A Velvet Stampede
 

Four bucks in the velvet, three 8-pointers and a 4 showed up together tonight, all bolted when I went to take the shot. The one on the left is particularly light in color, eh?

"take the shot"? What caliber?

When taking a shot at big game Robert Ruark would advise to "Use Enough Gun", so I was shooting a 12 mega pixel at ultra-high velocity, so fast the shot was travelling darn near the speed of light.

Bet they didn't feel a thing.

My associates at the shop have been damage control hunting since early june . I got an email yesterday telling g me they'd filled one permit for twenty and were waiting for a second one . Honestly I'm glad I wasn't there to participate .

They maybe didn't feel a thing, but I got all four with each and every shot...and I got pics to prove it!

These same four bucks have been running together most of the summer appearing most evenings in the small field next to our home. Their racks, still in the velvet, have undergone further development, heavier and with longer tines. The light colored buck has grown two more tines and is now a 10-pointer. The larger and darker 8-pointer's rack is noticeably heavier than just a month or so ago. This particular deer we've named "Gimpy" because he has a bad right front leg (noticeable in pics #3 & #4) that had been terribly injured by undetermined origin in early winter of 2020 -- was he shot?, caught in a fence?, hit by a car? -- we don't know. At the time he was a smallish 6-pointer, we watched him for two full days laying in the snow and in a pool of blood under a spruce tree in our backyard licking his wounds. His injury looked bad with a dangling leg and a bloody mess. After being under that spruce tree for those two days he somehow was able to move about 100 yards to the south where he laid down again for a few more days continually licking his wounds. He then disappeared. I had thought he had succumbed to those wounds, but here he is, gimping around and living life.

some really good pictures.....charlie