guy again running as before. He really got excited when he saw our second deer. Up the road he went with his big flat feet kicking up another cloud of dust. He was determined to find himself a deer, somewhere. I really didn’t know if I Wanted to stay in the area where he was hunting at all.
Now with two nice fat bucks, and the day just about over, it was time to head for home. It would take some time to skin them both out and put them into sacks to keep the flies off them. We let Dale have all the big buck, and Harry and I would split the two-point between us. Dale did not think that he would be able to go again and could use the extra meat. Harry and I would be going out at least one more time before the season ended. We hung the two-point in Harry’s garage to cool out for a few days, then cut him into steaks for the freezer. He turned out to be really good eating. We had a very successful day and really enjoyed the outing.