Success In The Field

I was one of the lucky ones. My dad was a hunter and started taking me hunting at the ripe young age of five. I killed my first deer at the age of seven. My dad worked two jobs for as long as I can remember. Working 14–16-hour days was the norm. My mom stayed home with us kids. We didn’t know it, but we were barely scraping by. He didn’t have the money for a deer lease most years, so my hunting was sparse and intermittent until he saved up enough money to buy a nice tract of land when I was in college. When we did go hunting, it was always a meat hunt. You shot the first buck that walked by your homemade ladder stand. We didn’t have corn feeders, protein feeders, or cottonseed. That cost too much money back then.

I always loved opening morning in those old ladder stands when we did have a lease. Dad and I would be so cold most mornings we would be shivering in our coveralls by 8 a.m. But there is just something about a cold, crisp morning, with the sun breaking through the tree canopy. Excitement at every sound of leaves crunching under squirrels’ feet as they scurry from oak to oak hunting for the fallen acorns. The sound they make warms up the blood of a young boy, and his imagination churns picturing the sound transforming into a deer stepping out of the brush.

Now I have a family of my own and have invested lots of time and money to give them a consistent hunting experience during their childhood. We still love hunting with Dad at his place, but for the past eight years I have had a separate deer lease as well. The first three years were in West Texas. West Texas has small-bodied and racked deer, but man are they plentiful along with hogs, turkey, and exotics as well. That deer lease wasn’t a trophy ranch by any means, but the kids didn’t care. They enjoyed the long road trips, the nights in the motel, and the plentiful opportunities to harvest game. We could harvest five deer a year and unlimited hogs, axis if we saw any. My son’s first deer was killed at that lease when he was five. A 50-yard shot from a pop-up blind with a 300 blackout with a red dot on another one of those crisp, cool mornings. Even better, Dad was on the hunt that day, so we had three generations in the blind for that memory.

Five years ago, I moved to a lease in South Texas between Laredo and Freer in the legendary Webb County. Growing up reading the Big Bucks IV book at my grandfather’s house, Webb County had more Boone & Crockett deer harvested in it than any other county in Texas at the time. My grandfather had a massive 192” deer he shot in Webb back in the early ’70s. Hunting in the low-fence South Texas brush country has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. Now, along with seven other hunters, we hunt 4,300 acres of some of the best deer habitat in Texas.

The group that had the lease before us were on it for thirty-five years. They didn’t do any supplemental feeding programs and just filled corn feeders a few weeks before the season started. Immediately in April of that year we started our feed program consisting of protein feeders and cottonseed at almost every blind on the property. This past year we put out forty-two tons of protein and an untold amount of cottonseed. We now regularly harvest mature bucks weighing from 190–220 lb. with the heaviest buck taken last year tipping the scales at a whopping 250 lbs.

During the past five years we have been intensively harvesting culls and management bucks trying to rebuild a healthy age structure that had been decimated by the previous lessees. The harvest criteria are as follows:

Cull buck

• 7-point — 3 years old or older

• 8-point — 4 years old or older

• 9-point — 5 years old or older

• 6-year-old — under 135”

Management buck

• 6-year-old or older between 135”–150”

Trophy buck

• 7-year-old or older and above 150”

The first year on the lease, there were two trophies killed, 151” and a very nice 172”. The next few years were lean on trophies with only one trophy harvested each year. However, we had a heavy focus on harvesting cull and management deer. Last year we killed three trophies; this year we have already killed three trophies, and that was on opening weekend alone. The feed and management program is definitely working, and the future is bright with many, many young deer getting placed on the no-shoot list.

With that back history, now we come to the story of “Old Warrior.” Over the last few years, I have become addicted, once again, to handgun hunting. In part due to Ryan’s work here at HHI, the Shortgun Sportsman podcast, and the Facebook group Handgun Hunting Addicts! It reignited a longing for more of a challenge than deer hunting had become with a rifle.

I have been competing in the Precision Rifle Series since its inception in 2012 and shooting precision rifle matches across the country since 2010. So naturally when I got on the lease, I set up my stand with feeders 200–450 yards away, which is a chip shot for deer. As my addiction to handgun hunting was reinvigorated I bought a Freedom Arms .454 Casull revolver off GunBroker, topped it with a Vortex Crossfire II 2–7 power and fed it the Hornady Handgun Hunter monolithic loads. Man, was I excited when that gun would regularly shoot 1–1½” groups at 100 yards off a Trifecta rest. I was bound and determined to harvest Old Warrior with that revolver.

I had been watching Old Warrior for the past four years, when I had him as a 5-year-old. At that time he was a mid 150s 11-point. I eagerly watched him for next two years waiting for him to turn seven. When last year rolled around he was on that border of being a trophy between the high 140s and low 150s. The previous rut he had been running hard and was seen whipping other bucks’ tails at stands over a mile away from his home range. We have noticed that the year after a really hard rut, those deer lose 30–50 lb. chasing and fighting. The next year their horns usually regress and suffer as their body recovers. Regardless, after watching for now the third year, I hunted hard for that deer. He was shifty early in the season and I never could get him in my sights except one time.

The first and only opportunity I had to shoot him last year was when he came out at 200 yards and fed at a corn feeder. I had him in my scope with a custom bolt-action pistol, but I really wanted to shoot him with that Freedom Arms revolver and I didn’t want to take my first animal at 200 yards, inside a feed pen with an untested load. That is a long shot for a revolver and I was unsure of how the monolithic bullet would perform at those distances. My bolt gun is an Impact action using a Custom Rifle Barrels barrel that was chambered by Stuteville Precision in .308. It sits in an XLR Atom stock that is topped with a Vortex Razor LHT 3.5–15x50. I prefer to hunt and shoot suppressed, so that gun had a Thunder Beast .338 Ultra suppressor. For those that want the quietest can on the market, that .338 Ultra is the best one I have found. That gun will outshoot me any day of the week and could have easily harvested him. However, that itch to get a shot at him with my Freedom Arms won out and I didn’t pull the trigger. After that time, I hunted close to feeders on the ground, I hunted a pond where he drank from, I tried all the tricks I could think of and never got an opportunity at him.

