Missed Deer Today

For Patriot:

I tend to look at it this way: A firearm is just a piece of machinery -or- a tool. Like anything else each tool has it's purpose. Most of the guys around here hunt with a rifle because that's the best tool for the job but a 12 ga. can do the job if it's used correctly.

A 12 ga. is more of a general purpose tool that does a bit of everything. It's better for someone just starting out that might not have too much money to put into it. I was awfully fond of of my 12 ga single shot back in the day. It was a simple and reliable piece of machinery. It was lightweight. It easily broke down into three parts that would fit nicely in my pack. Elegant in it's simplicity.

For a bit more money you can get a shotgun with interchangeable barrels. A rifled barrel would be intended for rifled slugs. It probably wouldn't be the best choice for shot because you would run into problems with lead fouling. The new steel shot would probably damage the rifling in the barrel. In a case like that you would swap in your smoothbore for running shot.

If you went really high up to the BMW of shotguns you could get something 10 or 15 different barrels that you could swap in for different purposes. Some of the barrels even fire rifle cartridges in the most popular hunting loads. That's more like buying the fine art of the gunsmith than purchasing an everyday tool that's put to practical use.

Around here .... most people process their own deer meat. They will hang it in a tree out in the front yard for days so that everybody can see that they got their deer this year. The big thing is that there's a scent gland down by the crotch. If you accidently puncture it when you're dressing out the deer then it will most likely foul the meat. It's best for a first timer is to get one of the neighbors to show them how to do it.

For Rog: You're right about the geometry of the slug. The length isn't in the right proportion to it's diameter. It doesn't fly quite true even if it's been run through a rifled barrel. My opinion is that it's got an awful lot of wallop at short range.



When you're talking about rifle rounds it's easy to understand because you're talking about the bullet diameter in hundredths of an inch. A 22 rimfire is 22/100 ths. The military M-16 is 22.7/100 ths. All of the 30 & 40 caliber rounds are basically the same thing. The shotgun rounds are confusing. A .410 is actually a caliber and can legally be fired from some pistols. A 12 gauge translates into being a 50 caliber round !

We're actually two islands that are not that far off the coast. There's a bridge from the mainland that goes over to the smaller of the two and then there's a causeway that goes over to the bigger one. Where we're landing millions of pounds of lobster every year we need a land route for trucking.

If you look at the history though .... deer have been here for thousands of years. Long before the bridge or even first white settlers in the 1600's. Nature abhors a vacuum. The deer and the other wildlife swim here. In the old days it was much colder and the ocean would freeze for miles out away from the mainland. They would just walk across the ice in a search for food if things got scarce where they were.

There's a national park called Isle au Haut that's way out in the water. Visited there a few times and it's over run with deer.

As far as the little ones go: There's a certain logic as to why they aren't taken. The law say that you can't take a deer that doesn't have antlers. A limited number of Doe permits are issued on a lottery basis every year. The thing is that there are so many large does you would naturally take one of them instead of settling for a yearling.

There's kind of a cultural thing going on too. When you tag your deer it has to be taken to the weigh station and logged in. It's sort of a friendly competition to see who brings in the biggest deer and the winner gets bragging rights.

If you showed up with Bambi ???