Did I do the right thing?

[Steve Foss]

Yikes! That would have been a risky rifle shot to take indeed upon looking at the image. Not one I would have pulled the trigger on.

[GoggleEye]

You definitely made the right decision. Two things could have happened here. 1. You may have wounded him and not found him 2. You can not see what is in the background of your shot....you may have hit someone or something in the background if you missed cleanly. Nice job on passing up that one.

[brassman]

Ok so heres the deal. The first picture is what it looks like from the stand and yes it looks reslly far but the camera distorts the real distance. the arrow is where he came out ( not really out but where I saw him through the trees.)

So up close the one tree with the arrow says 98 yards with my range finder and he was a good 20 yards passed that point. the blue circle was about where he was through the trees. And remember it was about 4:40-4:50 when I saw him. He was pretty much pointed my way through the gap like he was going to walk there but turned the left at the last moment. I walked down to that point and I am glad I didn't take the shot because there was a bunch of branches that I didn't see and I have personally seen blades of grass deflect shots.

On a better subject. My father came home from work from a mandatory training with some new software and so we got out on the road by around noon. We get to the spot and park off the road and as I'm getting my gear and clothes on my dad walks out to the road and sees a deer walk into the swamp on our property. I asked if I should walk down the road to see if I can see it in the swamp. my father says no we should get to our stands so we walk down the trail a little ways and theres a small field where overgrown christmas trees and the swamp all converge. So I said I'm going to walk along the swamp and see if I can spot the deer but right as I get to the swamp I heard a crash about 20-30 yards ahead of me. I'm still within sight of my dad and motion for him to go down the trail because eventually my path would cross his. He hurries through the pines while I walk along the swamp and cut the tracks of the deer. As I'm walking and it had only been about 45 seconds from the time I went into the swamp Iheard my father shoot and I book it towards the trail and hear him hooting, well I walk up and he shot a fat 5 point, clipped the bottom of the heart. It was the one that had crossed the road. the picture doesn't show how dark his body actually is. His legs were soaking wet all the way up to his chest and that was wet too. Five minute into getting there and a deer down! not bad.

heres the venison donor!

so we get his buck gutted and leave him there because I still wanted to hunt. We walk down to our stands which are about 150 yards apart. 20 minutes into sitting I hear BOOOOM! I'm like man he just filled my buck tag too! He ended up shooting a nice yearling doe. I was a nice day even though I didn't see anything. I know it looks like we are hunting in Saskatchewan. Sometimes it sure feels like we are.

[livintofish]

Brassman,

that is pretty thick, might think about expanding your shooting lanes a bit, thining some of the understory out. By the way where do you hunt roughly, looks like beautiful country.

[brassman]

north of Duluth a ways. I like it up there, you feel all to yourself.