Shot for a Doe

Here in Louisiana, we've got an extremely generous deer season. When you buy the license, you get six tags, three for antlered deer and three for antlerless deer.

That buck I shot last week, when I initially saw it, I thought that it was a doe. LDWF defines a legal buck as a deer with visible antler of hardened bony material, broken naturally through the skin. So, if a deer doesn't have antler broken naturally through the skin, it's antlerless regardless of gender and must be tagged as such. When I found that deer it had antler broken naturally through the skin, not much, but antler. As such, I tagged it with an antler tag.

At the ball game last night I was talking with a friend about shooting that little buck, thinking it was a doe, and he laughed. We've got a mutual friend in the Sheriff's Office, we'll call him Johnny who recently shot a deer. I'll tell you the story in his words.

"Johnny and I went hunting last weekend, and we were making an afternoon hunt. Johnny is getting older and needs to get his eyes checked, he doesn't see as good as he used to.

"Anyway, just about dark, I heard Johnny shoot, then another shot and in just a few minutes, Johnny called me to help him track a big doe. So, I grabbed a flashlight and went to help him track. Johnny said that he hit it twice, the first shot knocked it down and when it stood up, he shot it again. Then it jumped into the brush and he couldn't track it.

"We separated at about 30 feet distance and started easing through the brush. In just a minute, I picked up the blood trail and in just a few more minutes I found the deer. I called to Johnny and asked him what he'd shot, and he said a doe. Only problem was that this deer was a pretty 6-point buck. Nice rack. It's a good thing that Johnny had an antler tag in his pocket, or I'd have had to call a game warden."

Sometimes it's easy to shoot a buck for a doe. There's probably a moral there somewhere.