Remember your first deer hunt? We didn’t have a huntable herd when I went to work in Birmingham in 1969 stopping by the Funeral Home across from the Post Office to say good bye to my friend, Derrill Price, and sign the visitor book. He was killed in May in Vietnam.

It was opening day in 1977. Dad and I had cut off an oak tree, left the stump about eight feet tall and fastened an old horse drawn mowing machine seat on top of the stump where it would swivel.

Wearing my insulated rubber boots for warmth and so I hopefully wouldn’t leave a scent trail. I crossed Little Clear Creek, crossed the creek bottom, went up the hill and climbed the steps to get on my stand before daylight.

About 8 a.m. I saw an antlered buck coming down the creek bottom about a quarter mile away. He felt so good he’d occasionally stop and jump up and down. Finally he got to my tracks here I had crossed the creek bottom pasture, stopped and stood broadside looking at me.

I had the 3×9 scope on my 243 zeroed at 200 yards, about where he was standing. I struggled to put the cross hairs on his side behind the front legs and pulled the trigger sending the 80 grain bullet toward my first deer. He stood in place a second or two then ran east about a hundred yards to get into the timber.

I had an unpleasant conversation with myself about missing such an easy shot.

At 8:10 a.m. the buck, limping in his right front foot, busted out of the timber behind me on a high trot only 20 yards away. Caught totally of guard I watched the six-point buck disappear into the timber northwest of me.

Then the questions started. How did I hit him in the right front leg when his left side was toward me when I shot? What happened to his eight point rack?

I stayed on my stand until noon then got own and headed to the house. I walked by where the buck I shot at had run into the timber and did a double take. There he laid.

I’ve since learned a little about deer body language like how to tell if a deer is hit. Thinking back, he ran off with his tail down, not showing his white tzol;.

I also learned by accident how to drop a buck in his tracks.

I was hunting deer on Bob Allen’s alfalfa field when a 12 point buck showed up in the Eastern Gamma Grass and I could barely see his back. I put a bullet in the middle of his back just below the top line. He died on his horns. Didn’t spoil any of the back straps. Did the same thing with a morphidte (mixed gender) deer I shot at a quarter mile with a 7-08 in a 140 grain ballistic tip. I sold that gun because it was too hard to load for. At 200 yards, Davis put three 150 grain factory loads from Dad’s 308 in such a tight group you could cover it with a quarter. No sense paying to have 140 grain 7-08s hand loaded.

I went to the CCMH specialty clinic last Friday and kept running into the CEO, Terry Nichols. First he was showing around a new podiatrist who will be here in January. Then we discussed the new much more spacious location he has for the specialty clinic. The staff is excited about that and everybody I met with likes their new CEO.

As I was getting out of my wheel chair and back into the car, all of a sudden Terry Nichols was there to help me make the transfer. Kimball said somebody dropped him off and he came to help me make the transfer. I told him if he would keep my wheel chair from running away I could do it.

I told him my neurologist was going o find a surgeon to reroute my spinal fluid to take the water off my brain and he told me when I got name, he would check him out for me.

That, sports fans, is a people person. Kimball told me he has made Dr. Wyant his chief of staff; another people person. KL