Five days before the opening day of deer season here in upstate New York, I underwent some surgery that my doctor told me would prevent me from hunting.  Turns out he was mistaken.  That following Saturday, after a big breakfast, I hit the woods at the crack of noon, making my way very slowly up the ragged and rocky logging road that would put me into the small ground-blind my buddy Mark and I had staked out a week earlier.

Much to the chagrin of my hunting partner, who prides himself on being in the woods 45-minutes before dawn, my early-afternoon start time habits don’t sit quite right with his traditional hunting sensibilities.  By the time I had made it up the hill and carefully and quietly approached the small ground-cover in the middle of a nice stand of oak trees sporting a broken carpet of acorns, it was 1PM.

It had rained the night before and the leaves underfoot made it as quiet as a stroll in the park.  Not a breeze in the air, I made my way five or seven steps at a time, pausing for at least 90-seconds each time before proceeding.  I heard snorts to my right, in dense dead-falls, and I froze in place to see if they might come out and into view.  The first buck stuck his lowered head into the logging road, then the second and finally the third, a 4-6-and 8 point trio.  I was stuck in place because I was more or less in the open and any movement would start a stampeding exodus.  Seemingly uninterested and clearly not on high alert, the groups loitered about, me frozen in the open not daring to move.  The 8-point looked up and back down half a dozen times before he finally decided to err on the side of caution and the trio trotted away, tails down but without delay.  At least they hadn’t made me outright, so I figured they would be back and I quickly moved into my little blind just 100-yards ahead.

It was 1:15 as I settled in, scanning the forest in every direction.  Mark and I were texting back and forth and I reminded him that in the event I got lucky, he was on the hook for field-dressing and the heavy lifting, given my post-operative condition and he graciously agreed.

At 3PM, a small doe caught my eye off to my left on the edge of an old quarry, her head down, munching on the occasional acorns littering the ground.  Although I did have a doe tag, she was too far off and in no hurry to go anywhere as she was feeding easily but it was fun to watch her.  Then something caught my eye to my right.  I looked over and there was a large-bodied buck walking directly towards me about 150-yards out.  I immediately turned my attention to him and began to strategically position myself squarely between the two small pine trees that gave me a perfect side-rest for my little single-shot, 20-gauge shotgun.  As the buck continued to come towards me, I was hoping he would turn a bit for a better shot but he was staying true to a line and as he stepped into a spot where I had a clear head-on shot, I took it and he went down in a crash.

After I saw that he was going nowhere, I turned back expecting the doe to be gone but instead she was coming right at me!  I re-positioned my shotgun and as she stepped into a nice clear spot I dropped her in her tracks.

I paced off the buck at 80-yards, the doe at 50 and they were not 100 yards apart!  I texted Mark and he arrived just after dark to help me out.  As we laid both animals out in front of the 4-wheelers headlights, I handed Mark my little Case Peanut folding knife to start the incision.  He had forgotten his knife and he wasn’t crazy about the one I carry, so he ending up field-dressing both of those deer with only that little two and one-half inch Case knife.

Never before have a shot two deer within 2-minutes of each other and for Christmas, Mark is getting a brand-new Case Peanut and my doctor, a bag of back-straps.