Sprinkman
Well-known member
My youngest son texted me and asked if he and his wife could drive me around deer hunting. They had both shot their deer on the second day of the season. I’d been out twice and had seen seven does and five bucks. Unfortunately for me, four of the bucks were on Friday afternoon the day before the season opened. The next morning I went back and only found one of those bucks about a mile away from where they were the day before. They had moved on to private property. Nothing I can do about that.
So, I said yes, pick me and your mom up after church on Sunday.
Here he is when he was 14:
They showed up and we got going. It takes about 90 minutes to get back to where we wanted to go. At first we weren’t seeing anything except beautiful country. This is an old picture, but we were hunting at the base of the snow line:
After an hour of glassing one area and not seeing anything, we decided to move. We went a few miles and glassed another area and saw six does about 350 yards out, including this one:
After watching them for a good while making sure there wasn’t a buck lagging behind we moved one more time. Between moves we saw four more does.
When we got to the last spot of the day we all got out of the jeep and immediately saw eight more deer leaving a watering hole. I moved up and around the valley they were heading up. I’m old, fat and out of shape, unless looking like a pear counts as a shape, but I got out ahead of them and was able to glass them finding that they were all antlerless, I waited maybe another ten minutes to see if there was a lagging buck, but nothing.
Finally, I moved back down to where everyone else was and saw them hunched over and pointing. They had spotted four more does 3 or 4 hundred yards behind us on a hillside. I got over to them and looked, yep all does.
I kept glassing the hillside and found two more deer up and over to the right about a hundred yards. So, my son and I stoop walked over to the edge of the knoll that we were on and got behind some sagebrush. We started glassing again and saw antlers on one of them.
This is a picture I took over the summer, but the arrow is pretty close to where we were:
It was a really nice 4 x 4, but this hunt is for two point only bucks. The second deer was busily grazing with its head down. I could see antlers but not how many points. By this time the sun was setting and there was less than 20 minutes of shooting light left.
I decided that I needed to rack the rifle for when that second buck lifted his head. The wind was in our faces and the bucks were feeding into the wind, when I racked the rifle the buck that we were hoping was a shooter heard it and looked back and turned broadsided to us. Finally, we could see the antlers. He was a shooter! My son ranged him for me and said 350 yards.
Now, I have come to realize that I have a really bad habit of forgetting to look at the crosshairs when I get excited. I took the shot and he said it went high, crap!
Thankfully the suppressor was enough to confuse the deer and they didn’t move. I got on the followup shot and squeezed again, this time the deer did the death flinch went about 50 yards and crumpled into a pile. For what ever reason, my nerves settle down for followup shots (unfortunately it’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last time either). The follow up shot hit the center of his chest behind the shoulder, it missed the heart but his lungs were turned into mush. It was 7:15, 13 minutes of legal shooting light left.
The buck turned out to be a nice 2 x 3. Now the work begins.
We dressed him out and were going to quarter him up, but my son was like “I have to get home because I get up a 4 in the morning for work, so let’s drag him out of here”. My wife, then, comes up with the idea of “let’s do it like the Indians used to do it on a pole”. After all, she does have some Native American in her (Irish and German too), so we all agreed to do it her way. She found us a pole, we tied that deer on it and started hoofing it back up the mountain.
After about 75 yards my calves were on fire and I needed a break. Did I mention that I’m old, fat and out of shape?
My son was anxious, to say the least, so after letting me have a break he said I’ll just carry it out myself! He’s 22, 6’5” and 240 pounds of muscle. Dang kid grabs the pole throws it up on his shoulder and carries it the remaining 2 or 3 hundred yards up the hill. Blew me away. Glad he was there.
In all, we saw 24 deer, 22 antlerless and the two bucks. It was a great hunt and time well spent with some of the family.
Last edited by a moderator:
