Split-second decisons can be costly when hunting trophy game

Sometimes the difference between success and failure in hunting is a snap decision. A moment’s hesitation can result in opportunity gone.

Saturday, the opening day of the Texas spring turkey gobbler season, found my brother, Wayne, and I at our turkey lease on Cibolo Creek. We hunted together for the first hour and then I moved down the creek to a second fence row. Wayne was trying to call a distant turkey as I crawled under the fence and set up my blind. No birds were in my field and nothing was gobbling, but I made a few “yelps” on my call. To my surprise I got an immediate answer.  The gobbler was close. He gobbled again and sounded farther away. I know now that it was a second gobbler. Suddenly, a red and white head slipped up over the creek bluff. He was about 30 steps and slightly to my right. My Browning 12-gauge came up automatically and the bead covered the gobbler’s head. I should have pulled the trigger but I wanted him to make one step to the left for a better shot. Then came the alarm “put” and he was gone. My split-second hesitation cost me an opening day gobbler.

About an hour later a big gobbler (it may have been the same bird) was moving quickly through the brush along the creek bluff. I saw a small opening in the brush and put my barrel bead on the opening. I knew he would cross that little gap. But after a few seconds my arm grew tired and I lowered the gun. You guessed it. He crossed the clearing about one second later and was gone.

I began to think about so many times a split second had made the difference in my hunting career.

Two years ago in March I was sitting in the exact spot where I had just seen the two gobblers. I stepped out of my brush blind, leaned the shotgun against the fence and took a few steps toward a corn feeder that was at the end of my fence row (we have since moved that feeder). I took about a dozen steps when the short grass lit up with that terrifying buzz. I had almost stepped on a rattle snake. After leaping higher than the best rebounder for the San Antonio Spurs, I watched the grass move as the huge rattler crawled to the fence into the open.  Just a few feet away was my shotgun. Big mistake.  By the time I grabbed the gun the six-foot snake was gone.

My biggest mistake happened when I was in my mid-20’s. I had just graduated from seminary. My wife, Beth, and I moved to the Buckner Boys Ranch on Lake Lyndon B. Johnson in the beautiful Hill Country. I was to be the pastor of the Buckner Ranch Baptist Church located on the campus of the Boys Ranch. It was a plush assignment. The perks were great. All the ranch employees, including the pastor, had their section of the 4,000-acre ranch to hunt deer and turkey. And, being in the Hill Country, it was covered with both species.

The property assignment given to Beth and me was on the top of a mountain. Access was tough. I guess they thought we could handle it since we were young. No one had ever hunted up on top before and there were bucks that were born and died up there without ever being shot at.

Beth and I built a big blind overlooking a big open area. We carried all the materials up the steep mountain on our backs. Lots of hard work, but now it was the opening morning of the Texas whitetail season. I was in the blind very early.  Excited?  For sure!  I had never killed a buck deer.

As the first glimmering daylight began to appear in the eastern sky a huge buck stepped out of a cedar brake, jumped the fence and began to amble down a long ridge about 200 yards  away. The antlers looked like a tree on his head. I put the cross hairs on him but it was still too dark to see. But I could raise the scope slightly and the backlight in the east would illuminate the crosshairs. All I had to do was pull the scope down until the crosshairs disappeared and pull the trigger. As I did so I began to tighten down on the trigger. But suddenly, I realized that no one else on the ranch had fired a shot. As the new pastor-staff member I didn’t want to shoot too early.

So I lowered the rifle, deciding to wait just a few minutes for more light. The buck turned and walked back along the ridge and into the cedars. I should have pulled the trigger. If they fired me I could always get another church.

About 10 days later, the cook at the Ranch, who also hunted the mountain top across the fence, killed the buck. It was a heavy-horned 14-point buck with a 23-inch inside spread.  It was a Boone and Crocket record-book deer.

I have never seen a deer like it in the wild since.  My hesitation cost me the trophy of a lifetime.