Twanger
DINO and NRA Life
This story is about a muzzleloader hunt in the Mt. Nebo Wildlife Management Area in Garrett County, in the mountains of Western Maryland on Thursday October 16th, 2014.
In the previous two weeks before hunting season I’d spent a few days at the range relearning how to shoot the White Rifles Javalina muzzleloading pistol that has sat in the gun safe for the better part of a decade. To use the word “pistol” is a bit of an understatement of this weapon. The Javalina is basically a 45-caliber muzzleloading rifle with a barrel cut down to 14-inches and mounted in a two-handed pistol stock. Only 200 were made, and I’m fortunate enough to have two. The other one is a 41 caliber. The 45-cal beast wears a 2X Leupold long eye relief scope on it, which is a good thing because you don’t want the thing anywhere near your face when it goes off. You hold it out at arm’s length when you shoot it so it won’t beat you senseless. The load I was using threw a 350 grain 0.400-caliber all-lead hollow-point spitzer in a 45/40 sabot using 55 grains of Triple Seven 3F powder. Ignition in the open breach is provided by a #11 percussion cap, and the muzzle velocity is about 1200 fps. Triple Seven 3F powder is 25% more powerful by volume than standard Goex 2F black powder; and therefore this load is roughly equivalent to shooting an original black-powder cartridge rifle 45/70 load out of a 4-1/2 pound pistol. Market hunters killed millions of buffalo with rounds like the 45/70 in the mid-late 1800’s. Recoil of this pistol could be described as somewhere between “spirited” and “that’s nuts” and it will basically sprain both of my thumbs if I shoot it more than a dozen times at a sitting. Despite being physically unruly it’s quite accurate, and off sand-bags I was getting around 5-inch groups at 100 yards. However, the plan was to hunt with it like a bow that goes boom, and limit shots to about 50 yards, ideally under 30 yards.
Wednesday before season opener we scouted for a likely spot to hunt. At 4am Thursday the buds dropped me at the parking lot and took the truck on to their hunting location. First light found me ½-mile from the parking lot in thick cover near one of the many draws that come down off of Mt. Nebo. Fifteen minutes after shooting light a single large-bodied deer slipped by me before the pistol could be brought to bear, and he was gone in 3 seconds. I was sure it was the buck that had laid down the rub line I was hunting over. Nothing else appeared that morning and we met at the parking lot at 11am to go back to the cabin for lunch.
During the 1/2-mile morning walk in my right calf felt sore. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was a warning sign.
That afternoon the buds dropped me off at 3:30pm and took my truck to a different parking lot to hunt elsewhere. They agreed to return at 8pm.
I had brought my stand out, so on the walk in that afternoon I had about 40lb of stuff on my back between the stand and pack filled with clothes, water, and food.
Five minutes into the 20-minute walk it felt like somebody stabbed me low in the right calf with an ice-pick.
I stopped to catch my breath.
I didn't relish walking back to the parking lot and sitting on my butt for 4-1/2 hours until my friends arrived, so I thought maybe I could walk it off. The trail was not all that difficult but poorly defined. So I kept going. Every step brought a stab of pain until I learned to point my toe way out to the right and take the stress off my calf.
Basically I was walking like Igor, and dragged my right leg about half a mile while wearing a 40lb pack, wincing the whole way. I could not "walk it off." It's probably a good time to mention that the cell-phone was showing "no service" or zero to one bars most of the time. Probably also a good time to mention that I’m pretty stubborn about giving up.
So I tested the wind and found a good place nearby my morning spot where two deer trails intersected, a place that was a little more in the open than the morning spot. Climbed 20-feet up one of three white oak trees in a cluster, installed a tree umbrella, hauled the pistol up, capped it, put my coat on, and was settled in by 4:30pm.
About 5pm I glimpsed a grey form slipping by the exact tree that I'd sat in that morning, which was maybe 70 yards away. Then another one slipped by. It was in thick cover and the gray forms were gone in half a second.
Egads, did I outsmart myself by moving the stand?!
Around 5:30pm a lone turkey slipped by on the other side of me in the open woods about 65 yards out. He looked huge... about 4 feet tall! After a while it occurred to me to mark the gps position of the stand in my phone. That turned out to be a really good decision.
A rain shower came through... and I was glad for the umbrella wrapped around the tree above. Then the wind came up and pumped back and forth, spreading my scent everywhere. Not ideal.
At 6:30 pm the spidey senses tingled and I looked to my right to see a six point buck lazily polishing his antlers in overhead brush at a range of 8 yards! How do they do that!? How do they slip in that close?
Slowly I brought the pistol to bear, but it was really thick and I couldn’t get a clear shot. I considered shooting him right through the brush but he was so close and quartering towards me that the shot was poor. I figured he had come out of the pine thicket and would soon decide to continue to cross the trail in front of me so I decided to wait him out. After a few minutes that’s exactly what he did.
