Denny Tkach

Columbiana Co Ohio

Shotgun 2002

BBBC 146 5/8 typical

My cousin came to my home to hunt with me the first day. I usually have my last cup of coffee at a picnic table behind my garage before entering the woods. My cousin went one way and I the other.

Over the years I’ve had better luck still hunting and sneaking quietly through the woods than I do posting. I walked past my pond to a road I had cut through the woods on a steep hillside. To my right was a cliff-like high bank with a strip of woods before a hayfield. As I looked through the woods to the field I saw the silhouettes of several deer.

They were walking the wood line above me so I hugged the cliff and sneaked down the road to another pond deeper in the woods. In the middle of the road is a large tree so I hid behind it and watched two deer enter some grapevines. I thought there were antlers on the one, but wasn’t quite sure.

Then, the larger of the two deer mounted the smaller one and when he did his antler rose above the vines into site. The site of his antlers actually took my breath away for a few seconds. The wind was blowing into my face as they finished mating and the doe started down the hill towards me. If she continued on the route she was taking she would cross the road well ahead of me so I sneaked ahead slowly.

The doe entered the road and turned and walked directly towards me about 50 feet. She then crossed the road and over a hill and out of my view. I raised my gun, knowing the buck could not be far behind. The buck entered the road with his nose to the ground taking the exact path his girlfriend had. The buck walked to within 25 yards and my scope now was shaking wildly from holding the gun up for so long.

The buck looked up and saw me and started the old head bobbing and foot stomping trying to get me to move. He then looked down to the doe. He then looked back at me. He must have thought the doe was more important because after about the third time of looking at me, then the doe, he turned toward the doe and I took my shot. He bolted over the bank, as I ran to the edge of the road only to see the buck running as if he had never been hit. Farther down in the woods he stopped and turned broadside and I shot again.

As he took off again I threw another shot at him and he ran again as if he had never been tougher. He stopped again about 200 yards down the hill and lay down under a large Hemlock tree. As I was watching the buck, a doe ran past from above me and ran to a second doe below me that I had not seen. As they ran past the Hemlock tree the buck put his nose to the ground and started to follow.

I reloaded and leaned against a tree and held well above his back and fixed again. He disappeared over a knoll in a thicket. I then leaned up against the tree and smoked a cigarette trying to make sense of what had just happened. After 15- to 20 minutes, I started over the hill to where I had last seen him and I looked up and there he lay. I about fell out.

They were about the widest antlers I had ever seen. My cousin came down and said he had harvested a small doe. I don’t know how much he weighed but I had to return with the front loader on my tractor to get him out.

I returned to the spot onto the road the following day and found two shell casings where I had originally shot. Apparently I had fired twice and in my excitement didn’t even realize it.