The deer I shot was as big of a spike as I have ever seen, on the Island or anywhere else...big curved 12" spikes trying to split into a two point, but not quite making it, and perfectly symmetrical.

Pro Tip: Don't get shot in the face with 00 Buckshot from 30 paces. There are 9 .32 caliber BBs in a standard 2 3/4" 00 Buckshot round...four of them hit the deer. One went thru an ear (made attaching the transport tag easy ), one went thru the muzzle...of of the other two that hit the deer, one went directly into the temple where I was aiming, thru the brain, and out the other eye, brain killing the deer instantly. The other went directly and all the way thru the neck just behind and below the jawline and traveled thru the carotid artery.

In the ten seconds it took for me to scramble thru the jungle to the deer it was already brain dead and quivering and spurting blood 12 inches out of its neck.

I repeat...don't let that happen to you. It is pretty effective.

I shot last year's buck with a slug. You also don't want that to happen to you. That one was at 50 paces, and I shot it directly thru the neck in almost exactly the same place that the pellet went thru this year...with the exact same effect:

Neither deer took even one step, or suffered any pain whatsoever, nor did one bit of meat get a hole or bone fragment in it.

If any of you have not experienced the hand-to-hand combat of shotgun hunting in the tangled brush of western Washington I would highly recommend it...just don't expect to have much of a success rate. It's pretty brutal...no sitting on a clearcut glassing up a deer and shooting it from 275 yards away, it's more like grouse hunting, only for animals that can hear, smell, and see you when you are way too far away to get a shot.

I feel pretty fortunate to get two in a row, and make fun of Nick a bit for getting a little buck fever and blowing a chance this year because I did the same thing last year, only I was able to chamber up a fourth shell while on the run and miss with that one, too...thankfully an easier shot presented itself later on the same day and I was able to close the deal.

The deer I shot this year was my second run in with the forest ghost of the PNW this season...last week I hopped one that presented me with two running shots at over 50 yards, and ended up doing nothing but shooting up some brush and disturbing the peace.

On this hunt I'll take hitting every other one as a pretty decent success rate.

Fish on...

Todd