I remember my first experience in an elevated blind as if it was yesterday afternoon. In fact, it was an afternoon hunt, one for whitetail deer on my dad’s hunting lease near the historic San Saba, Texas. To take a diversion for a moment, I love Pecans (pronounced [correctly] by native Texans, ‘Puh kaans’, and [incorrectly] by others, Pee Cans). The town of San Saba is known as the ‘Puh kaan Capitol of the World’. So, San Saba is world renowned. Just sayin’. In the 1960s, famous for Pecans or not, with a population of only ~5,000, San Saba fitted the definition of ‘village’ as much as ‘town’. But, as a boy of nine years, for whom deer hunting was already a passion, it qualified as my Mecca. And on one dry, and bitterly cold, November afternoon, that Mecca provided a nine-year-old boy with an encounter marking his passage into elevated stand hunting.
As my dad and I climbed up the wooden boards nailed into the trunk of the tree, leading to the wooden platform complete with folding chairs, I reveled in the experience of aerie hunting. The tree we scaled was not one of the valuable pecans, nor one of the many so-called ‘Cedars’ (actually Junipers), but instead Quercus fusiformis, a.k.a., Hill Country Live Oak. As Daddy and I settled into the metal chairs, I felt as though the whole world lay at our feet. I know now that we were likely a mere 15 feet above the rocky terrain, but it seemed like 100+ feet high to my young eyes.
Though I cannot guarantee exactly which bullets extended from the mouth of the reloads stoking my dad’s and my rifle, I know they were from the Hornady factory. Daddy carried his Belgium-made Browning in 7mm Remington Magnum, and I a Winchester Model 70 chambered in the recently introduced .243 Winchester cartridge. We now enter into the educated-guesses phase of this article. My hypothesis is that Daddy and I carried reloads both topped with the Hornady ‘Innergroove’ bullet, released in 1965. Quoting from the Hornady website “Innergroove bullets were scored inside the bullet jacket tip, ensuring consistent mushrooming whether the bullet was a spire point, round nose, or flat point.” I’ll also hypothesize, based on what my dad used routinely, that our chambers and magazines contained spire pointed bullets of around 150-grains (7mm) and 100-grains (.243).
It was as I looked out from my seat on top of the world that my young mind recognized one possible problem. I’ve written often about the ‘gentle’ breezes for which West Texas is known. Entering into my peaceful revery was one such wind event on that mid-afternoon. Having built many tree houses near our ancestral home with my older brother Randy, I knew such structures moved with gusts of air. What I had not ever tried before was firing a rifle at a stationary object while seated on a radically swaying platform. With no deer in sight, my lack of skill in a wind-tossed stand was a moot point. About an hour after settling in, that skill set I lacked entered the realm of non-mootness.
A beautiful Hill Country buck, the first I had ever seen, stepped into the glade directly in front of our stand. To help hunters stabilize their rifles the constructors of the stand built a crossbar to use as a rest. Slowly raising my rifle from my lap, I laid the stock across the wooden support and slid my face to where I could peer through the 4-Power riflescope. Pointing the sight toward the browsing animal, I slid my hand across the pistol grip and rested my finger lightly on the trigger. Just as the buck came into focus the wind breathed and the buck slid violently out of the field-of-view. Adjusting again, the buck came back into the scope’s sight, and the crosshairs laid perfectly on the buck’s shoulder. At that moment, the breath of wind decided it had blown enough and ceased, causing the buck to quickly disappear again, this time in the opposite direction. That is when my trembling began.
My nerves came from the certainty that the whitetail would soon finish its browsing on whatever had its attention and my first chance at a buck would disappear. I quickly formulated a plan. All I had to do was time my squeeze in-between the gusts. Easy peasy. So, as the buck once again centered in the riflescope, I activated the pressure on the Winchester’s trigger. The crack of the rifle came just as the deer began its wind-aided disappearing act. Having lost sight of the target, my dad’s shout of “You dropped him!” caused me to start breathing again. Raising my face from the stock, I saw the beautiful buck laying underneath the greenery on which he had been nibbling. The 100-grain Hornady had done the work and had indeed dropped the buck where he stood.