This year as he started growing again as an eight-year-old, I had high hopes that he would return to his glory days of being in the 150s. But alas, it was not to be. He ate protein and cottonseed all year long and those big, long beams just appeared to continue to grow. Then something weird happened. After 4 years of religiously living, eating and being the dominant buck in my area, he picked up and became a regular visitor at another stand that was 1,000 yards away. This is why you should always maintain a great relationship with other members of your lease. I had often shared pics and stories of Old Warrior with Scott, the owner of the blind Old Warrior now called home. For multiple weeks leading up to deer season he would send me trail-cam pics of Old Warrior eating at his feeders.

Finally, the time had come. I picked up the phone and called Scott and told him I was going to the lease, and I was trying to find and kill Old Warrior. He said, “When you come down, hunt my stand; I would be offended if you didn’t.” Now that is a good friend!!! The first morning I rolled through the gates late after shooting a sporting clay tournament with clients for work. Deer were already at his feeders, so I snuck in on foot. Upon reaching the bottom of his stand, a deer had me pegged and I had to slump down and sit on the ground. I didn’t see Old Warrior that night, but I had some nice deer get within yards of me and never look my way. Talk about getting the adrenaline pumping—there is nothing like handgun hunting on the ground with deer milling all around you.

The next morning hunt was another good hunt, seeing young bucks, does, fawns, javelinas and a coyote. Do you know how hard it is not to shoot a coyote with that suppressed .308 handgun for fear of spooking Old Warrior? I had 3 coyotes come by in those two hunts and it was pure torture. I saw 20+ deer again that morning.

The evening hunt finally arrived after a long day of doing chores around the ranch in 90+ degree heat. South Texas is still brutal during October. Thankfully, we had a small front come in and it was only low 90s instead of the high 90s to low 100s that it had been. My hopes were high that the slight drop in temperature would result in the mature bucks moving before dark. Sure enough, around 6:30 p.m. I had a five-year-old 9-point walk out in front of me. The feed pen in front was 120–140 yards from me. The deer had a well-used trail to the west and would crest a dirt berm about 3 feet high and then walk down to the feed pen and eat.

About two minutes after this 9 showed up out walked another large-frame deer. He stood on the dirt berm, and the western sunlight lit his tan coat up as he stood there, basking in the sun and checking out what deer were around. I pulled up my binoculars and sure enough here was Old Warrior! I ranged him quickly at 137 yards and knew that the .454 would drop around 4” at that range based on what I had reviewed previously with the Hornady 4DOF app. I quickly brought up the Freedom Arms revolver, settled the crosshairs for a shot to impact the aorta and slowly started squeezing the trigger. Doubts cascaded into my brain. Was he Old Warrior for sure? Did I rush looking at him and, in my haste, am I about to shoot another deer, out of someone else’s stand no less? I uncocked the revolver, set it down and started to really study him in the binoculars. Confirming that he was a 10-point, g2’s that are shorter than then the g3’s and seeing the telltale left G4 which is a nice 5” crab claw with the main beam curving up at the end. I was now confident that this was indeed Old Warrior.

I rushed to swap back to the FA before he decided to leave the berm satisfied with his surroundings. Once again, I put the revolver up on the Trifecta rest, rock solid and aiming for the aorta. I slowly squeezed that trigger and upon the hammer falling I could hear the telltale slap of the bullet impacting. He brought up his left foot, paused for half a second and then turned and disappeared back into the brush and disappeared. I knew I had hit him, but on the lease if you shoot a management or trophy deer and you can’t find him, you must call in tracking dogs. If you don’t get an exit, little drops of blood disappear in the sandy/rocky soil of South Texas and I find it exceptionally difficult to trail deer. Was the shot good, would I have to call in a dog and again … was I absolutely sure this was Old Warrior? All those thoughts raced through my brain while I waited.

After twenty minutes passed, I reloaded the revolver, turned it down to two power and put it back in my Backcountry Leather Goods chest holster. I was anticipating having to track him through the thick brush country. This was my third big-game animal to shoot with that .454 Casull, all over 100 yards, he was the only one that hadn’t dropped in his tracks. I hastily climbed out of the stand and hurried to the berm where he was. I found him lying in the brush, not three steps in! What a relief to find him and confirm it was the right deer! I finally got to hold his rack in my hands and reflect on the worthy quarry I had been watching for four long years. With his grey and wrinkled face, he was indeed an Old Warrior!

The 200-grain Hornady Handgun Hunter performed really well, and I have yet to recover one of the bullets. He must have been quartering slightly to me as the shot was a perfect behind-the-shoulder shot that exited a little further back in the ribs. Old Warrior weighed 210 lb. and scored 139” on the tape. I couldn’t be happier to get my second 10-point in as many years with this new, exciting addiction called handgun hunting.

Now there is only one thing left to do: find and hunt a trophy 150” deer this year and add another tally mark to the kill count of the Freedom Arms …. or do I try and break in the newly worked-over 3-screw Blackhawk in .41 Mag that used to belong to my grandfather. Short Action Customs reworked it, put a new 7.5” barrel on it with some nice grips and an action job topped with some of Fermin Garza’s nice sights. That is the beauty and challenge of handgun hunting—you have so many choices!!!!