As the range opened to 12 yards he walked into the clear and I mouth grunted to see if I could stop him. The crosshair was tracking his shoulder. After half-a-second it was clear he wasn’t going to stop and the opportunity was about to evaporate. The crosshair was on his left shoulder and the trigger broke as if it had pulled itself. Now, when I’m hunting with a high powered rifle like the .308 or a 12-ga slug gun when the trigger breaks and the scope is zeroed on the vitals of a deer or hog I don’t even feel the recoil, and don’t remember even hearing the sound of the gun go off. It’s a non-event. Well folks, that was not how it played out with the Javalina pistol. When the trigger broke there was a bright flash of sparks that blinded me when the cap ignited, fire shot 3 feet out of the muzzle and the gun roared like the voice of Satan. It bucked and twisted in my hands from the recoil, threatening to fly away. I was momentarily stunned and my ears began to ring. My eyes flew open wide as saucers. Holy crap! The 350 grain bullet drove through the near shoulder of the buck, wreaked havoc inside his chest and broke his far leg-bone in half before plunging into the dirt below.
The buck ran like the wild doomed beast that he was through the gathering gloom, directly towards the trail out. I strained to see him as I recovered from the flash. His front end was low and scrambling and I knew he was done for. He slowed about 70 yards out and began to weave. At 80 yards he stopped, weaved more drunkenly, and toppled over. Yes!
Then it began to rain and the gravity of the situation hit me. I’m half a mile back with a dead buck in the cold rain and a bum leg and it will soon be dark. I’ll never, in a million years, get him out by myself. I needed a plan.
I grabbed my phone. No Service. Oh boy. It’ll be dark in 40 minutes. Gotta move!
So as fast as I was able I collected my things, lowered the gun, and climbed down. I at least had to find him again before it got dark.
I left the stand at the base of the tree, grabbed the pack and gun and hobbled to the buck as darkness fell. Using the safety line from the tree stand, carabiner from my safety harness, and a spare piece of stout line from the pack I hung him in a small nearby tree. I texted the buds “Deer down. Need help.” Then I began to gut the buck. I stopped to check the phone. Text didn’t get through. I hit “retry” and continued my work, retrying perhaps half a dozen times before the message went out. There was no answer. I finished gutting him at 7:30pm. It became clear that I could not stay there and wait for rescue for me and the deer. Did they get the message? Did they know to come? Could they find the trail? No way of knowing for sure. It was also as clear that if we were going to get the deer out I’d have to walk another mile and a half on the leg before the night was through. Well, that’s it then. Nothing else to do really. Time to suck it up and just do it. I hauled the buck a little higher in the tree, pulled the gut pile 10 yards away in hopes that it might distract a scavenger from the real prize, and prepared to leave him.
I donned the pack, picked up the gun, and headed to the parking lot as fast as I was able given the steady rain and bad footing. The trip was fairly uneventful except for the occasional stabbing pain in the leg whenever I put weight on my toe. I soon became expert in avoiding this situation.
Finally, whew, the parking lot. I was hot and damp. Steam poured off my body in the humid air like I was about to catch on fire. It was cold. I put on my poncho, extinguished the head lamp and sat there in the rain, secretly hoping that my buddies had not scored on a buck, and that they would be there by 8pm as pre-arranged.
Every car and truck on the highway that approached raised my hopes a little and then dashed them again as they went by. However, it wasn’t long before the lights of a vehicle that was going more slowly than the rest approached from the south and turned in. My bright blue Chevy Avalanche appeared. How do you spell relief!?
They hopped out of the truck and I quickly explained the leg situation, and though I’d marked the trail with reflectors told them that I should lead them back in - if they were game to do a deer recovery. Without skipping a beat they grabbed the deer cart and made preparations to head back into the darkness.
By 8:30pm we had found the buck. We decided to get the stand now, instead of waiting until the next day. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to walk the next day after the leg had time to stiffen up. Heck, it was only 80 yards away. So while one friend stayed to tie the buck to the cart, the other friend and I headed in the general direction of the stand … and in 5 minutes I was completely and solidly disoriented. Completely lost. Then I remembered that I had marked the GPS position of the stand. The GPS software has a tracking mode and soon we were headed in the right direction, and 3 minutes later we found the stand. We’d walked 100 yards past it! Sobering.
Back at the buck we decided that my two able bodied friends would have to haul the buck out, if I could haul the stand and the pack. I figured I would be faster than them, but was soon proved wrong. They pulled that little cart like demons on a mission and by 9:15 pm we were back at the truck high-fiving and very glad to be out of the rain.
I butchered the buck the next day and the two best packages of backstrap went to my two buddies that pulled that buck out for me.
