Chris FarrisPlanning ahead and allowing enough days plus two has saved my tail on many hunts. More than once I tagged out on the last day right at dark.
But on this particular hunt we were done way early and with no tags left found our selves looking for any excuse to get back in the woods. We worked a deal with a high fenced ranch to varmint hunt (a win win for both him and us). He told us that we could also hunt fallow deer if we saw any. He put them on his place about five years ago and no one has seen them since.
His land was about 5,000 acres of rolling hills and extremly thick cover. Fallow are known to get into the thickest stuff they can find......stuff that you could not walk through. After not seeing any coyotes and presented with such a challenge, we started hunting fallow.
After all day of walking and glassing we began to think that the coyotes must have been able to find the fallow years ago because we did not see any sign of them ever being there.
We became more relaxed and deliberate in our hunting style. Walking and talking out in the open just passing time when we spotted two of them, (one almost black and one spotted). How they got into the vine infested tree covered spot they were in with those palmated antlers I have no idea, but there they were just frozen thinking we could not see them I guess. I raised my rifle and the black one took off, the spotted fallow took a few steps and stopped. I always keep my scope on the lowest power when walking and I am glad I did because he was only 15 yards away. I moved my crosshairs to him and without thinking about the range.....held where I would normally hold for a 100 yard shot and squeezed the trigger (hitting way too high), I thought I'd missed. He took off dead away from us when I shot again. Down he went! with the infamous "Texas heart shot". When we finally pulled him out of the cover he had two hits, much to my surprise.
The rancher was elated to find out that at least two (now one) were still on his place.
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