Idaho Deer Hunter Magazine Fall 2012, Issue #2 | Page 21

The first evening was promising as I settled in on a decent 3X3 buck that was relatively wide . I contemplated whether or not to notch my tag with this buck for over five minutes as I couldn ' t decide if he was big enough for this tag . Right about the time I had decided that this might be my last chance to fill the tag and was ready to squeeze the trigger my buddy told me that another buck had just appeared in the field behind another small forked horn . I quickly swung my scope over to where the small buck was feeding and saw a really big 3X3 that looked very heavy , tall and wide . I knew this was a worthy buck . The buck was facing straight on to me when I settled my cross hairs on the center of his chest . He was roughly 200 yards and I thought the shot was a no-brainer with my Savage . 270 . Once the cross hairs hit his chest I pulled the trigger ..... Emphasis on pull .... the buck turned around and trotted away into the trees and creek bottom not sure what had just happened . The other bucks slowly stood up and trotted away apparently not sure what had happened either . I couldn ' t believe it ! I had just completely blown a perfectly good shot ! I knew I had missed just by the way the buck turned and trotted away . I was sick to my stomach . I had never missed a shot like that , until then . My buddy and I went out to make sure I hadn ' t hit him , but to no avail we could not find so much as a drop of blood or tuft of hair . It was official , I flat out missed .
The next day I went out to shoot my gun to make sure the scope hadn ' t been knocked off a little during my previous hunting exploits . Unfortunately , or fortunately depending on the point of view , my scope was still rock solid . I just missed , that was the hard truth ! My buddy continued to scout for the bucks for the next few evenings after work . He came up with no sign of the bucks we had seen the first night and I began to be discouraged once again . Three days after I had missed my chance at a nice buck my buddy called me and asked if I wanted to go out that evening to look again . I again accepted his invitation and we headed out that evening .
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