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DuBose claims top story prize
Posted: Tuesday, Dec 11, 2007 - 08:23:19 am CST
Tom DuBose of Uvalde claimed first place in this year's Uvalde Leader-News Hunting Story Contest.
DuBose won the $50 top prize for his story about an excited hunter whose kill suffered “ground shrink.”
Second place and $30 went to Cody Brown of Uvalde for his story about a hunt with a black powder rifle.
Alan Shubert of Conroe won the third-place prize of $20 for his story about a memorable hunt with a preacher.
The three winning stories appear in the pages of this year's Hunters Guide. Below is DuBose's story.
‘Ground shrink' strikes deer
(Editor's note: The following story about tracking a wounded buck, which was written by Tom DuBose of Uvalde, won first place in this year's Hunting Story contest.)
In 1958 I leased our ranch to a couple of deer hunters from Houston. They set up camp in the old house up near our barns and were very excited about getting to hunt in the Uvalde area. These two fellows had never hunted in the area before, but had heard it is a deer hunter's paradise. They could hardly wait to get out into the pasture and see for themselves if that was true. They arrived the day before the hunting season opened, so they let me drive them around and show them the lay of the land.
Early the next morning, the first day of hunting season, I drove them out to a part of the ranch where I'd been seeing several deer. I suggested that they would probably have a better chance of getting bucks if they would sit still under a tree and watch for deer instead of walking around. It is pretty hard to walk up on a deer in brushy areas because they have very keen eyesight and hearing. They can usually tell you are there and will run off before you ever see them. The hunters agreed with my suggestion. They separated and sat down under some trees about 200 yards apart from each other. I left them and drove back to the barns.
A couple of hours later one of the hunters came running back to where I was shoeing a horse. He excitedly told me he had wounded a huge buck but couldn't find it He said he walked straight to the spot where the buck had been standing and found some blood and a small chip of bone. He was certain the deer couldn't go very far after that solid hit so I agreed to go back with him and help look for it. I put the horse in a pen and we drove out to the place where the deer had been wounded. Unfortunately, the blood trail played out and we were able to follow it only about a hundred yards.
The guy was so upset about not finding his trophy buck that he looked like he was about to cry. He asked me if I knew of anyone around Uvalde who had a dog that would trail a wounded deer. I knew that Richard Stitts had a dog that was supposed to be really good at finding wounded deer so I phoned him and explained the situation. He came right out to the ranch with his dog. I saddled the horse I had been shoeing in case this turned out to be a long, fast race. I would have a better chance of keeping up with the dog if I were on horseback.
The hunter drove Mr. Stitts and the dog to the last place where we had found blood. I got there on my horse just as Richard released his dog. The dog immediately took off on the deer's trail. Richard ran along on foot carrying his rifle with him and I swear he could almost outrun my horse through the thick brush. We soon left the hunter so far behind I was afraid he might get lost I rode back and found him puffing like a steam engine. I told him to walk on back to the road and wait, that we would try our best to get his deer for him. He was reluctant to give up the trail, but realized he'd never be able to stay up with Richard and me so he turned back.
The dog finally caught up with the buck and bayed it in a dense thicket in a neighboring ranch, about three miles from where we had started the trail. I had to ride down a fence line a good ways to a wire gap so I could continue following the dog into the neighbor's pasture. Richard just climbed over the fence and stayed on the trail. He got to the deer before I did and had already shot it through the neck and dragged it out of the thicket when I got there. As you have probably guessed, the deer was a typical little hill country six-pointer with antlers about the size of the fingers on your hands. Besides the bullet hole Mr. Stitts had put through its neck, the only other wound on the deer was a nick on its front leg, just deep enough to knock out a little chip of bone.
Here we had another typical case of “ground shrink” in which a deer seems a lot bigger when it is alive and running around than it does after it is lying dead on the ground. I've had it happen several times with deer I have shot and it is always quite a disappointment. I was almost tempted to leave this deer and go tell the hunter his buck had gotten away just to spare him the embarrassment and disappointment of seeing what his “huge buck” really was. I thought better of the idea, so I got Mr. Stitts to help me lift the little buck up onto my saddle, then I carried it back to the gap in the fence line and left it there.
I rode on back to the barns, unsaddled my horse, then got in my pickup and drove over to get the hunter. He was still waiting beside the road. I took him to get his deer, and when he saw it, he tried to claim that the dog must have been trailing the wrong buck, that his deer was much bigger. I had no doubt that it was the same one, so I asked him if he still had that little chip of bone he showed me earlier. He reached into his pocket and produced the chip. Then I told him to see if it matched the chipped off place on the deer's leg bone. The chip fit like the hut piece of a picture puzzle.
At that point, the man had to admit that he must have just thought it was a much bigger deer he had shot at However, he was glad that Mr. Stitts had come, and gladly paid him the small fee. I'll bet the next time he went hunting, he took a closer look at the size of the deer before deciding to shoot, and took closer aim before pulling the trigger.
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