That's ok, it happens. At least you got it.
We were trekking back to a little sweet spot I know late Sat morning looking for a doe for my kid to fill up her permit after her buck she took earlier in the day when three nice sized ones popped out right in front of us, about 40 yards out. They stopped, standing broadside to us, and froze, looking our direction. It seemed like they were standing there forever, and I kept waiting for the BANG. I finally whispered over to my daughter, SHOOT, when she replied, "I'M TRYING!"
About then they bolted and were gone. Turns out she was so nervous about these deer being pretty much gifted to us, and where we weren't expecting them, that she completely forgot about the little lever on her rifle called the "safety". Whoops.
THEN.... OMG...
Fast forward several hours.
We spent that evening in my blind right behind my house, waiting for a doe to walk past us. Directly across the road from the front of my house is a dense timber with lots of cover and bedding area, and over the hill behind my house is a nice farm pond. Behind our house, between the timber and the pond is the field that my blind overlooks. This year, it was planted to beans. There is a tree filled fence line separating it and the adjoining field, which this year is corn, and it is still in the field. The fence line runs all the way from the timber to the pond.
Sure enough, about a half hour after we sat down, we spotted 2 big does crossing the fence line after coming out of the unpicked corn next to us. They were probably 500-600 yards out, and were slowly headed down the fence line, right to us. Now remember, we are basically in our back yard, right behind our machine shed. We can't see our house because the shed is between it and us, but we are so close that we can hear everything that goes on there. We had taken some time that afternoon to haul some furniture home that we were going to use in our basement. We had unloaded part of it, but then hunting time came, so we decided to leave the rest of it until after dark. My wife said that was fine, because her oldest son was coming down for dinner that night, and could help us unload whatever was left.
Well, as we are watching these 2 deer make their way down the hill, we hear a car coming up the rock road, and then slow down, and apparently turn into our driveway. A car door slams, and then the door to the house opens and closes. OK, so the kid got there early. It didn't seem to bother the deer any, so no harm, no foul.
Now, the deer are about 300 yards out and still coming when we hear the house door open again. NOW WHAT??? Then, we hear the trailer door open, and we could obviously tell that someone was dragging furniture out of the trailer. We found out later that Kim's son (who is NOT a hunter, not even a farm kid lol) decided he was going to do a good deed and help unload the trailer while Kim was cooking dinner. Of course, he never told her this, so she had no idea he was outside making a rucus.
The deer heard this, paused, but amazingly resumed their trek down the fence line. I quietly reached into my coat pocket and got out my phone (which I had turned off). I turned it on and sent a "pleasant" text to my wife asking her what the heck was going on. I sat down the phone, took a breath to calm myself down, and went back to watching the deer.
Finally, they come into range, and turn across us, heading out into the bean field to graze (which is exactly what we had been waiting for them to do). Our plan is coming together perfectly. In a minute or so, they are going to be directly in front of us, about 75 yards out, broadside, and either standing still, or slowly walking. As they get further away from the fence and out into the open field in front of us, my daughter readies herself for a shot. We hear another car in the distance coming up the road, but it doesn't concern us much as we are moments away from a shot anyway. She takes a deep breath, I hear the safety click off, the deer are slowly walking perpendicular to us, and are seconds away from being in perfect position, when RING RING RING, my phone (that I forgot to turn back off) goes off. It startles both me and my kid, and we both flinch.
Well, it startled the deer as well. Between the phone ringing and us jumping, they take one look at us and bolt back in to the corn. There was about a second when there was a shot at the running deer that I would have taken, but my daughter was not comfortable shooting at anything running at speed, and she had lost the sight picture anyway when she jumped at the phone.
Wanna know the best part....
The car coming up the road was a buddy of mine, and he was calling me to find out where we were, so that he could tell me there were two deer back behind our house.
