Opening morning arrived and dad was going to pick me up at 5:45 to head out to our hunting spot. I set my alarm on my phone and what do you know I don’t set it right. For some reason I wake up and decide I should look at the clock. Crap it is 5:43 the mad scramble ensues trying to be silent not to wake the kids, wife, and in-laws I’m getting dressed grabbing my gun back pack and boots and clothes in two minutes. Dad laughs as he pulls in the driveway to pick me up I’m stumbling out the door with a handful of stuff that I am usually wearing. I finish getting dressed in the truck as we head out to our spot. We arrive and finally I am ready to go up the hill. We go in the dark to be at the top around daybreak so we can head over the other side and into prime deer country. Shooting hours arrive and it is still pretty dark so I wait a while longer and decide ok my scope can now draw enough light to shoot if need be. Not needed I get to my rock and get situated not much happening for the first half hour then I look down and see two deer in the very bottom of my draw feeding away. Pretty soon more deer appear in the same place before I know it there are fifteen does and one buck. At this point I can tell he is forked but not sure if he is legal they are a long ways out so I just keep my eyes on them and let them feed they are slowly making progress towards me. I keep checking on them and I decide that yes he is a legal 3 point about that time another buck and three does come bounding over the hill and start to take the others that were calmly feeding away with them. I decided that they were not going to come up the hill and if they go with the others I will not see them again so I check the range finder 483 yards I find the legal buck in my scope and squeeze the trigger that connecting sound of the bullet rings out whack the buck humps up and the others take off he just stands there. Crap I know I hit him but he is still standing so I let another one fly just high dust flies and he starts to walk boom another shot this time he stops ok I must have hit him that time too. He looks pretty wobbly on his feet and changes his direction and heads back towards me he covered about 50 yards back my direction while I closed the distance down heading down the canyon towards him. He laid down and I knew he would die but I didn’t want him to suffer so I closed within 100 yards when he picked his head back up and stared at me I finished him off putting one round through his head. Dad makes his way down to where I am standing and told me congrats but now the work begins. It is 8:00 and I start gutting him out we gather up the heart and liver tie the back legs together and start dragging. I have never shot one this far down my canyon before and now I know why. By 11:30 we were finally back to the truck exhausted and had the deer loaded. We headed for town to go skin him out and get him hung in the cooler. Went back out to try and find one for my dad but couldn’t find a legal buck all two points. Oh well at least we got one. Now time to get ready for elk season.
