More Than One or Two Ways to Bag Your Buck

Rifles and archery equipment are great ways to bag your white-tailed bucks, but there is an alternative to both that many of you may have never considered. That’s right, handguns!

Handguns add another element to deer hunting that is somewhere between rifle and bow hunting, especially when using traditional pistols not specifically designed for white-tailed deer hunting. The hunter pictured here shot this beautiful 8-point, 5-1/2 year old buck using a .45 caliber Ruger P97DC at 15 yards while the brut was trailing a hot doe.

“I was sitting in a ground blind when a doe stepped out at about 85 yards - she was crossing an opening and I figured she was just traveling through. However, once she got about 30-yards out of the brush, I saw a mature buck following her and knew if she would continue to work my way, I’d have a potential shot. She followed down the brush line and kept feeding towards me, and the 8-point was ever-so-slowly closing the gap between both her and I.

The doe kept feeding my way and the buck was following suit. When the buck was about 20-yards out, it looked like he was going to come even closer, as the doe was only about 10-yards from me, so I was going to let him keep coming. When he was at 15-yards, I knew it was time to make my move.

I aimed right for the lungs and slowly squeezed the trigger - the shot connected! The buck ran about 60-yards before he collapsed in some brush.”

The whole time there was a 10-point, 2-1/2 year old buck standing 25-yards in front of me. Hopefully, he will do what the big boy wanted to do.