Here's a picture of the Javalina pistol, bullet/sabot and a recent 100-yard target.
Here's the buck back at the cabin the next morning.
In the previous two weeks before hunting season I’d spent a few days at the range relearning how to shoot the White Rifles Javalina muzzleloading pistol that has sat in the gun safe for the better part of a decade. To use the word “pistol” is a bit of an understatement of this weapon. The Javalina is basically a 45-caliber muzzleloading rifle with a barrel cut down to 14-inches and mounted in a two-handed pistol stock. Only 200 were made, and I’m fortunate enough to have two. The other one is a 41 caliber. The 45-cal beast wears a 2X Leupold long eye relief scope on it, which is a good thing because you don’t want the thing anywhere near your face when it goes off. You hold it out at arm’s length when you shoot it so it won’t beat you senseless. The load I was using threw a 350 grain 0.400-caliber all-lead hollow-point spitzer in a 45/40 sabot using 55 grains of Triple Seven 3F powder. Ignition in the open breach is provided by a #11 percussion cap, and the muzzle velocity is about 1200 fps. Triple Seven 3F powder is 25% more powerful by volume than standard Goex 2F black powder; and therefore this load is roughly equivalent to shooting an original black-powder cartridge rifle 45/70 load out of a 4-1/2 pound pistol. Market hunters killed millions of buffalo with rounds like the 45/70 in the mid-late 1800’s. Recoil of this pistol could be described as somewhere between “spirited” and “that’s nuts” and it will basically sprain both of my thumbs if I shoot it more than a dozen times at a sitting. Despite being physically unruly it’s quite accurate, and off sand-bags I was getting around 5-inch groups at 100 yards. However, the plan was to hunt with it like a bow that goes boom, and limit shots to about 50 yards, ideally under 30 yards.
Wednesday before season opener we scouted for a likely spot to hunt. At 4am Thursday the buds dropped me at the parking lot and took the truck on to their hunting location. First light found me ½-mile from the parking lot in thick cover near one of the many draws that come down off of Mt. Nebo. Fifteen minutes after shooting light a single large-bodied deer slipped by me before the pistol could be brought to bear, and he was gone in 3 seconds. I was sure it was the buck that had laid down the rub line I was hunting over. Nothing else appeared that morning and we met at the parking lot at 11am to go back to the cabin for lunch.
During the 1/2-mile morning walk in my right calf felt sore. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was a warning sign.
That afternoon the buds dropped me off at 3:30pm and took my truck to a different parking lot to hunt elsewhere. They agreed to return at 8pm.
I had brought my stand out, so on the walk in that afternoon I had about 40lb of stuff on my back between the stand and pack filled with clothes, water, and food.
Five minutes into the 20-minute walk it felt like somebody stabbed me low in the right calf with an ice-pick.
I stopped to catch my breath.
I didn't relish walking back to the parking lot and sitting on my butt for 4-1/2 hours until my friends arrived, so I thought maybe I could walk it off. The trail was not all that difficult but poorly defined. So I kept going. Every step brought a stab of pain until I learned to point my toe way out to the right and take the stress off my calf.
Basically I was walking like Igor, and dragged my right leg about half a mile while wearing a 40lb pack, wincing the whole way. I could not "walk it off." It's probably a good time to mention that the cell-phone was showing "no service" or zero to one bars most of the time. Probably also a good time to mention that I’m pretty stubborn about giving up.
So I tested the wind and found a good place nearby my morning spot where two deer trails intersected, a place that was a little more in the open than the morning spot. Climbed 20-feet up one of three white oak trees in a cluster, installed a tree umbrella, hauled the pistol up, capped it, put my coat on, and was settled in by 4:30pm.
About 5pm I glimpsed a grey form slipping by the exact tree that I'd sat in that morning, which was maybe 70 yards away. Then another one slipped by. It was in thick cover and the gray forms were gone in half a second.
Egads, did I outsmart myself by moving the stand?!
Around 5:30pm a lone turkey slipped by on the other side of me in the open woods about 65 yards out. He looked huge... about 4 feet tall! After a while it occurred to me to mark the gps position of the stand in my phone. That turned out to be a really good decision.
A rain shower came through... and I was glad for the umbrella wrapped around the tree above. Then the wind came up and pumped back and forth, spreading my scent everywhere. Not ideal.
At 6:30 pm the spidey senses tingled and I looked to my right to see a six point buck lazily polishing his antlers in overhead brush at a range of 8 yards! How do they do that!? How do they slip in that close?
Slowly I brought the pistol to bear, but it was really thick and I couldn’t get a clear shot. I considered shooting him right through the brush but he was so close and quartering towards me that the shot was poor. I figured he had come out of the pine thicket and would soon decide to continue to cross the trail in front of me so I decided to wait him out. After a few minutes that’s exactly what he did.
