If not interested in the narrative, just skip down to the pics.
Enjoyed hunting deer more this year than perhaps ever in the past. Notwithstanding some of the monster bucks I"ve seen while bow hunting (not within range of my lowly longbow), I"ve always tended to take the first legal animal come the rifle hunt. I"ve just liked the meat too much to risk an unfilled tag.
While I am a fair elk hunter, I generally suck at deer. It has occurred to me that I"ll never gain the experience to hunt mature deer, by killing the first forky horn I see every year. I have the luxury of rifle hunting deer for up to 25 days (seasonal days, not what I actually could take to hunt) in two areas close by and decided I would try to hold out for a bit bigger deer this year.
I saw a few small bucks the first couple of times I went out. I also kicked a really nice mature buck out of his bed late one morning, but was not nearly quick enough to get the shot.
Hunting a different area last Wednesday, I was still trying to keep myself disciplined about holding out, until later if necessary, before shooting a little buck. I hiked about an hour or two to get to the area I wanted to hunt before shooting light.
Hunting through there, I came across a spike and a little two point. That made seven bucks so far during the rifle hunt. I watched them, watch me, watch them for a while and continued to still hunt through the timber. It is a drainage with a good mixture of old growth pine , patches of sage, some aspen, and a few small open meadows. A lot of seeps in there as well. Really nice variety of habitat.
I parked my tired butt on an open ridge around 8:30, after some good hiking, and watched for awhile and took some pics. I could hear something making a lot of racket walking through the timber on the other side of the ravine. As noisy as it was, I initially thought it might be a moose. Then I noted that the noise split into two different directions and spread out a bit. It was clearly a lot of something walking around in there.
My next thought was cattle, but then after a good 30 minutes of listening, I thought, cattle generally make the odd vocalization when on the move. I then came to realize that it must be elk. That area was not yet open for elk, of course, but it was still cool to realize they were in there. After awhile, I got my tired butt up and worked down through the bottom and back up through the timber to the next ridge.
This was a ridge on which I"d seen a couple of really nice bucks, one a real whopper, while bow hunting several years ago. There was some very fresh elk sign to substantiate the source of the noise I'd heard earlier in the timber below. I noted that I hadn"t heard any shots, thus far that morning. I worked the edge of the ridge, watching the transition zone between the bare, sage ridge top, and the tree line about 60 yards below it. I did hear a close shot shortly thereafter. It was getting late enough that my expectations of seeing deer were scant. I thought it was interesting that this was the first hunting day of the year I hadn"t seen a doe or fawn. I sat for awhile on that ridge and took a series of pics for a 360 degree panorama. I could see down a couple of drainages for several miles
After awhile, I start working the ridge to the North, thinking I would start hunting back down toward the truck. I went a couple of hundred yards and there was a shot just below me. The guy must"ve been shooting a cannon. It was loud! I hung out to see if he maybe would kick anything out to me. After about 10 minutes, he shot again. Don"t know whether he got anything or not. Didn"t sound like a hit. I kept working north watching the tree line along the edge of the sage. I looked up into an area with some shadow and saw an odd looking bush.
The bush started to look a bit like a deer so I glassed it. It was a buck, narrow and very tall. He was about 150 yards. I really couldn"t tell how big he was. He just stood there and stared at me. I dialed the scope up and found that shooting off hand would be a real trick. Even with the sling wrapped around my forearm, it was waving about. I still wasn"t sure if this was a buck I wanted to take. It was probably only about 10 or 12 inches wide, but really tall. I was hoping that he would turn his head sideways. I wasn"t holding out for a wall hanger, but wanted to make the goal of a four point, though I knew I would shoot a big three pointer as well.
Another buck came sauntering in behind him and stopped to his right. I don"t think it really registered that I was there. The first still just hung there and watched me. The second one, also in shadow was definitely wider and looked heavier. I couldn"t tell how many points he had, but he was clearly a mature buck and I decide I would try to get him. While I"m a fair shot with a solid rest, I am not so good off hand. I had a heck of a time holding steady, but got it to where the cross hairs were consistently wandering about in his shoulder/chest area and squeezed off a shot. Of course pandemonium broke loose!
The buck I shot at headed to his right, down into the trees, the other one spun about and took off. I also saw two other bucks then and two does take off as well. They had not been visible before the shot. The buck I shot at didn"t act at all hit. He didn"t hunch, stagger, or walk like he"d been hit. Going to the spot, there was no blood either. While I was looking for sign I kicked out the two does and there was another bigger buck that was as tall as the first, wider than the second and with really deep forks. He was impressive, but didn"t seem to want to hang around and let me gawk. I decided I had best look a bit more diligently and make sure on the buck I shot at. I walked down into the trees. There was a set of tracks. About 40 yards in, I saw blood. He left a decent trail for another 40 yards or so to where he lay.
I know several guys that would not shoot a buck this small, but he was definitely a keeper in my book and by far and away the largest deer I"ve ever shot. I halved him with the hopes that a friend could bring his horses up to pack him out. I cut off the head, and stashed the rest of him, propped up in a pine in the shade and covered with pine boughs and started out.
I ended up getting back home around 2:30 or 3:00 (I shot him around 10:30). The fellow with horses couldn"t go up, so I called someone else and we made a plan to go up and pack the beast out. It was pretty warm that day and I really wanted to get him out of there. We didn't get back up to the mountain until close to five.
The idea was to take packs up, with our bikes (bicycles, not motorcycles), bone him out, and pretty much coast most of the way out to the truck. Funny how plans go awry! Lol With a number of trails, I knew we could get the bikes to within a couple of hundred yards of the deer. What I miscalculated was how far back he was and how long it would take to get back to him. We finally got back to him and it was about 30 minutes to dark. We started working on him to get him skinned and boned out.
Dark came on pretty fast and I had to finish boning him in the dark. Neither one of us could find our headlamps that afternoon. I"m sure I lost some meat, working in the dark, and I did shoot him in a front shoulder and lost some meat there. He was a fat beast with upwards of 3 to 4" of fat on most of him. Maybe it"s going to be a rough winter.
We ended up having to walk most all of the way back to the truck with our bikes. Most of it was way too rough to ride in the dark. Once we got down to a section of closed road, we coasted some sections that we could remember were not too rocky. We figured he was about 4 miles from the truck by the way I"d hunted and the trails back. Guess I got dehydrated as well as I started getting Charlie-horses in both my calves and in my quads. I don"t recommend it.
I finally got home about 11:00 that night. Ended up getting about 60 lbs of lean, fatless, boneless, meat off of him. It is always good to set and attain a goal.
There were elk in that there timber!
A couple of views of the country.
There he is!
Just four more years until it's his turn.
Muley hunt: narrative and pics
