Rachel’ s First Muley!
Rachel’ s First Muley!
By Rachel Cantrell
My name is Rachel Cantrell, and I am 15 years
old. I got my first deer this year after a wild and fun hunting trip. In the following few paragraphs, I’ ll talk about just a few of the neat things that happened!
The first time my parents, brother( Daniel), and I went out this year, Daniel was able to get a nice 4x4 buck. I had a shot at a doe the next day, but I was just a little low. Even though I had missed my first shot, I was determined to try again, and I got that chance a few weeks later.
On our second time out, just my dad and I were able to go on the hunt. We set up our camper and headed out to do some scouting for the next morning’ s hunt. As we drove across the snowy landscape, angry clouds loomed ahead of us. They looked like they could dump a foot of snow at any moment! We got a bit worried, but we tried to put that out of our thoughts. We went to bed early and woke up well before sunrise. Thankfully, the storm had passed without dropping anymore snow. Quickly, we got on our four-wheeler and headed to the hide where Daniel had gotten his deer a few weeks earlier.
We sat on our rock looking for deer for hours.
It was freezing! I could barely feel my fingers and toes even though I had hand / feet warmers. In a disappointed mood, we decided to go back to camp to warm up. All of a sudden, we saw a shape that looked like a deer off in the distance. My Dad looked through my binoculars and sure enough, it was a big doe! We made our plan on how to stalk closer to the deer. As quietly and quickly as I could, I grabbed my DPMS 308 rifle and we tried to get to the location we had discussed.
As fast as I could, I got into my shooting position. There wasn’ t much cover for us to hide behind and the closest we could get was 320 yards. My dad used the rangefinder and then I set the Leupold CDS riflescope for 320 yards. Even with a bipod, I was shaking like crazy! I tried to calm myself down and wait for my dad to tell me when to shoot.
When the shot went off, four or five more deer pop up out of the bushes! Due to the way the doe reacted, my Dad said the shot was good but the doe stopped running after a few steps. He said that I should shoot again to ensure that we get her quickly. Comparing her with the other deer that had stood up, she was the biggest of the bunch, and I know this is a great chance for me to get my deer. I take a few deep breaths, and after Dad’ s ok, I shoot again. This time, we see lots of blood. The deer I shot runs up the hill, and the others go the opposite direction. Dad said it was best to wait an hour or two before we start tracking her and because it is so cold we don’ t have to worry about the meat.
We head back to our camp and talk about what just happened. After an hour or two, we go back to where the doe went over the hill. We walk over to the bush the deer walked by to try and find the blood trail. Something seemed different about the bush and I told dad that I thought we were at the wrong one. Dad thought we were at the right bush, so I kept looking. Little did I know, Dad had walked over to the bush that I said was the correct one and sure enough, the blood trail was over there. Dad calls me over, and now we begin to track the deer.
The blood trail leads us into a thicket of pokey, tall bush-trees. Soon, we come across a place the deer had laid down. There’ s a huge amount of blood, and we wondered why the deer hadn’ t stayed there to bleed out. After examining the scene for a
9