Actually, Woods, Nugent left out the 4th F...
To fit it in with the quote, you’d have to end it with “And whose arse am I going to have to kick in the process?”
My brother and Godson pulled off a neat little trick - the Soft Bump - on my nephew’s first deer hunt last weekend; they were headed up the hill and bumped a doe Mulie - pretty softly - no stamping or snorting, I think. Now, my brother has been hunting that drainage every September for over 20 years now (lucky bum!) and he’s a smart guy who's learned a thing or two, so he and the boy just settled into the ground where they were, and it wasn’t very long at all until a second, nice mature doe came picking along right to about 15 yards. At which point my nephew’s low blood glucose alarm went off on his insulin pump.
Another time (this would’ve been before my Godson was even a twinkle), my brother and I bumped a doe (again, very gently), and she came stalking back down the hill on a beeline toward my brother. Literally STALKING, as she sneaked back in for a closer look at whatever it had been that had spooked her off in the first place. He was about 15-20 yards behind me on the trail, and she gave me a near- perfect broadside presentation at maybe 15 yards. Which I blew, because just as I was releasing, she picked up a hind-foot to take another step, and I nearly drilled her in the hoof.
So what my brother had learned was that these animals can be curious.
So last week, after the doe bolted off at the sound of the alarm on his son’s insulin pump, they held tight. And sure enough, her curiosity got the best of her and she came back. She was just about into position for GodBoy to score his first deer on the first morning of his first hunt... when the alarm went off SECOND time.
With nothing to lose, they sat tight; and when she came back to within about 60 yards, my brother took the first good angle, and the .50-cal conical did the trick.
I’ve soft-bumped whitetails, as well, sending them back the way they came from... I think it’s because 4-legged predators give chase, and 2-leggers tend to waste ammo. But it seems that if they run off a bit and nothing comes of it, they figure there might not have been a threat after all, so they will try to localize whatever it was that spooked them, and then sneak around that spot - down-wind - to figure out what it was.
With a short-range weapon, they’ll probably be out of range when they do that. So once when I bumped a buck and his lady friend as they came (southbound) along a ridge... when they took off, so did I. I sneak-sprinted about 40-50 yards, quartering NE and downwind, and it wasn’t long after that the buck came out from behind a tree about 10 yards away.
