My Illinois Shotgun Opener Buck

I got to my stand about 5 am on Friday morning and had to wait an hour and a half in the pitch black before legal shooting light. Time slowed down to an eternal crawl during that span of waiting, but thats not all bad these days. Anyhow, I was hunting this stand for the first time, and was pretty excited to check out the new surroundings as the light began to arrive. Pretty much everything looks like a deer early in the morning before the sun rises.

Chad walked me to the stand, and even placed a nice doe decoy and apparently dumped some deer urine on it out in the opening 20 yards in front of my stand. Here was my view from the stand:

It didnt take long for the action to warm me right up! At 6:56 am two bucks came trotting along the trail together and came to a complete hault when they came across the stinky decoy. The first buck was a nice tall 8 pointer with fairly thick beam, but abnormally narrow spread. He was definitely the smarter to the two bucks, after sniffing the decoy he looked right at me and quickly jumped on ahead about 10 yards but then stopped. It was like he knew exactly how to get his 'friend' killed! His friend sniffed the decoy as well and I think that urine got the best of him. He too looked over to the right and stared right at me as well, for actually about 30 seconds we stared right at each other, but after our glaring contest he just couldnt get his mind off of the pretty little lady just standing for him.

The moment he turned his head, I lifted my H and R slug gun, placed the crosshairs on his heart and without hesitating fired the slug! The buck spun around 180 degrees and ran full speed about 25 yards directly head first into a very small pond. His head went completely underwater and his back legs kicked furiously for about 30 seconds before he finally drown.



Last year I shot my first buck in the first 10 minutes of the season, and this year I had him down within the first half hour of legal light! I can't actually take any credit for either buck, because my cousin and brothers are the ones who do all the scouting. I just do what they say and sit where they put me and pull the trigger. This is my 2nd buck and 13th deer harvested overall, and I can thank them for every single one of them.