Well,I made a bit of a resolution this year to hunt more with my muzzleloaders. So this morning I went out with a mate who bow hunts with my hawken to see if we could call in a fox.
My first attempt at one was a failure. We arrived at the edge of a steep drop off leading to a river flat and one was contouring the base of the drop off at 50m. Click back to full cock,set the trigger,draw a bead,pop ! Fail to fire ! Damn,should've cleaned the nipple back at the car !
Had a bit of a calling session there just in case but nothing came. So we moved to a position a couple of hundred metres away.
I sat at the base of a gum tree with my mate about 10m to my right in the shade of another tree. My position wasn't great as I had the morning sun shining right on my face but I figured on letting my mate shoot anyway.
After working the scotch call for about 5 minutes I glanced over at my mate. He was frantically pointing at something off to my left. I had a look and could just see the head off a fox through the grass 50m away,heading toward me. I looked at my mate again and he indicated I should shoot,good idea considering to get a shot himself would've meant shooting in my direction. Carefully I shouldered my hawken as the fox cautiously approached. I gave a few lip squeaks till it gave me a clear shot at 25m. BOOM !!!!!! A thick cloud of smoke erupted from my hawken and obscured the fox. I let it clear and thought damn I dropped it clean !
No such luck ! The ball hit slightly left,took a bit out of the side of its face,entered just behind its ribs,and exited the tail. I reloaded as fast as I could ( for some reason I ended up with a stuck ball and had to ram the ram rod against a tree to seat it !), walked up to the wounded fox and gave it another ball to the side of the head. Tough little bugger.
So I'd guess my year has started off well !
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