I love hunting.
The good Lord comes first, and then family, then deer hunting, but I really love deer hunting. I've hunted in Rutherford County in Middle Tennessee since I was about 8-years-old, but I didn’t take my first deer until I was 10.
Hunting in Tennessee was hard at that time. All I saw were does, never any bucks. When I was 12, I shot a 3-point buck, and kept hunting until I took an 8-pointer. By the time I was 21, I had yet to kill a buck worth hanging on a wall, then in 2003 I got a new place to hunt near the Stones River.
Before bow season that year, I scouted the area, which was thickly overgrown and found trails and a few rubs.
The area had everything deer needed, and it seemed like no one hunted there in a long time. It was like a deer bedroom, so I left. I decided not to hunt there until muzzleloader season. The first time I saw a big deer there I would put him on the ground.
But my plan didn’t work out.
On the Friday before youth season, my brother Michael told me I needed to put his son Cody on a buck. I told him I knew a place, and I was saving it to hunt in muzzleloader season. But I agreed, and told them to meet me before daybreak at 4:30 a.m.
Cody was only 8 at the time. My brother had hunted the whole year before he took his first deer, a doe, but this boy wanted a buck.
We got up into the stand at daybreak and it was cold, in the 30s. We sat and saw nothing. I was beginning to second guess myself about the area when Cody and told me he was freezing. I didn’t need to make him stay, but I told him it was only 7:30 and we can’t hunt anything while sitting on a couch. He agreed to stay a little longer.
About 15 minutes later I heard something coming through the thicket—a buck. I told Cody to get his .243 up and ready. This buck was on a mission, looking for a doe, so I warned him not to shoot until I made the buck stop.
I grunted, but the buck kept going. I repeated that four more times. I knew if the buck didn’t stop, he’d be gone.
I whistled. The buck stopped.
Ca boom.
Cody shot and the buck was down—a real nice 7-point buck for a kid who had never taken one, but in Cody’s eyes, that was a 150 class buck. We were pumped up and called my brother, then decided to drag the buck out because I didn’t want to mess up my new hunting spot.
We drug the buck about 150 yards from where Cody took him, and when I looked up there was the biggest rub I’d ever seen. I explained to Cody what it was, and told him when you see a rub this big, it’s from a big buck.
We didn’t gut Cody’s deer until we got it back to my place, and by then, I was really torn up after seeing that rub. Cody got his first buck for his wall and I was a proud uncle who shared this experience with him. Now, I couldn’t wait until muzzleloader season the following weekend.
On November 9, I returned to the same stand where Cody taken his buck but this time I was there in the afternoon. My buddy Jerry Easom texted me as he was driving from Illinois, to tell me a weather front was moving into Tennessee and deer were moving, too.
It was around 2 p.m., and every hunter knows when there’s a front coming, deer move, so I was really excited.
By 4:30 I hadn’t seen anything, but 15 minutes later I heard it. Son, my heart about fell out. There that buck was, broadside, at 60 yards. I didn’t count his points; I knew what I’m looking at, so I pulled up the Thompson Center, put the crosswire on his shoulder and squeezed off a shot. The load, a 250-grain T/C Shockwave bullet powered by 3 Pyrodex pellets, hit the mark.
He ran like nothing was wrong. I knew my shot was good, but now I was worried, and called Jerry to tell him what happened.
"Rocky,” he assured me, “you hit that deer,” but I told him the deer didn’t act like it. I waited an hour before climbing down to where the buck should be and saw white hair everywhere, but no buck. I called Jerry again.
Even though that shot felt right, I was still second guessing myself. I’d calmed down but when I couldn’t find blood I was freaking that I’d blown it. I called my buddies Charley and Tater to help. I picked them up and when we returned to the woods, they told me we were going to find my buck if it took all night.
We split our search by going down three different deer trails. We hadn’t gone 40 yards when Charley yelled. “I got him, Rocky! And he’s a bruiser!”I ran over to see my 8-point buck would be in the 140s. Finally, I got my deer to mount.
I hope I’ve done a good job on this story, because my 12-year-old son Michael just got his first bow kill this past weekend. He called me on the walkie-talkie. “Dad, I just put a Rage in her cage and watched her go down.”
I love hunting.