According to an article via Outdoor Life, it was supposed to be a simple doe-management afternoon for Cheyne Matzenbacher in northern Arkansas—park the truck by the family plot, climb the embankment, sit in the stand, fill the freezer. And for a while, everything went exactly by the book: deer appeared, lead doe stepped out at 37 yards, grandpa’s trusty .30-06 did its job…or so it seemed.
Instead of tipping over gracefully, the doe took off, looped around a downed tree, and vanished—no blood, no trail, nothing but frustration and a looming Christmas party. That is, until the hunter walked back to his truck and found the doe waiting for him—because she’d swan-dived off the 16-foot embankment and landed on his windshield, turning his pickup into a venison-delivery trampoline.
After the initial excitement came the real challenge: driving home from the passenger seat with one foot on the pedals, processing the deer, making the party, surviving sleet with a towel-wiped windshield, and still teaching a deer-aging class two days later. In the end, he tagged a 132-pound doe, scored a discount windshield, and learned a valuable lesson: sometimes the deer really do come to you… just not in the way you’d prefer.
Photo Courtesy of Cheyne Matzenbacher via OutdoorLife
