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hunting season offered us a ten-inch snow base with the snow still falling, not an inviting environment

for my two Grandsons, Anthony, an engineer from North Carolina and John, a Naval aviator from Texas.
Anthony has hunted with me one time before but for John, this was his first deer hunting experience.

To say the least, the hunting conditions were not ideal. As the snow fell for two days, John kept his eye
on a small six-point buck but felt that he would pass on that deer in favor of a larger one that he hoped
would come later. Finally, on the third day he could wait no longer, and he shot his first New York Buck.

What happen next was the experience rarely witness by any experienced hunter. As John came down

from his tree stand, he first checked to see that the buck was indeed dead, a procedure that he had
been told to perform. So far OK, the deer was dead. As he took some time to calm himself from the
excitement of the kill, he notices some clumps of hair several yards behind the dead deer. For an
experienced hunter, this would not have been considered unusual but for this first-time deer hunted it
was unexpected. He didn’t realize that the 270 Remington that he was using provided enough velocity
for a through and through shot and the hair that he had seen was from that bullet passing through the

deer.

As he stood there admiring his prize, he noticed a straight line in the show expending from the hair
about ten feet along the ground where the line suddenly stopped. It looked to him as though someone
had run their finger through the soft snow. He walked to the spot where the line ended and looking
down into the snow, he saw a dark spot.
Taking off his glove he reached down a picked
up the shattered bullet from his 270 that had

passed through the deer and lost enough
speed that it was sitting hear the top of the
soft snow. Even the heat of the spent round
was not enough to cause it to bury itself in
the deep show.

John didn’t think a lot about this find until
that night as he told the story of the kill for
the fifth time and he suddenly took the bullet
from his pocket and relayed the story. He laid
the shell casing and the bullet on the table as

we all were amazed by the story.

I have relayed this story to several
experienced hunters and they have all
expressed complete amazement that the

bullet performed as it did. No one had even
heard of this type of experience and we
simply called his kill and the find a “one
chance in a million.” Not bad for a new
hunter first kill. Thank you for your service
John. You will tell this story many
times before next year’s hunt.