Darryl's Axis

I hunted the Cave Blind Saturday morning by myself and saw a big herd of Axis bucks and two White Tail bucks. One of the Axis bucks was very large and mature, with dark coloring. He was teaching the younger bucks in the herd to how to fight. There were no females present. It was pretty cool to watch. He also chased the White Tail away from the feeder so his buddies and he could eat. I decided that he was a nice mature buck that Darryl might be interested. Save the shot for your buddy!!!

We came back that evening and positioned ourselves on the ridge overlooking the floor of the canyon. We were not hunting the normal "Cave Blind" location, but an area that Darryl and I found and picked out almost 13 months ago. Luckily we had marked it well because it is very hard to find. The feeder was about 180 yards away. We waited. Nothing showed up that night except for a white tail doe, small 4 point buck, and an axis doe. Oh well.

We came back Sunday morning and got into position around 6:20 AM. It was pitch dark. Around 6:45 AM we could make out many dark figures around the feeder. At the same time, Sika started bugling - they were very close!!!

We had enough light by 6:55 to see the large buck chasing a white tail buck away, but wanted to wait until the feeder went off at 7:00 AM in case there was a larger one in the herd I had not seen the day before. We watched until about 7:15 AM and decided no more Axis, or any Sika, were going to come in. We had 8 Axis bucks at this feeder at this point.

Darryl took the shot at 180 yards with his Browning Stainless Synthetic Stalker. The 120 grain .25 WSSM entered perfectly behind the shoulder! (We would later find no exit wound - perfect).

You could hear the bullet impact the animal - WHAM! He took off running to his left, jumped the hog fence, and then his front legs collapsed underneath him. He regained his footing and continued to run with two of the other bucks. I watched them run under a large group of oaks and I watched the two other deer exit, but not him. He had ran about 40 yards and fallen. Awesome!

He was very old and mature and weighed 225 pounds. He was 31" long and very heavy.

Nice deer Darryl!