Coming home from Barnwell Mountain in the middle of the night in Sept (I think it was).....in the Mazda B4000 pulling a 6x10 flat trailer with three bikes on it. Mom and the kid are asleep....it's about 1:00AM just outside Jacksonville. I'm truckin' along at about 70-80mph.....

The highway is a two lane plus two lane with a very wide 50 yard center divider. I've seen over 8-10 sets of eyes and various sizes of deer along the sides of the highway all night. From the far left I see three deer coming out of the brush, jump across the empty highway....running, stopping, then running again.....heading across the wide center and toward my two lanes.

The three deer were spread out about 20 yards apart, so they covered a wide track. I let off the gas and coast. I knew there was no way I could time whether they would go in front of me or behind me. The big buck seems to hesitate and the other two follow his lead.....then he bolts....and his ladies join him.

It's like watching a slow motion movie.....the more I slow down, the more they time exactly to hit me....there's nothing i can do to change what I know is happening. The first doe passes in front of me, the other one behind me....and the buck runs right into the driver door! I knew the tail end of the truck and the trailer had hit him, so I went up a quarter mile to the next U-turn and went back and U-turned again. I didn't want some sleepy driver to come up on a buck blocking the highway at 1:00AM....so I figured I'd at least pull him off the road.

By now, the two sleepers in my truck have woken up and are wondering what that BAM was and what happened. To my surprise, when I pull up the highway, the buck is sitting up in the middle of the fast lane, just looking around. He looked like a nesting deer sitting there. I get out and walk up to him and realize the bumper of the truck has split his hips and he's paralyzed on the hind end. So he sits there otherwise unharmed and not seeming to be in any pain at all.

So, I get a rope from the trailer and lasso his rack and pull him up on the trailer, then tie him off to the railing. As I drive, I can see him......I watch him sit calmly looking around as we drive on home to the suburbs north of Houston. We stopped and got gas once...and he drew quite a crowd. He finally passed away just a half hour before we got home and that next morning, me and a buddy cleaned him up.

My buddy who helped me and took the meat off my hands was very pissed....

I don't hunt, I never really had a desire to.....
And he has spent a fortune over the years hunting....
And in my backyard was hanging a ten point buck!

Not many guys can say they got a ten point buck....I did...out near Palestine....
Mine cost me a hefty deductible.....still cheaper than a deer lease!


Anybody wanna' hear about dirtbike rattlesnakes out in Abilene?

Or would you prefer my most world famous "Chasing Jack Rabbits" story?
That one even got published in the New Zealand Hare Scrambles Series newsletter!