Wow! This season came and went fast! After having only a couple days of hunting under my belt from my Peaches Ridge bull hunt, I finally got an opportunity to get out and hunt some Blacktails. I typically like to hunt Eastern Washington for muleys, but didn’t have a lot of time to take off to make a legitimate 3 or 4 day hunt like last year.
The late season is when I would have my fun this year. November 17th thru 20th. I got very lucky on the whole deal. A buddy of mine called me saying he had a nice 3-point buck spotted. Since he had already tagged out during the general season he said I should come up and shoot it. I managed to finally get up there about 2 hours later and my buddy still had to buck spotted. You could barely make out the buck through the driving snow showers and dead senecio. We were looking down on the buck from above as the slope we were on was nearing 70% and the buck was bedded on more like a 30% slope. I could have taken a shot from around 300 yards, but we wanted to try to get the buck to stand and offer a better shot at his vitals. This also allowed time for me to get a better rest and move closer.
The snow helped to conceal our movements and noise since we were walking through a 1 year old clear cut directly towards the buck. We got set up closer and with a better rest at around 270 yards. Of course, as if things weren’t difficult enough, just as the buck stands the snow really started coming down HARD! I got set up to shoot and my buddy got set up on the camera. BOOM! The recoil from my .300 WSM moved me off target and I lost track of the buck in the blizzard. My buddy was between using his binoculars and running the camera (rookie mistake, but I don’t fault him as he is not used to the camera thing) so he also missed seeing if the buck went down. But after a quick review of the film it was obvious the buck was hit hard and went down just out of the frame.
We drove around to the bottom of the unit and walked in. Just before we found the downed buck we jumped a doe and spike bedded down not 50 yards away. They obviously didn’t spook when I shot. Must have been all the snow and what not. And there he was…
The biggest blacktail I have killed in my life and a decent buck in his own right. 3x4 with eyeuguards. He won’t score well, but is heavy, nice eyeguards, 15” inside spread, 17” outside. It was a good hunting season for me even though I only had 3 days of actual hunting. Primetime Outdoors takin’ ‘em down again!
P.S. Sorry for the pic quality. We only used my friend's stupid iPhone.
I wasn't very prepared that day.
