Even a Blind Squirrel….

There’s an old saying about luck, that, “even a blind squirrel will find an acorn every now and again”. That’s how I felt after a recent hunt near Weeki Wachee when luck surely played a major role in my success. You see, I had decided to pull the old muzzleloading rifle out of the safe and take her along for a hunt and hunt a new property I had been offered access to. But, it hadn’t been my first choice.

Now, I’d already made up my mind to tote the old muzzleloader, a .50 caliber Plainsman model with old-school iron sights and a side-lock percussion ignition system. A beautiful old rifle that would have been state-of-the-art in 1843! Anyway, after a successful archery season, I double-checked the accuracy of the old weapon and took to the woods. I had headed out to a property near my home and where I’d had a couple of close encounters with a handsome, mature buck twice already. I hadn’t been ensconced in my brush blind more than half of an hour when I heard a doe bleating well off to my left in a dog fennel thicket.

I returned the lovesick bleating of the doe and kept my attention on that thicket when a slight movement caught my ride-side peripheral vision causing me to turn my head too quickly (rookie mistake) and I locked eyes with that handsome 8-point buck from a mere fifteen yards. Well, he spent no time making up his mind that he didn’t want to be there and disappeared in a flash of a white tail shining and blowing a danger alarm through the woods. Normally, I’d have continued the hunt; hoping for a lesser and less aware buck to wander in. But, I was a little upset with myself for having spooked my target buck and walked dejectedly back to the truck.

Driving home, I decided to go and grab a drink and some snacks at a nearby convenience store and I began thinking about the new property I’d yet to hunt. So after purchasing a Mountain Dew and a fresh can of Copenhagen, I decided to try my luck there, in Weeki Wachee. Entering the property, I was already seeing good sign of whitetails at the front gate and the farther I got into the land, I began seeing tracks of a truly trophy caliber buck.

I settled into a thick crop of palmetto and waited an hour for the woods to quiet down from my arrival. But, as soon as the birds and squirrel once again became active, I tossed a few buck grunts from a deer caller I often carry with me. To my surprise, a giant of an 8-pointer loped into the clearing in front of me, looking for the lesser buck he intended to fight, but instead received an invitation to a tailgate ride. Pure luck I tell you. I hadn’t even scouted the area, just walked in blind and stumbled into a great situation.

After recovering the big buck, it turned out, that the big 8-pointer was in fact a big 11-pointer (a mainframe 8 with three additional points in excess of 1”) and the biggest buck I’ve ever taken in Florida. He weighed well over 160 pounds and scores well above the state minimum requirements for entry into the record books. A blind squirrel found his acorn…

Any questions or comments? Please, reach out to me at [email protected]. God Bless, and good hunting!

Toby Benoit is a best selling novelist and professional outdoors-man with thirty-five years of experience guiding and outfitting for big game all across America. Toby is a renowned archer and turkey hunting expert who manufactures custom game calls and is a regular judge at NWTF sanctioned turkey calling events across the Southeast.