Sitting in the stand waiting on daylight. It was 6:05 am and sunrise is 6:42. Saw some movement on my left and looked thru my binos to confirm it was a deer, and was a buck. Watched him walk from left to right to cross in front of me. When in front of me he was only about 50yds and I could see he was big enough to shoot. This was about 6:07. He reached the far side of the field getting ready to jump the fence onto another property. My clock showed 6:10. In Texas legal hunting begins 30 min before sunrise. He would be lost if he jumped the fence, so I squared off behind the shoulder and shot. The distance was about 130yds.
To give a little history, my aunt lets me hunt on 40 acres of land. Its mostly pasture with some trees around the fence line, but its not too far from a couple hundred acres of forest. So I do have deer that move across the property. I took my son last year on youth weekend and he got a nice 12 point. I hunted the rest of the season when I could, and only saw small bucks. The county I hunt in only allows bucks 13" inside span or spikes. So, yes I took the shot a little early.
I felt myself flinch as soon as I shot and knew I missed, but to my surprise he only ran about 30yds to my right and stopped. Now he was facing away from the though, still next to the fence. Knowing I was going to mess up some meat, I shot again. This time I heard the impact. He ran back towards me about 40yds, and just bedded down in a stand of weeds. I could still see the top of his head and horns above the weeds. He just laid there looking around. I knew the shot must not have been a quick kill shot. After an hour he finally stood up(a bit stumbly). Didn't want to take a chance, so I put another shot thru his lungs. This time he ran about 20yds and fell over, only raising his head one last time.
The first shot that hit him entered the lower right rear leg and came to rest just below the skin of the left rib cage. The second was a thru and thru on the lungs which did him in, although he had a lot of internal bleeding while sitting there for so long. Needless to say I only got the upper portions of meat from the right ham.
Will try to get some pics up.