Jason Loblein

Marsh River Outfitters 

The last doe I shot was November 18th, 1994 hunting with Mike Dyer on his grandmothers property in Palermo, Maine.  I almost always have doe tag but can’t make my self pull the trigger.   

The last time I did pull the trigger on a doe was about ten years ago, also with a my muzzle loader, and at that time the cap went off but nothing else.  The deer just stood there.  I got another cap on and the cap went off again but nothing else.   But as I started to take the gun from my shoulder the load went off.  Obviously that was a miss.  

Well this years rifle season came and went and I passed up at least 10 doe kills and one decent buck the second day of the season. 

My Monroe land neighbor, Larry,  lets us hunt his horse pasture.  He said it’s amazing how much grass they eat and asked that we thin the herd a bit.  My son Brody took a nice one earlier in the season but when I hunted there I just kept letting them walk.   We have had a couple nice bucks in there at night and I assumed eventually one them was going to mess up. That didn’t happen.

Maybe it’s was time to try the muzzle loader again and take one of those does for Larry.  After all I really appreciate the added land to hunt.

  This day I sat the horse field again getting into position a whole hour before legal time.   I told Larry I would be out by 9 as he has been hauling wood out with his horses and I didn’t want to mess with his routine.   

As you can imagine, with the decision to shoot made, that nothing came in to the field.   I decided to take to foot and see what happens.  I hadn’t gone far a jumped five deer but none of them presented a shot.    

I cleared Larry’s property and let him know by text that I was done. I started up the pipeline that crosses through two of my properties and his.  My main goal at this point was to change batteries in one of my trail cams about 200 yards up the pipeline.  My son Andrew also has a tree stand not far from that camera.   After changing the batteries I looked up and there was deer standing right in front of that tree stand. Probably 200 yds so I opted not to shoot and the deer walked off. 

  I decided to sit this tree stand for awhile where the deer was standing.  I hadn’t set there very long when a doe walked out directly in front of me inside the woods.   I decided to take the shot.   Guess what?  The cap was a dud, I couldn’t get the bad cap off, and the deer walked away.   I just chuckled.   I did eventually get the bad cap off with my knife and replaced it with a good one.  I continue to stay seated as I had no place else to be right away.   I texted the boys and told them what happened.  As we chatted a deer, I assume the same one, walked out on the pipeline about 80 yards up.   

I took the shot, the cap worked,  and the deer ran off.   After the smoke cleared I took a visual of exactly where the deer was standing and descended the ladder stand.  I reloaded and headed to check my results.     

I found nothing.  I began to think I missed but after a few minutes I found one drop of blood.   I flagged it but that was it!   And I looked carefully.  I decided to just walk the way the deer ran.    I hadn’t gone far there she lay dead.  Still not a drop of blood anywhere.  

Brody grabbed my four wheeler where I had parked it and came up to help.     We learned the deer had bullet hole through the front and back of  its left ear that clearly wasn’t a kill shot so she was lucky there, then my cap was bad,  she was lucky there too.    Her luck ran out as my final shot attempt that pierced the heart. 

This deer had a short deformed lower  jaw that came to point with only one tooth.   Although the deer was alone, the reason why I pulled the trigger,  she did have a small amount of milk.  One would assume she has had a lamb.   

We loaded the deer and both of us on my wheeler started for Brody house.  

I tagged the deer at Monroe store and it weighed a whopping 76 lbs.  The smallest adult deer I have seen in these parts but I did thin the herd a bit, as hoped by Larry, and my first muzzle loader harvest.   This deer was taken from my own land and cool that Brody had the day off to take part in the memory. 


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