Tagged out for the year

[Redman232]

Boy was it a long season. Pretty rough year for antlers, saw one legitimate 170'' deer twice. Second time was 40 yards but a poor angle and he was standing in the river and I never seriously considered taking the shot. After that he disappeared, I passed a couple 115-120" deer that I probably would have shot most years. I shot a small doe(fawn) at the end of October with my bow. My wife and I had a baby girl in the beginning of December and seemed like all hunts before and after were short sits. It eventually got to the point where we needed meat and seasons were coming to an end. It finally got pretty cold prior to our muzzleloader season. I know from experience that the pressure of firearms season and the cold weather cause the deer in the area to kind of herd/yard up. If you have a spot where there is one deer there are usually several. Once you know where they bed and where they are feeding, walking out to hunt the last hour of daylight has been very successful for me when meat hunting and it keeps me out of hot water with the wife after a long season. Muzzleloader season came in and I played cat and mouse with a group of deer a couple times and couldn't figure out how to get a decent shot opportunity on them as they were bedded in a small patch woods with no good approach because it's only about 5 acres surrounded by fields. Instead of walking in a blowing them out I waited for my opportunity. I waited until a warm, rainy day. With warm temperature and melting snow, a super thick fog had formed, 15 minutes in to the hunt I finally got a shot. I knew exactly where they would be bedded from previous hunts and I literally walked just out of visibility from them and waited for them to stand up. A group of 6 deer crossed the fence, I picked out the biggest one without antlers and pulled the trigger. That deer turned out to be a small buck that was broken off. Still in need of another deer to replenish our dwindling venison stockpile I headed out for our 10 day bonus antlerless season ( I had previously been a critic of the season since we have 16 day firearms and 16 day muzzleloader seasons, but I was glad it was available this year). Started my last hunt of the year at 4:40 p.m. and it was over at 4:47. We had about an inch of snow, after dropping in the creek bottom I hit a track that looked odd. Three hoove prints and a skid mark with a little blood in it. I followed the track for about 50 yards and go a general direction of where the deer was going and it was head towards a thicket. I bumped off the tree line about 30 yards and started scanning into the thicket. I spotted the but of a bedded deer, then a head, a big head. I was confident it was a buck, which aren't legal at this time with a gun so I started to move on. The deer stood up and was obviously hobbled. I took another look after it took a few steps, I looked thru the red dot scope and didn't see any antlers, it's head and neck were visible from about 40 yards. I took the neck shot and the deer tumbled over. As I approached the deer was laying on it's head but I could see testicles and I thought o oh. I flipped it over to discover it was a buck that had s mostly healed front knee injury. Sometime very recently it must have slipped and added a broken ankle as it's front foot was about worked off (source of the bloody skid mark track). Luckily for me it had also shed it's antlers some time ago, making it a legal deer. It's currently hanging in the garage. It was pretty run down, I'm not sure how the meat will be, first injured deer I put down, front shoulders are pretty boney but the back straps and hind legs look good, from what I can tell the meat looks fine and smells fine. Any advice? I'll add pictures when I get a chance.