Every late autumn I am gripped with the overpowering need to get out into the bush with an old Winchester. It is not just about harvesting a Whitetail Deer for the winter’s supply of meat. It is more than that. It is about spending time with various friends I have up in Northern Ontario, it is the smell of the cedars and the fallen leaves on the forest floor, the quietness, getting away from the crazy busyness of ‘normal life’ (if you can call it normal) and getting alone in the forest with God. It is one of the highlights of my year and immensely refreshing.
This year I hunted on the farm of some good friends of both my wife and mine, a 100 acre farm close to where my wife grew up. My rifle of choice was an original Winchester Model 53 in 44 WCF caliber, also known as the famous 44-40. Very few Model 53’s were ever made, and even fewer in 44 WCF. They are essentially an ‘extra light’ version of the Model 1892, with a tapered nickel steel barrel, a button mag, and a fluted shotgun butt stock. This particular one was made in 1928, and is shown in the photo below, along with the two empty casings from my hunt and my favourite bowie knife with the Sambar stag handle, that I used to clean and skin my animal.
I had loaded my cartridges with 20 grains of IMR SR4759 under a 200 grain cast SAECO bullet for a velocity that chronographed at 1,460 fps. The bullet was soft cast out of pure wheel weights.
Before dawn I quietly disappeared into the bush and headed to the spot I had chosen the evening before ..... a low ridge of hardwoods bounded on one side by a very dense stand of cedars. The cedars are thick as hair on a dog’s back and so I figured they would act as a fence, channeling the deer along the low ridge of hardwoods. I get relaxed in the bush. In fact, after a couple hours, I was thinking of laying down against a nice, comfortable looking hump out of which a Silver Birch was growing and taking 40 winks. The thought of doing it, however, made me feel like a slacker, so I figured I would see how long I could fight off the urge. I pulled out my thermos mug of hot tea and began taking the occasional long pull. It was during one of those slow swigs, with my head tilted back and the cup pouring another belt of tea down my hatch, that I heard something rustling through the leaves coming toward me. With my gun across my lap, and the cup of tea in my right hand, I looked and there were two does standing 33 yards away staring straight at me. Dadgummit! Caught with my pants down again (figuratively speaking)! I closed the little hatch on the top of my thermos mug so I wouldn’t spill any tea, eased it down to the ground, picked up my 44-40, held the hammer under my thumb while I pulled the trigger so I could ease it back to full cock without making any ‘click’, then let go of the trigger, then the hammer, then raised the little rifle to my shoulder. There were a couple trees straight between me and the deer and I couldn’t shoot to the left of them. It was a difficult shot, crouching and leaning way over to the right to the point of almost toppling over. Both of the does were very nervous, staring straight at me, ears pricked forward and looked like they would bolt at any instant. I sighted down a narrow corridor between the trees, laid that front sight bead right on the larger doe’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The little camera in my head that goes off at the moment of firing confirmed that the front sight bead was still centered on that deer’s chest when the gun fired. In the photo below, taken from the exact spot I took the shot, you can see some orange marker tape on a sapling (the left marker tape ... the marker tape slightly to the right and higher marks the tree where the bullet stopped). The deer was standing behind the little tree with the left marker tape on it ....
What happened next had me scratching my head for the past two days. Although I was certain that the bead had been on target when I fired, the bullet passed through the large bone of the deer’s upper front right leg, then entered the inside thigh of its right back leg, broke the major bone in the back leg (the femur), then exited and continued on. What puzzled me was that, with the doe standing facing me, it was impossible for the bullet to take that path without also passing through the bulging side of the deer’s body, but there was not a mark on its body. I wracked my brain over this for the past two days and finally concluded that as the rifle fired, the very nervous, twitching deer decided to launch itself to the left, pushing away with its two right feet planted. This would have splayed its two right legs out from its body with the upper right legs moving to the left, where its chest had been, so that the bullet could both go through the right front leg, and enter the inside of the thigh of the right rear leg, which normally would have been against the deer’s body, without going through the deer’s body.
I didn’t know this as I walked toward the deer until it raised its head and looked directly at me. Although it was down, it looked like it might get up and bolt at any instant, so I took a head shot from about 20 yards away. That bullet entered the front of the skull between the eyes, went through the brain, shattered the spine and deflected down, travelling down the neck and winding up somewhere in the lungs. They were a puréed mess and I forgot to look for the bullet as I was field dressing it. Total penetration was about 26 inches. I tracked the first bullet and found that after going through the main bones of both legs, it hit the top of a little hillock, plowed a furrow and then bounced up and hit a small sapling, knocking off a small area of bark and denting the wood slightly underneath. I searched around in the thick mat of fallen leaves at the base of the sapling, but never found that bullet either.
After cleaning the deer, I walked out and drove the truck up the nearest trail. My friend came in with me and we dragged the doe out and slung it up onto the hood of the truck to take it back to the farm yard. Here’s a photo of the field dressed doe on the hood of my old ’97 Suburban with almost 245,000 miles on it. ...
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