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As I climbed the steep mountain to my stand, I was flooded with memories of hunting with my dad<\/a> and all the great times we shared as I made the trek in the predawn darkness. I glanced down at the rifle<\/a> and looked up at the star-filled sky and said a little prayer in the hopes that today would be the day. It turned out to be rather eventful with a couple small bucks and several does passing near my stand. As the day drew to a close, I looked at the setting sun and was discouraged, but I kept telling myself over and over to stay alert because things can change in an instant, especially with the rut just kicking in.<\/p> <\/p> <\/p> I heard the sound of a running deer and turned to look over my right shoulder to see a doe bounding across the plateau of the mountain, only stopping to turn back from where she had come. I knew a buck had to be chasing her so I slowly stood up and faced her back trail. A few seconds later I saw a body running through the thick cover coming from the same direction as the doe. As it entered my first shooting<\/a> land, I could tell that it was a racked buck, but had to be sure that it had at least 3 points on one side before I could shoot.<\/p> <\/p> <\/p> I shouldered the rifle and started to track it in the scope<\/a> and saw immediately that it had 3 points on the closest main beam. I grunted to try to stop him, but he kept going. I grunted louder a second time with no luck. He was about to clear the top of the ridge headed for the doe when I gave the call all it had. He stopped with a couple of trees blocking his vitals, but there was a tight window that offered a clear shot at the base of his neck. He was about 70 yards.<\/p> <\/p> <\/p> Since it happened so quickly and the deer was on my right side, I was forced to shoot<\/a> offhand. It seemed like I went into auto pilot as the gun felt almost like an extension of my body. Before I even knew it, the rifle barked and the buck folded in its tracks<\/a>. As I came out of recoil, I got back on the fallen buck just to make sure he was down for good. Lowering the rifle and looking over the scope<\/a> at this majestic buck laying in the snow, I glanced down at the rifle in my hands and almost could not believe what had just happened. After ten hours in the stand, the conclusion unfolded in a matter of seconds.<\/p> <\/p> <\/p> <\/p> <\/p> I climbed down and walked over to kneel beside the buck. Placing my hand on its shoulder, I took my hat off, bowed my head and thanked the good Lord for giving me the opportunity to harvest this animal. I field dressed the deer and started the drag down the mountain as the light began to fade. It was already dark when I got to the bottom of the mountain where my buddy was going to pick me up. I sat down next to the buck, with the rifle<\/a> by my side and looked up at the star-filled sky and said \u201cThanks, Dad.\u201d I wept for quite a while as I was overcome with an emotion that is hard to explain. I have been blessed to have hunted quite a few places across the country<\/a> and kill bigger bucks, but I don\u2019t think any of them have meant as much as that one.<\/p> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dad\u2019s Rifle \u2013 A Rite of Passage | TRACT design and engineer performance-grade optics without the added retail costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12754,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/12754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tract-optics.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.tractoptics.com\/uploads\/general\/JLdadrifle.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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