After clearing the chamber, and swelling with pride from my accomplishment, I followed Daddy down the ladder and across the short space between the bottom of the tree and my first buck. Walking up to the whitetail, I stared at where I knew the bullet went — the on-side shoulder. As I puzzled over where the entry point was hiding, my dad cleared his throat and asked gently, “Son, where did you aim?” “At his shoulder” I replied confidently. My dad cleared his throat again and explained the missing shoulder wound. “Well, you hit him in the head.” I altered my gaze and saw that he was correct. My dad wisely dispelled my shame at striking the buck some two feet left of where I had intended. “You made a great shot in a very difficult situation” he told his young son. He continued, “I don’t think I could have done as well.”
The memory of my first stand-in-the-sky hunt, from which I took my first whitetail buck, came to mind a few weeks ago as my wife Frances and I climbed up the metal steps of a fancy, enclosed blind on the Choctaw Hunting Lodge property near Blanco, Oklahoma. Unlike my first adventure in an elevated stand, this one had walls and windows through which to fire. Though the window ledges could act as a rest, I was a bit tall, even while seated, and instead set up my French-made, 4StableSticks, ‘Sit Sticks’. The rifle and riflescope combination on this outing cost more than my dad’s 1963 Chevy pickup he drove to the San Saba lease. The cost was more than worth it because of the quality of both the Seekins Precision, HAVAK PH2-NRL rifle and Stealth VisionÒ Extreme SVX 5–30×56 riflescope. The rifle-scope combination had outstanding accuracy on the range, and later in our hunt provided the means of shooting in very low light, using the illuminated reticle. Chambered in 7mm Remington Magnum and firing ammunition topped with Hornady 175-grain ELD-X bullets, I felt extremely confident in the equipment. My range workup helped my confidence, with the accuracy proven at distances out to 400-yards, off both my fieldrest and the bench. Now, I had to perform.
I reflected back on a lifetime of hunting adventures, all the way to that first buck. A major advantage of the current blind? No swaying. The disadvantage? Nothing on which to blame an errant shot except poor marksmanship. With the Sit Stick rest and a wonderfully accurate rifle-ammunition-scope combination, I was ready to try my hunter’s luck. Like my first encounter with a whitetail buck, I had little time to wait in the elevated stand. With sunrise less than 30 minutes old, Frances’ sharp eyes caught movement in the thick edge of the pine-hardwood forest to our left. Slowly raising my binocular-rangefinder to my eyes brought a beautiful, ‘clean, eight pointer’ into focus.
The previous day, Choctaw Hunting Lodge manager Dusty Vickery, along with ‘Mr. Whitetail’ himself, Larry Weishuhn, described this class of buck as needing removal for their management plan. The buck was gorgeous and fitted Dusty and Larry’s ‘management’ designation. Slowly, slowly I raised the rifle onto the Sit Sticks, tilting the assemblage until the crosshairs of the Stealth riflescope rested behind the buck’s last rib. I guess I should explain that the 8-Pointer’s focus was on marking the end of an oak branch with his preorbital gland. He stood at an extreme, quartering-away angle. Aiming behind his last, onside rib meant the Hornady ELD-X should travel through his vitals and into his off-side shoulder. Unlike the San Saba buck, I hit my aiming point on the 8-Pointer. The 175-grain ELD-X knocked the animal to the ground. Stumbling back onto his feet, he staggered another 10-yards before dropping for the count.
As with that very special San Saba deer, the Choctaw buck lay only 50 yards from the stand, so it took no time at all to make my way to him. As Frances videoed me discussing the rifle, riflescope and wonderful Hornady bullet, I could not help but think of that first whitetail trophy. Yep, I’d been lucky on that cold November afternoon, but that was still my first whitetail buck. Like this most recent trophy, I took that first buck using a Hornady bullet. It is safe to say that my dad had a long-running love affair with the Grand Island, Nebraska firm. That love affair continues on through his son.
Author profile
Mike Arnold is professor and Head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia and author of the 2022 book, BRINGING BACK THE LIONS: International Hunters, Local Tribespeople, and the Miraculous Rescue of a Doomed Ecosystem in Mozambique. Mike’s newest book, BRINGING BACK THE WILD — Stories from Revitalized Ecosystems Around the World and How Sport Hunting Supports Them, appeared June 2025. You can find a description of Mike’s travels, talks, articles, and books at mikearnoldoutdoors.com.