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| Regular Big Game |
"Mr.
Magoo"
By: Anonymus
- 13August2002 August,
2002 - Winner
- "Story of the Month"
A group of friends meet up at the Catahoula
Game Reserve in LA for one of our annual deer hunting trips. Only
this year is different. I brought along my brother-in-law, Robbie.
Robbie's no idiot, He's just like any other hunter. A reasonably intelligent,
sporting kinda fellow.
Our trip generally consists of a bunch
of friends who separate into smaller groups of three to five guys.
Each group goes to its' own prospective "secret spot" for
a little friendly competition. The object, if not obvious, is the
biggest buck of the week-end.
Our group is supposed to meet back at
the truck for lunch to discuss what we saw and to develop a strategy
for the evening hunt. One group-member, named Billy, was late getting
back for lunch, so we all talked for a while, ate and headed back
into the woods.
On the way back to our "secret
spots", we ran across Billy, our missing group member, walking
back to the truck in a hurry to eat and get back out into the woods.
He tells us, he jumped a group of does, which had within it a monster
buck. Quite possibly the largest deer he had ever seen on hoof.
So now we're all pumped up and he's
hurrying to eat. We split up to go to our stands in the "secret
spot", and that's the last I heard of Robbie until later that
evening on the way out.
We were on our way out of the woods
when I came across Robbie on his way back in. He was all in a panick
about having shot the monster buck his buddy, Billy, had described
to us earlier. So we had to calm him down so he could tell us what
exactly happened.
What he says is this; "I was on
my stand for about two hours when something got in my contacts. I
couldn't get it out, so I decided to go back to the truck to clean
them both. When I got to what I thought was the main trail, I must
have zigged when I should have zagged and headed away from the truck.
After half a mile or so, I realized
I was going the wrong way, because I came across a creek that wasn't
there earlier. So I turned around.
On the way back, my eyes are even worse
now as I round this curve and what appears to be a monster of a buck
is just standing there about fifty or so yards down the trail staring
at me. I couldn't believe it, so I tried to rub my eyes clear, and
he's still standing there. He slowly begins to walk away, so I take
a shot. The buck runs off, so I go to where he was standing, and find
blood.
I tried to blood trail, but couldn't
see. So I flagged the spot and ran to the truck, cleaned my contacts,
and hurried back to blood trail".
That's where Robbie's' account of what
happened ends and mine begins. You see, we caught Robbie on his way
back in and He tells us all this in a panick. He even described the
apparent 10pt or better rack this guy was sporting.So, as you can
guess, we all decide to pitch in and find this beautiful specimen
before the coyotes' get to it. We trail and we trail, it's about eleven
P.M. now, so we decide to flag the last blood, and come back in the
morning.
Robbie's bummed all night and we try
to lift his spirits by bragging to the other groups how they just
got smoked on the first day. So we decide to miss our morning hunts
to find this buck that is sure to win us the friendly competition.
After blood trailing for three hours
that morning, me and Billy are on our hands and knees looking for
specs of blood on every leaf and twig while Robbie circles around
us looking for the trophy buck. He comes back and asks, in an unconfident
manner, if we think we can find his deer. We think he's trying to
tell us to give up, and not to worry about it. We assure him we will
find his deer. He didn't take this gesture as positively as we would
have hoped, as Robbie had just stumbled across his "baby-button-buck-bambie"
and didn't want to tell us in the hopes that we would give up the
search. Not us though, this wasn't our first time to blood trail.
When Robbie realizes we're moving closer to this trophy buck of his,
he spills the beans. He says, "You're not gonna believe what
it is". We ask, "What do you mean"? He informs us,
that now he can see more clearly, he has discovered it's just a button
buck.
You see, he was afraid to tell us he
found it twenty minutes earlier because he didn't want to be ridiculed
after being praised all night for bagging the next state record and
us missing our morning hunt to find this monster of a rack.
Certainly to be called Mr. Magoo by all of
us forever, he still hunts with us and a lot of the new guys even
call him Magoo, unaware of his real name. I'm not sure if they even
know why we call him that, but the nickname stuck and it brings to
mind fond memories of all the good times we have out there. Robbie
will probably never outgrow "Magoo" even if he does get
the state record.
Sorry Robbie. |
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