With the morning, I had a new plan. We would build a blind from sage brush and whatever we found around the water hole. My daughter saw to the care and feeding of her rifle.
Eighty grains of loose black powder down the barrel. A 275-grain lead conical seated in the lands. Mikayla whipped the ramrod then pinched a cap and fitted it under the hammer squinting against the sun that beat down on the playa.
I walked to the water’s edge to read the tracks. Here a bobcat had taken a drink, here the heart-shaped track of a buck antelope.
In the brutal dry August heat the water was going away fast and now the skull of a wild mustang stuck out of the mud where the water had receded. Scattered about the bank, I found jawbones, a femur and rib bones scattered by coyotes and bleached by the sun.
Bent over to keep my silhouette out of sight, I gathered sage brush, horse bones and a weathered plank to brush-in a blind at the toe end of a berm.
Yesterday, a doe had led three mature bucks into view, but head-on, at 110 yards, Mikayla did not have the shot she wanted.
This new blind would put us close to the edge of the water, close to the end of the berm where we hoped the antelope would appear again.
I scooped sand from the playa and trickled it out of my palm. The wind showed a gentle breeze from the east. We pulled on face masks. Mikayla laid the primed muzzleloader across her lap and picked up a book – The Law by Frederic Bastiat – originally published in 1850 when a gun like the one she carried would have been state of the art. It had taken her 12 years to draw this tag; 30 days to build the rifle.
We had worked side by side on the project. She built her rifle while I built another one like it to give to a friend. Kit guns – 50 caliber – with short barrels and percussion locks. We fitted metal furniture, blued the barrels, stained the wood and oiled it. Here is a look at the Deer Hunter rifle kit.
Mikayla took extra care, adding seven coats of Tru-Oil, and the stock gleamed. After two sessions at the range, she had the feel of her homebuilt rifle if not the confidence in it. She had hunted with bolt-actions before, and bow and arrow. This was her first hunt with a muzzleloader.
We lay in the alkali of the playa. Mikayla studied The Law which I had read at her age. I watched the horizon and the middle ground and the sky.
Four hours in the sun and the temperature had climbed to 80 degrees.
A buck antelope walked into view from the left with delicate mincing steps. Puffs of alkaline dust rose around each hoof.
The buck led seven females. I read its body language with a glance as the others came into view.
A black patch at junction of cheek and jaw set it apart from the others, and the wide-thrown horns curved around in the shape of a heart, tips gone to ivory, all this taken at a glance, horns almost 2-1/2 times the length of the ears.
The buck looked at the rib of the mustang plunged in the mud to which I had affixed a strip of paper towel that rose and fell with the gentle wind. Then the buck looked at the blind, Mikayla still reading, absorbed in the book on her lap. Two seconds had elapsed. We had two seconds more.
“Mikayla, kill that buck.”
The Law slipped from her fingers, the rifle she swept up, eared back the hammer in one smooth, practiced motion. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. The rifle cracked and we heard the strike of the bullet. The buck toppled onto its side.
Seven antelope wheeled out on the playa. A cloud of white smoke hung in the air. Stunned, I fell onto my back, and looking straight up at the blue sky, whispered to her to reload the rifle. Just in case.
I counted our steps. Forty-six paces from the blind, 41 yards.
Knelt on the ancient playa next to the animal, I recognized it as the herd buck I had spotted on a scouting trip the month before. It’s horns were 14-1/2 inches each side with long diggers, a buck we estimated would score 72 or 73 B&C and place high in the muzzleloader record book. It was the buck we came to get. We drove down to the cow town of Paisley to celebrate with a burger at the Pioneer Tavern.
Kit Build Traditions Deerhunter
Muzzleloaders are inclined to be heavy. Not this one. The Traditions Deerhunter rifle, with a 24-inch octagonal barrel in a wood stock weighs in at 6 pounds less the leather sling. After putting together half a dozen muzzleloader kits over the last thirty years, the Deerhunter gets my vote as the easiest to build with 26 parts and easy instructions.
Mikayla and I built two Deerhunter guns side by side. I opted for a brown walnut finish sealed off with wax while Mikayla used rusty walnut and seven coats of Tru-Oil. I finished mine first and gave it to a friend.
Mikayla took about a month to finish her kit, which gave us enough time for just two sessions at the range, developing a load of 80 grains of black powder to drive a 275-grain lubed conical bullet. We developed ballistics data for shots to 50, 75 and 100 yards. The 24-year-old already had 14 big game animals to her credit, but this was her first hunt with a muzzleloader. A similar kit is available at muzzle-loaders.com