***MUDBROOK NEWS BULLETIN***Who: Barnacle Bill
Subject: First Buck Of 2006
When: Wednesday Evening 10/4
Time: 4:30 p.m.
How: Who the hell knows!
Story…
Wednesday, October 4th 2006 was a beautiful autumn day full of gorgeous fall color and warm sunshine. It was a perfect day to be in the woods for a Mudbrook bow hunt and that's just where Barnacle Bill found himself at 4:00 p.m. Sitting quietly in the Loop Road stand and being one with nature had Barnacle seeing visions of tender loins and back straps…of a deer that is. Little did Barnacle know that while his "Uncle Ted Spirit" was running wild and his soul was being saturated with all that is good, there was soon to be an unexpected encounter with a white racked beast. At about 4:30 Barnacle was awakened…no, umm, startled …er, umm alerted by his finely tuned instincts that a deer was behind him (he heard a twig snap). Upon turning to look at what made the noise he was amazed to see a fine whitetail stag standing there with antlers glowing in the late afternoon sun. Barnacle immediately went into action by slowly grabbing his bow, drawing the arrow back, double checking his anchor point and launching a lightning fast razor bladed missile towards the unsuspecting deer. When the arrow hit it's mark the deer ran a short distance into the thick brush before crashing to the ground…and Barnacle knew he had scored his first respectable buck since the year 2000. He immediately climbed out of his stand and went to look at his prize. Upon closer examination of the bucks antlers Barnacle realized that what should have been, by all rights, an 8 pointer was actually only a 6 pointer due to the absence of brow tines. It didn't matter though, this was exactly what Barnacle needed to get back in "the game". He was thrilled and the rest of us were thrilled for him. A funny side note to this story is that when we all went to help retrieve this buck (after dark) Barnacle got turned around and couldn't find it. We drove his truck down the Loop Road to where he had an arrow sticking out of the ground. He said the buck was straight into the woods just a short distance from the arrow. Well, Barnacle took off walking into the woods at an angle and was soon 50 yards into thick brush with no sign of the deer. Lefty and I looked back to where the truck was parked and realized that Barnacle was no where close to where he said the buck was so we started walking back the other way. While Barnacle continued to stumble around in the brush, swinging his flashlight around trying to figure out where he was, I walked right up to the deer without even using a flashlight. It was exactly where Barnacle said it should be…go figure! Anyway, it was fun to see Barnacle so fired up and fun to have the first buck of 2006 on the ground. Way to go Barnacle!
