Brushes with the dark side

This happened a couple deer seasons back, but this post made me think of it again. It happened on opening weekend, and I had a head cold. Meaning elves had poured concrete into my head and it was setting up slow, so they were doing demolition derby with the trucks to pass the time.

Anyway, I was sneezing and sniffing and my ears weren't working very well. So when I went out for the afternoon I found a spot where I could sit facing upwind with my back to a tree surrounded by cows. I figured their noise would help hide the fact that my face was exploding on a regular basis. It didn't take long and I had a dozen or so does grazing in front of me. About an hour before sundown I heard squealing and grunting off in the brush to my right. It sounded as if Satan had launched his invasion, and the landing party had opened up their interdimensional portal only to find themselves doing battle with Texas brush that was meaner and pointier than they were. Or maybe it was a hog fight. Ordinarily I would have gone to see, but I was pretty miserable by then and didn't really care either way. It lasted a minute or so and then somebody squealed loud and long, so I made note of the fact that there seemed to have been a loser of some sort and went back to my misery. When I did I found out that a couple small bucks had wandered out into my clearing, so things were interesting again.

My stealth cows had been walking on the rocks behind me all afternoon, making sort of a clicking sound, and all sorts of other noises in general. So I didn't really pay attention to any new noises until they started getting closer and faster. Finally I decided to peak over my right shoulder and take a look.

Turns out there really had been a loser, and his retreat had brought him downwind of me. Those fast clicks weren't the cows, they were one of the devil's minions clicking his tusks. Fifteen feet away. He was squinting my direction and sniffing the air, waiting on the breeze to come his way again so he could make up his mind. When I turned my head he caught the movement and trotted a few more steps to get directly behind my tree.

I was pretty sure when he figured out what I was that he'd head for the hills, but then again he might not. I wanted to know and be prepared either way, so I stood up as quickly as I could manage, and turned my rifle in his direction. I was a little stiff and I really didn't manage much quick. I leaned out past the tree right as all hell broke loose on the other side. Ol' Satan made another devil noise and thundered my way. I missed badly with my one leaning, off balance hip shot from the .270 (who knew I needed to practice that maneuver from a scoped bolt gun?) and sidestepped as he came around the tree.

I'm not a genius. I don't always have the answers. Plus, my head hurt. So as Lucifer came around that post oak, all I could think of was to put a size 11 Wolverine into the side of his head. He wasn't expecting anybody to be channeling Chuck Norris. Instead of continuing on around the tree he kept on his strait line for the brush. I was thankful for that and managed to take a breath and put a 150 grain soft point behind one shoulder and out the front of his chest. He rolled to a stop and lost about three hundred pounds as he died. I swear he was a 500 pound demon monster before I shot him, but somehow when I got to the body it was only a 180 pound boar hog. No clue how that happened, must have had something to do with that interdimensional portal. Come to think of it, the portal is probably also how he snuck up on me. Has to have been the portal.