I promised more details on how I took this doe down, and here they are.
I was sitting in my friend's tree stand, rifle in hand and the seat threatening to violate me if I don't relieve myself of excess fat deposits. It was a fairly warm morning and I didn't have to wear as many layers as I did the last two weeks. I was actually a bit tired and hungry too, having been up since about 0400 hrs and only having had a sugar-free pudding and a granola bar for breakfast shortly after 0400 hrs. I heard a deer blowing, suspecting that they either smelled someone or saw/heard something they didn't like, maybe that bear I saw last week or my friend (an extremely experienced hunter, albeit one who also had a bit of indigestion going into the last few hunts) moved in the wrong way.
Then I heard rustling nearby and it wasn't one of those darn squirrels that I hoped that the local hawks, falcons, and bobcats would eat. I saw something light brown moving so I knew it wasn't a hog or bear and it was all by itself.
"Darn," I thought. "Probably that ... censored ... spike or one of those censored button-bucks." There's a particular annoying spike that my friend and I keep seeing. He named this annoying little spike "Hoover" after his ability to seemingly vacuum up everything edible in an area and still remain relatively scrawny and thin. Neither the spike nor the button are legal targets at the club, so I didn't undo the safety just yet but I did continue to watch.
No bumps on the head, no little spike-like antlers poking out. Odd. What was a doe doing all by herself? She had a beautiful coat and seemed to be a decent size, although obviously smaller than the doe I took in November. I watched her movements and confirmed she wasn't a button-buck. Then I raised the rifle, hoping she'd stay in the relatively clear area slightly to my left, but she raised her head and looked up at me. I had to freeze and this scene played itself several time -- I'd adjust myself again to follow her movements, ever to the right and further away, always freezing if she even looked up. At one point, she even looked up, bolted about 2-3 yards away, flashed her white tail up (bad sign!) but instead of blowing, she went back to feeding, moving about among the acorns. I could hear her munching and she kept presenting her butt to me. She even started cleaning herself and wagging her tail, good signs that she was really relaxed.
I slowly adjusted myself until I was able to get as clear of a path as possible through the tree in front of me and waited until she was broadside. Finally, when I saw her approaching broadside, heading towards quartering towards (bad, as I learned from the last deer when I did some gut damage), I slowly squeezed the trigger, ever holding my aim onto the "pocket" right behind her shoulder, roughly corresponding to a 10 ring on an ASA-style 3D target. I heard the thunder from my rifle and I saw her take two steps and drop. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest and I knew I was not coming out of the tree-stand in one piece for at least 10-15 minutes. She flopped around for a few heartbeats before she became still, so I knew I dropped her right then and there.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, my friend arrived from his stand about 80-100 yards away and helped me down knowing that I was still unsteady. We went over to where she fell and examined the entrance and exit wounds. I saw the dreaded clumpy stuff -- guts. I busted yet another deer's gut but it looked like I also took out part of her lung because she was bleeding quite a bit out of her mouth. Later on, while we were cleaning her out, I found out that I actually damaged one of her lungs a bit and destroyed her liver. Apparently between the shock and the heavy bleeding in her liver, she just didn't have a chance to move more than two steps before dropping. I still lost the tenderloin and the rib meat, but I still have plenty of really good back-strap steaks, hams, and shoulder (something I had lost on the last deer from all the trauma in that area).
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