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Hunting
Stories
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Lance
Autrey’s Hunting Story
| By Lance Autrey
"You’ll never win!" This is something that I heard from both of my older brothers constantly as we discussed the upcoming big buck contest. The contest was just between my brothers and I. I had conceived the idea for all of us to throw in $25 for the person that kills the biggest deer. The odds were against me. They had both killed bigger deer than I had since I started hunting around the age of nine. They also had a dependable lease that they had been hunting on for years and had produced many nice bucks. I, on the other hand, was a full time student at Baylor and had no prospects for good hunting land at the time. If worse came to worse I knew that I could always hunt on the family ranch, which is known for the great dove hunting, but not many deer have been spotted on the place in the last fifty years. Despite my obstacles I knew that I could beat them somehow, especially since one of them couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a deer rifle if he was standing in it. November 20th rolled around and like most other Saturday's, I was at the Baylor football game. Around about halftime I looked at one of my good friends, who is a fellow hunter himself, and told him that I wanted to go hunting. He turned to me in pleasure and said "Let's go". Somehow my dad had found a lease for us to hunt on that was around 40 minutes from where I was in Waco, so we left.. An hour later, Klay and I where sitting in a double-stand watching an oat field down in a little river bottom. I had occupied the same spot only a few times before because my Dad had set claim to the stand early in the year. I just happened to get permission to hunt in it because Klay and I could not fit in my little stand. He had told me that the deer usually move in to the field around 4:00 p.m. Five o’clock rolled around and we had not seen a thing. It was 5:15 p.m. that we finally saw our first deer. We only had around forty-five minutes left of sunlight. Around 5:30 p.m. we had around nine does grazing out in front of the stand. Klay noticed movement about 250 yards away. As I turned we saw a buck heading down a hill right for on the green oat field. While it was looking at us it looked like a nice deer, then it turned its head and exposed his little forked antlers. The six-point continued down the hill and disappeared into the brush. About five-minute later the six point showed his face on the grain field with the rest of the deer. At 5:45 p.m. I noticed movement from the top of the hill where the six point came from. I saw the top of a small tree rocking back in forth. There was brush between the base of the tree and I so I could not see what was moving it, all I could see was the white tail. I drew Klay’s attention to it, and when I did I saw a mule deer split from between the branches. We were both certain it was a massive deer. The big buck turned and headed down the hill. We had a clean look at his impressive spread as we walked towards us around 250 yards away. Klay insisted that I shoot immediately. I put my 250 Savage out the window and followed the deer with my cross hairs. It was looking straight at me and I had a steady rest, but there was a sixth sense telling me that the deer would follow the trail down to the grain field to offer me a better shot. I waited too long and it departed behind the cover. I put my gun up and sat there in disgust. We had around ten minutes left of shooting light. Klay could not believe that I didn’t squeeze a shot off on the monster. Five minutes flew by quickly-still no deer. All of a sudden at the same spot the six point came out into the field, there the monster came trotting towards the does about 75 yards away. Before I knew it my cross hairs where following him across the field. I waited for him to stop, and when he did I shot. I glanced up after the recoil to see magnificent animal dragging his antlers across the ground until he did a complete flip about ten yards from contact. As any well-trained hunters should do, we waited about ten-minute before leaving the stand. We walked in its direction and came to an awesome ten point with a 19-½ inch inside spread. I am usually a calm hunter, and tend to make fun of the people on TV that run and get overly excited after shooting a buck, but I told my brothers that when I beat them that I would do a back flip. Sure enough that’s exactly what I did. I think that it excited Klay as well because he took off to the stand to get his camera. When he got back he claimed to have pulled a muscle in his leg. One of my brothers
missed a few deer, as expected, and my oldest brother bagged a nice eight
point but they still did not overcome my deer. It seems that it will be
a long time before they do beat me -- hopefully.
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