I posted this pic in the new member intro since I just joined a few days ago. I got the Henry Big Boy in .44 mag back at the end of December last year and didn't get any hunting time with it so this was my first hunt of this season and first shot at an animal with the Big Boy. I had been watching a 2x3 young buck chasing a couple of yearling does all evening and as it got darker I kept looking through the scope to see how it gathered light, and it was impressive. The darker it got the more impressed I was with the scope. It's a Leupold VX 3i 3.5-10. I checked my watch and I had about 2 minutes of legal shooting time left. I saw the buck reappear in the shadows about 50 yards from my stand, or so I thought. When I looked through the scope and he lifted his head a little I saw a handful of long tines and realized it was a different buck and I cocked the hammer back and got the cross hairs on him and fired. I knew if I waited to get a better look at his head that time was running out so I chanced it and shot quick. He jumped to the left of my sight picture and disappeared in the brush.
I sat for about 10 minutes and never saw any movement in the area so I climbed down to go look. The blood trail was massive and the blood was bright red and bubbly. I was pretty confident he hadn't gone far and that I had managed to get a lung shot. In the 10 minutes sitting in my stand I had been remembering things like check parallax, check breathing, etc. All the things you know to do and practice at the range but about half the time you are in the moment where you have to shoot quick, you forget. I'm probably lucky I didn't have any time to study him or I might have gotten the shakes. I've killed a lot of deer in my 40+ years and gotten buck fever staring too long even at a doe I was going to shoot, much less a good buck. I think that excitement and the fact I love deer meat is what keeps me hunting at my age.
About two more steps over cactus and I could see him laying still just around the bush in my way. I just said Whoa, under my breath. I went around the bush and there he lay with his head right in my quad runner trail. He had gone 20 yards. I counted his points 3 times and was stunned at his size. His neck was huge and he was Mr Tubby. I grabbed his antlers to pull him out into the trail and could barely move him. Usually a central Texas buck from a non-high-fenced ranch doesn't manage to get this big. A lot of hunting pressure in the areas I've hunted keeps the big bucks pretty deep in the woods and only coming out during the night. We have several on the game cameras after dark.
He is the best buck I've ever shot and my first shot with the Henry. It's like something you dream when you're a kid and getting ready for your first deer hunt!
I'll add this one on a plaque in a spot I can keep an eye on.
