Outrunning the Deer

You are not going to believe this. I'm 6'4" and at the time I was over 250 lbs. I was always the biggest kid in school, and the one they always laughed at in gym. I always came in last in the 50 yard dash. However, once I actually out ran a deer.

In 1996, I took off the opening day of Ohio Modern Weapons season to go hunting. I had a new Mossberg 500 with a rifled slug barrel, and Bushnell Banner 1.5-4.5 scope. I was putting Brenneke 2 3/4" slugs into the same hole at 50 yards. I was feeling mighty ready.

The morning hunt had ended abruptly when I started taking incoming fire from the neighbors. I was up in a treestand on the far side of a creek, about 150 yards from where it turned out the neighbors had posted three hunters. The sun came up, a small herd of does came trotting through between us. The neighbors had no idea i was there. When the action started I was directly in their line of fire. Luckily I had a stout oak tree between me and them. One shot took off a branch a few feet from my head. The deer took off. The shooting stopped. I yelled, got not response, and quickly unhooked the stand and beat it out of there.

It was now the afternoon. I had repositioned myself on the same side of the creek as the neighbors. I was sitting on a tall stump at the intersection of several tractor paths. One cut across the field behind me. Another was along the creek. Another came up from the creek itself. There was one that separated the treeline of the woods along the creek from a stand of saplings that was what was left of the farmer's experiment at building a tree farm. They were a thick stand of inch to two inch maple, sweet gum and sycamore trees that had been planted in rows about 50 yards long and the whole patch was about 30 yards wide.

I heard nothing more from the neighbors. My guess was that they might have moved after hearing me call to them that morning. I started sitting about 3 PM and was going to stay there until dark. It might not have been the best setup, but I was surely not going to get back up in an elevated stand with the neighbors habits as they were. This was a good spot. The wind was in my face, I was slightly elevated off the creek bottom. I was inside the treeline. I had a couple of trees breaking up my outline. My guess was that deer would come one direction or the other along the creek and feed in the bottom just before dark.

Along about 4:30 I got a funny feeling and turned to see a large doe standing about 5 yards behind me. She had come down the tractor path behind me, and was standing on the edge of the stand of saplings, just on the other side of the crossing path. She bolted before I could bring my shotgun around. She ran into the saplings.

I got off the stump and followed the crashing. I had fifty yards to cover. The doe was about ten feet into the saplings and was having a slow go of it. I had a clear path. I made it to the end of the row a second or two ahead of her. She popped out of the saplings into the opening about six feet in front of me. I let her cross the tractor path and run through a hole in the barbed wire fence on the far side while I brought my shotgun up. I got the crosshairs on her back and . . .

. . . the slug buried itself in a six-inch locust trunk. The doe crashed through the brush and disappeared. I was in a perfect position to shoot again, but it was also the perfect position to fire back into the section of woods where the neighbors had been posted in the morning.

It was over. It was not long before dark. I had probably queered the whole area with all the ruckus, but I was happy. On the way back to the stump, I realized I had actually outrun a deer on the fifty yard dash.