As the range opened to 12 yards he walked into the clear and I mouth grunted to see if I could stop him. The crosshair was tracking his shoulder. After half-a-second it was clear he wasn’t going to stop and the opportunity was about to evaporate. The crosshair was on his left shoulder and the trigger broke as if it had pulled itself. Now, when I’m hunting with a high powered rifle like the .308 or a 12-ga slug gun when the trigger breaks and the scope is zeroed on the vitals of a deer or hog I don’t even feel the recoil, and don’t remember even hearing the sound of the gun go off. It’s a non-event. Well folks, that was not how it played out with the Javalina pistol. When the trigger broke there was a bright flash of sparks that blinded me when the cap ignited, fire shot 3 feet out of the muzzle and the gun roared like the voice of Satan. It bucked and twisted in my hands from the recoil, threatening to fly away. I was momentarily stunned and my ears began to ring. My eyes flew open wide as saucers. Holy crap! The 350 grain bullet drove through the near shoulder of the buck, wreaked havoc inside his chest and broke his far leg-bone in half before plunging into the dirt below.
The buck ran like the wild doomed beast that he was through the gathering gloom, directly towards the trail out. I strained to see him as I recovered from the flash. His front end was low and scrambling and I knew he was done for. He slowed about 70 yards out and began to weave. At 80 yards he stopped, weaved more drunkenly, and toppled over. Yes!
Then it began to rain and the gravity of the situation hit me. I’m half a mile back with a dead buck in the cold rain and a bum leg and it will soon be dark. I’ll never, in a million years, get him out by myself. I needed a plan.
I grabbed my phone. No Service. Oh boy. It’ll be dark in 40 minutes. Gotta move!
So as fast as I was able I collected my things, lowered the gun, and climbed down. I at least had to find him again before it got dark.
I left the stand at the base of the tree, grabbed the pack and gun and hobbled to the buck as darkness fell. Using the safety line from the tree stand, carabiner from my safety harness, and a spare piece of stout line from the pack I hung him in a small nearby tree. I texted the buds “Deer down. Need help.” Then I began to gut the buck. I stopped to check the phone. Text didn’t get through. I hit “retry” and continued my work, retrying perhaps half a dozen times before the message went out. There was no answer. I finished gutting him at 7:30pm. It became clear that I could not stay there and wait for rescue for me and the deer. Did they get the message? Did they know to come? Could they find the trail? No way of knowing for sure. It was also as clear that if we were going to get the deer out I’d have to walk another mile and a half on the leg before the night was through. Well, that’s it then. Nothing else to do really. Time to suck it up and just do it. I hauled the buck a little higher in the tree, pulled the gut pile 10 yards away in hopes that it might distract a scavenger from the real prize, and prepared to leave him.
I donned the pack, picked up the gun, and headed to the parking lot as fast as I was able given the steady rain and bad footing. The trip was fairly uneventful except for the occasional stabbing pain in the leg whenever I put weight on my toe. I soon became expert in avoiding this situation.
Finally, whew, the parking lot. I was hot and damp. Steam poured off my body in the humid air like I was about to catch on fire. It was cold. I put on my poncho, extinguished the head lamp and sat there in the rain, secretly hoping that my buddies had not scored on a buck, and that they would be there by 8pm as pre-arranged.
Every car and truck on the highway that approached raised my hopes a little and then dashed them again as they went by. However, it wasn’t long before the lights of a vehicle that was going more slowly than the rest approached from the south and turned in. My bright blue Chevy Avalanche appeared. How do you spell relief!?
They hopped out of the truck and I quickly explained the leg situation, and though I’d marked the trail with reflectors told them that I should lead them back in - if they were game to do a deer recovery. Without skipping a beat they grabbed the deer cart and made preparations to head back into the darkness.
By 8:30pm we had found the buck. We decided to get the stand now, instead of waiting until the next day. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to walk the next day after the leg had time to stiffen up. Heck, it was only 80 yards away. So while one friend stayed to tie the buck to the cart, the other friend and I headed in the general direction of the stand … and in 5 minutes I was completely and solidly disoriented. Completely lost. Then I remembered that I had marked the GPS position of the stand. The GPS software has a tracking mode and soon we were headed in the right direction, and 3 minutes later we found the stand. We’d walked 100 yards past it! Sobering.
Back at the buck we decided that my two able bodied friends would have to haul the buck out, if I could haul the stand and the pack. I figured I would be faster than them, but was soon proved wrong. They pulled that little cart like demons on a mission and by 9:15 pm we were back at the truck high-fiving and very glad to be out of the rain.
I butchered the buck the next day and the two best packages of backstrap went to my two buddies that pulled that buck out for me.
Here's a picture of the Javalina pistol, bullet/sabot and a recent 100-yard target.
Here's the buck back at the cabin the next morning.
Maybe yours?
