A few buddies and I had an amazing adventure last weekend. We all met down in Rocksprings Friday afternoon for our annual get together. With one not being able to make it at the last minute another buddy brought his son who is home from college for the holidays.

Friday and Saturday passed with no real action happening for anyone, a few young bucks and some does were seen, and I took a cull right at dark. Instead of gathering him up and field dressing him i decided to wait until after supper and see who wanted to go for a ride on the mule to help get him and see if we could scare up some pigs or axis.

As we pulled thru the first gate i said just wait guys since none of us grabbed a long gun we'll be overran with animals but that didn't change our course and off we went.

Sure enough within a quarter mile of camp we light up a treeline and there are 20-30 sets of eyes looking back at us. As we ease on past we really can't get a good look so we just tell each other "aww they are all whitetail so nothing to worry about"...famous last words right?

Up the hill we head to recover and clean my deer. 30 minutes later deer recovered, cleaned, loaded up and off we go but at a much slower, relaxed pace. As we approach the infamous treeline we light it up again and there they are only this time there are about 10 sets of eyes looking back at us. I eased the mule as close as i dared and we have positive ID...All axis..

We turn back to the trail and "calmly" make our way back to camp headed straight to the truck.

After properly equipping ourselves to engage in the act of harvesting fine table fare we head back to the last know location of said steaks.

As we stealthily make our approach we discover there are only 3 pairs remaining so we quickly decide that the youngster and I will be the shooters, dad will be a spotter and the last guy will be the shiner. Once we are all in position and everyone is in a safe position to avoid accidents we wait on them to give us an opportunity. When the opportunity finally presents itself the youngster and i shoot at almost the same instant. After waiting and discussing the shots we have determined that i went for the neck and he went for the lung shot. After a quick search we have 1 doe down, neck shot so we are assuming it's mine and he missed since no other sign was found. After striking a deal with him to field dress it for half of the meat away he gets to work. we are all just BS'ing but paying no real attention since the ribbing we were giving him was much more entertaining than actually looking at the spoils.

Once back at camp the ribbing continues as I start to skin and quarter until.....you guessed it after getting the skin off there is a perfect .243 hole right behind the left shoulder...we actually shot the same deer!!!

This is one for my collection of stories that i will continue to tell year after year to anyone and everyone that will listen. This was his first axis to see, hunt or eat so not only did he get half the meat good ole dad agreed to have the hide tanned for him so he will have that to go along with the memories.

Sorry for the long post but i just had to brag on the awesome adventure that was had.

Cool story. Give it a few years and when the kid tells the story, it will be the old man that shot the deer behind the shoulder

..it happens. Good eating and partially tenderized.

Good times !