We were hunting the second rut, or late season muzzleloader. Brad's trophy buck had just come into the alfalfa field with a large doe at its side to feed on the sweet frozen alfalfa.
I had set Brad up in a hunting blind overlooking a prime, sweet, frozen alfalfa field in which 15 to 20 deer were coming into almost every evening around dusk.
It was early December of 2005, and it was cold! I had shot a huge doe with my 50 caliber Knight muzzleloader, early in the morning two days before; the temperature then was a -10 degrees below zero, without the wind chill effect. Brad had also harvested a nice doe that afternoon with his hand made custom muzzleloader. A beautiful rifle that he hand made himself. Brad had put in hundreds of hours building it from scratch; the barrel alone had cost him over $400.00 to have that part of it hand made. It is a beautiful muzzle loading rifle.
It was a cold Thursday afternoon; 0 degrees was the high for the day. Brad entered his ground blind at about 3 o'clock. I took a another ground blind covering a wooded, swampy area, where a clover field was. It was about 400 yards from Brads ground blind. Deer were hitting both fields, some I knew were trophy deer. Legal shooting time ended at 4:52 PM for our local time (1/2 hour after sunset in Minnesota). At about 4:20 PM I heard a faint crack; sounded like a firecracker in the distant. I thought it might be the local farm kid playing around with leftover fireworks. I waited anxiously; expecting to see deer any minute. I expected to hear the roar of Brad's .62 caliber muzzleloader any second; as I knew deer were hitting the alfalfa field in higher numbers. Then about 4:45 PM - Ka-Boom! I knew it was Brad's long gun going off. Yes! I said to myself. I waited till the last minute of legal shooting light on this clear moonlit evening to leave my hunting blind. The moon was low in the sky, giving us a lot of extra light with 3 - 4 inches of snow on the frozen ground. I was cold. I gathered my hunting gear together and set off to see if Brad had pounded one. In the back of my mind I knew he had, after all; we each had a doe hanging in my garage. Also; we are both experienced bow hunters and had shot our muzzleloaders again that day for extra practice. We were both confident going into the evening hunt.
I had covered about 300 yards towards Brad's hunting blind when I noticed this dark hump, laying on the cold, snowy alfalfa field, about 75 yards from the hunting blind Brad was hunting from. I thought to myself, that has to be the deer Brad shot at. Then, through the moonlit haze the deer got up - slowly and ran off about 75 yards towards the woods it came out of - and stopped. It just stood there. I called out to Brad; "do you see that deer?" Brad answered, in a low voice, "yah, I think I hit him good." I said, "should I try to finish him off?" Brad said "no, come over here and light the heater, I'm really cold." I was too. I could see that the deer was hit hard as it was laying down while looking at me. It stopped moving, staying motionless. I went over and into Brad's hunting blind, started a small portable propane heater as he told me what happened.
The crack I had heard at 4:20 was the percussion cap on Brad's muzzleloader going off. It didn't ignite the black powder. The nipple was full of carbon from our afternoon practice of just a few rounds. From 4:20 to 4:45 PM Brad cleaned his breech plug and nipple. He then reassembled it; and looked up into the cold, hazy, late afternoon shooting light; dark-end by the black interior of the hunting blind. To his surprise; he saw 2 huge trophy deer about 50 plus yards away, grazing on the frozen sweet alfalfa. He picked out the larger of the two; lower his muzzleloader, barely able to see his open sites he took careful aim. Ka-boom! A nice liver shot with a 300 grain, round ball.
Looking at the motionless deer from the blind with binoculars, I could see it was a buck. Even as my night vision improved, I couldn't tell how big it's antlers were because of the way it was laying on the ground. Not much light now; as we only had the moonlight on the frozen, cold, snow covered alfalfa field. As soon as we warmed up a little (I think the air temperature now was about -5 degrees below zero), we left the hunting blind to recover Brad's trophy deer. It was a real nice, heavily bodied 8 point buck. It dressed out just over 190 pounds. Nice shot Brad, and way to go!
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