Name: Aaron P
Date of Hunt: November 24, 2012
Location of Hunt: Alberta, Canada
Animal Hunted: Whitetail Doe
Were you successful?: Yes!
Weather, Wind, and Conditions: No wind but below freezing.  There was about 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground.

Interesting Details of the Hunt:
A friend and I were out hunting near the end of the season.  I had a whitetail buck tag and 2 doe tags, but this year I had not had the opportunity to shoot anything.  It was our last day and time was running out.  We had both sat on a cutline in the morning and had seen lots of tracks in the snow but no deer.  Earlier in the week we had seen a couple bucks and my friend actually got a shot, but missed it.

It was mid afternoon and we were working our way down a trail slowly after lunch.  We weren’t anticipating anything really being out at that time of day so we were casually going down the path.

My friend spotted the doe first.  30 yard directly to our left hidden in the woods was a doe standing perfectly broadside looking at us.  I shouldered the gun and at first hesitated on shooting because of all the branches in the way.  The doe didn’t move a muscle and so I quickly took 2 steps to my left to try and improve my sight line.  Moving over did give me a clearer view and I was able to shoot with only a couple branches hanging down.

As soon as I shot my 30-06 with 150 grain bullet, the doe disappeared.  Neither one of us had seen the shot clearly so we weren’t sure if I had hit it or if some branches had deflected the shot.  We ran through the knee-deep snow over to where the deer had stood and as soon as we got there we saw there was blood everywhere.  With the fresh snow and the amount of blood, it was a pretty easy tracking job about 20 yards away to where we found it with a direct heart shot.

It was my first doe ever and I was glad I shot it because that ended up being the only deer I got that year!