LOL...you may have seem this written on FR by me before, but I’ll repeat it anyway.
I live in southwest Washington State. Lots of deer wandering about, even inside the incorporated limits of cities — no hunting allowed there (wink, wink).
This story is about a fellow I knew from work who went deer hunting a few years back, leaving his wife and kids at their rural home.
He returned, skunked, only to open the garage and find an eight-point buck hanging in the garage.
His wife had shot it from their back deck. The buck was eating her roses in the backyard garden. And yes, she was wearing slippers.
She didn’t have a deer tag but he did. Good thing he hadn’t shot anything.
But really, one day... I was wearing slip-on shoes one day, out at a friends place where I'd went to stay and hunt for a day or two. I wasn't quite in the hunting mode at the time, and while taking a very short stroll outside, was surprised to see a buck across a draw, approx 200 yrds away, and just slightly uphill. Moving slowly, I got out of sight, then fetched a rifle, came back, and saw the buck hadn't gone very far.
Got that one right through the heart, which is where I was aiming. 7mmMag is a bit much gun for Coastal Blacktail, but it is pretty flat. Slightly uphill, about 10-15 degrees, it's even "flatter", in a way.
That one was fairly large for a Blacktail, although the horns were a bit runty. I've gotten more than a few with larger racks & thicker tines, but cannot remember a heavier bodied forked horn. The meat was excellent, even though it wasn't next to alfalfa fields, or other cultivated lands.
I can remember several times going dove hunting and coming home to seeing more doves on my birdfeeder then I saw all day hunting. Or certainly more than I shot ;)