AIRASSAULT
PMA Member
One of my friends... The smallest doe ever
So.. Apparently, the military has made me a bad shot.. I've spent the last year and a half shooting at stationary targets stapled up to a human silhouette, qualified expert marksman with an m-16-a2 and somewhere in the mix, it screwed up my reputation for being called "Dead eye" during shotgun season.
I was fortunate enough to be granted 15 days of leave this year and got to be home for Thanksgiving and the first 2 and half days of Iowa's first shotgun season. I sighted my slug gun in on Thanksgiving weekend and was hitting dead nuts. Usually, I'm a pretty good shot at running targets out to about 75 yards, but, this year was a challenge. The first day, I missed a 130 incher at about 30 yards and a 145-150 incher at about 30 yards.. Both running, but generally dead in their tracks if they get that close to me. I also missed several does.. I was starting to think maybe I bumped my BSA red dot scope and it may have moved somehow. Monday morning came and I had to leave for CR airport by noon.. We made a drive where I missed the 130 incher the first day and I stood in the same spot. Sure enough, 3 does come out and stop right infront of me at about 50 yards. I shoot and dropped one. She got back up and started running again. I tried to shoot again, but nothing happened. "What the Heck!", I thought. The does ran back into the woods and then another deer came out running straight for me. I shot at it once at about 50 yards and then tried to shoot it again at 10 yards, but, once again, nothing happened. This time I dropped an "F" bomb.. The deer ran behind me and my buddy dropped it from about 100 yards on a dead run with one shot.(Turns out, my trusty 870 had something break in the action...don't generally have problems with 870's). After the drive, I went and looked where I dropped the first doe and tracked her into the woods where she was dead.. Finally, a perfect lung shot. I guess my scope wasn't off after all. I'm just a little rusty with the slug gun.
I had a great time back home seeing friends and family and finally getting to eat a good home cooked meal, but, I had to come back here to Egypt /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif It's pretty depressing knowing you have to go back to place like this. The flight back was pretty interesting. I had a 10 hour lay-over in Amsterdam. During the lay-over, some Dutch security guards asked me to be part of a drug dog training session in the airport. They gave me a briefcase and had me sit down in one of the lobbies and they had 3 different dogs go through the airport and find it. After it was done, I asked the guard what was in the briefcase.. He opened it up and I was very surprised to see a bag of cocaine in it!! So that was interesting. Then, I finally got on my plane, and we taxied out to the runway where we sat for 3 hours because one of the boewing 747's engines wasn't working properly. I ended up having to stay in Amsterdam for another 24 hours. I made the best of my time there by getting on a train and going to downtown and seeing the sights (no, i didn't go to the red-light district or to any "coffe shops").. Went to the Anne Frank house and a Vincent Van Goh museum.
Finally made it back to Egypt the next day and had to walk a half mile in to camp from the front gate, all the while, singing Highway to Hell by AC/DC.. Only a month and a half left! I cant wait till February gets here!