I’ve always wanted to harvest a deer with a handgun. I religeously carry my trusty 629 when I’m out in the woods, whether I am hunting or just out roaming around, and I shoot it every chance I get. This year I decided that if an opportunity presented itself to harvest a deer with my 629 that I was comfortable with, that I was going to take it. My season started out really slow. The weather here in Oklahoma has been warm and the first few days of gun season the wind was blowing 20-30 miles an hour. So by the third day I was a little frustrated and hadn’t really seen anything other than coyotes. Tuesday night the other guys I had been hunting with that morning decided to back out on the evening hunt citing the wind. I decided to take the opportunity to hunt a farm that we hadn’t hunted yet this year and was on stand by around four. In spite of a twenty mile an hour wind that was NOT in my favor, I immediately started seeing deer. There is an abandoned wellsight just off the edge of the wooded area I was hunting. My brother had harvested several deer in years past by sitting up on the catwalk of the tank battery. I grabbed an old folding chair that was left at the bottom of the stairs from a couple seasons ago and positioned myself at the end of the catwalk and started glassing the wooded area to the south. I’d spotted three different bucks within the first forty-five minutes. I glassed one that I definitely would have shot with my rifle, but he never would give me a clear shot. Right around sunset, one of the smaller bucks suddenly appeared on the edge of the woods to my southwest. He was small and very unsymmetrical, but after watching him for a moment, I decided that if he came my way, that I would try to take him with my revolver. Sure enough, he worked a licking branch and then headed down the old lease road right towards me. I ducked down a little to where I was hidden by the top of one of the tanks, pulled the hammer back on the 629 and rested it across the railing. When he came into view off of end of the cat walk I grunted at him, and when he stopped and looked up I let him have with a 240 grain Missouri Bullet Company hardcast SWC backed by 23.5 grains of Hodgdon H110 right in the pumphouse. He ran for about a hundred yards and piled up. Though he will never be a trophy in anyone’s mind but mine, I will always remember that hunt, and the excitement of it because of the circumstances. And on next days off, I plan to grill backstraps!
