As I parked the car in my special spot last opening day a blond pony tailed rangerette came up to me and asked for license etc. I should mention that I hunting a herd reduction zone and the DNR wants everything brown shoot. I thought that was strange as this is a very out of the place and hunting is by permit/invitation only. What the heck she checked me all out and I was off the hike ¾ mile into woods to find my tree stand. Now the tree stand is actually a 40 ft high pile of logs that were to be burned when enough snow is on the ground to keep the burn from taking the entire forest. As I begin to climb the pile a whitetail jumps from the thicket of bushes about 10 yards away. Of course my gun was unloaded and slung over my back as I was climbing to the top of this pile of logs. It was going to be of those days.

After I got to the top, I dropped my pack and arranged my sit upon. Then gazed over the 600 yard long meadow and low and behold there is a doe about 280 yards away. Hot damn, I’m in a “earn a buck” zone and have to shoot an antlerless dear before I can shot a buck. This hunting isn’t that hard, I thought to myself. I unslung the gun, loaded up four rounds of 300 Win Mag and tried to still my beating heart. It was beating hard from the hike, climb and the excitement of seeing a deer. After I got settled down and glassed the doe I noticed the doe was not moving. The ears did not twitch, the eyes did not blink, the head stood still, and the legs did not paw the ground, damn it must be a decoy. I glassed the woods up and down the meadow trying to find the rangerettes buddy who was waiting to ticket some hunter for what ever.

After glassing for a while and not finding the other ranger I put the scope back on my unmoving deer. I’m thinking is this really a decoy? Should I take a chance and put a hole in someone’s decoy? I’m just too nice a guy to shot someone’s decoy. Then something to the left moves, it is a fawn, they count towards a “earn a buck” tag, besides this is herd reduction and they are tasty. So I took one more look just to make sure that what I was looking at was a decoy, get a good sight picture and squeeze off one round at the fawn 280 yards away. The fawn drops like a rock as the decoy runs away.