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Don't Pass on the First Day.... |
By: Tracy Breen
9/26/2011 |
0.00 out of 5 with 0 votes |
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Everyone on the outside looking in believes outdoor writers and TV show hosts bring home an animal on every hunt. At least that’s the way it looks on TV and in the magazines, right? Many of us go on several hunts a year just to tag a good animal or two each season. Like the average hunter, there are many things that can go wrong on a hunt. The weather can affect hunts, missing a shot at an animal, getting an illness while hunting and several other factors can cause a good hunt to turn bad.
One prime example of going home empty-handed happened to me a few weeks ago. I hunted mule deer in Colorado for the first two weeks of the archery season. I was hunting with a friend of mine in Colorado who has killed many large mule deer bucks. However, things didn’t go our way while I was hunting. It was almost 90 degrees everyday so the deer didn’t move like they typically do. Instead, they stayed bedded down until dark every night.
Although much of the country had drought-like conditions this summer, Colorado has had above average rainfall. As a result, everything is green. There is lots of green vegetation up high and down low. The good news is the green vegetation means the elk and the deer are staying healthy which results in bigger antlers on the bucks and bulls. The downside is with so much green vegetation up high, the bucks didn’t have to come down to the lower elevations where we were hunting.
Over the course of almost two weeks of hunting, I saw a few decent bucks. On the second or third day of the hunt, we decided not to chase a 140-class buck that we saw in hopes of finding something bigger. We saw several bucks that were bigger. At one point, I had a 160-class buck within five yards but never got a shot at him. That night, I laid eyes on a buck that had over 170 inches of antler on his head. This buck was with another buck that would score about 150. I stalked these two bucks for almost an hour before one of their lady friends busted me and they all took off.
After that mishap, I spent the remainder of the hunt going after the 140-inch buck that I saw earlier in the week. The problem was at this point in the hunt, his pattern had changed and he was spending much of his time on a piece of property that I couldn’t hunt. The last night of my hunt, I watched the 140-class buck for over an hour. He was within bow range but on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence. I could hunt one side but he was on the other
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As I headed home, I replayed the hunt in my head. The trip home was a 24-hour drive so I had a lot of time to think. I realized that I broke my number one hunting rule: Don’t pass up on the first day what you would take on the last. I probably could have taken the 140-class buck early in the hunt because we had his pattern down, but I passed. Now I regret it. Live and learn. Never pass up on the first day what you would take on the last.
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