After a busy week I finally have a few minutes to write a story. Last weekend I took an eastside trip with some buddies including addicted2hunting. Saturday morning me and addicted2hunting woke up at 2:00am so we could head over to a pre-determined mountain and begin our climb. At 4:00am we were sitting in the sage brush on a hill waiting for the sun to come up. As the sun came up we were hoping to intercept some deer coming back from the alfalfa fields below.
We sat there overlooking a draw until around 7:00am. Nothing came in so we moved side hill a bit in order to glass the alfalfa field. We get to where we can see the field and then something catches my eye. I throw up the glass and am delighted to see a train of whitetails headed to bed. It was three bucks, two mature doe's and a yearling all in a line. The buck out front was a big bodied 4x4. We devised a plan to cut them off at a pinch point but it wasn't meant to be. still very cool to see something like that though.
later in the morning we moved over to the other side of this mountain we were on. We bumped a few muley doe's around but also started to run into a few hikers. I had an arrow knocked and was ready to draw on one just as a hiker came around a corner. I put the arrow back into my quiver and greeted him as the doe ran off. He said he couldn't believe they allow hunting where people hike. I wanted to say, "I can't believe people are allowed to hike where people hunt", But i refraned. Then he asked me how I know that I'm shooting a deer and not a person? At this point I didn't know what to say to the guy so me and Brandon walked away. haha I mean, he must have thought we'd be out there taking brush shots.
Anyway, on with my deer story.
We left for a few hours to let the morning hike crowd do their thing. We came back for the evening hunt hoping to do some open country mule deer spot and stalk and as luck would have it, that's what we did. we started up the hill through the sage brush and within minutes we had a muley doe at 75 yards. She was on the move on a side hill trail and was eating as she went.
I started the stalk and for a few minutes it seemed like i'd never gain any ground on her. She went over a knob and out of view so I took advantage of the situation and picked up the speed to close the gap. I started to round the knob and didn't see her for minute. Then, all of a sudden, there she is at 40 yards but she's got me pegged and is locked in on me with both ears standing at alert.
She didn't quite know what I was though and even did one of those pump fakes where they look down but then look up again really quick as if trying to catch you moving. She took a couple steps and was broadside. I came to full draw and settled my 40 yard pin on her. I released and instantly had a bad feeling about the shot. I had twitched upon the release and hit her pretty far back. it was a gut shot and I know watched in horror as she ran off kind of crouched over.
I believe everyone has there own terms of what an ethical distance for a shot is and for me, 40 yards is perfectly ethical. After shooting thousands and thousands of arrows over the last year I felt comfortable making the shot. I've been anylizing the shot over and over again all week and all I can think is that I may have rushed the shot and punched the release.
Brandon watched the whole thing go down and ran over after the shot. We went and found the arrow and it smelled like guts. I felt terrible!!! we waited a half hour and decided to at least start looking for blood. With the amount of predators where we were I wanted to find her before darkness set in.
Due to the gut shot there was very little blood. we started finding a drop here and a drop there but were mainly following her distressed looking tracks and blades of grass with bits of blood rubbed on it as she passed by. About an hour and a half after the shot we bumped her in her bed and off she went. We figured we could spot her and put a final stalk on her and make a final, well placed shot.
She was headed towards a lake at the bottom of the hill. It didn't take long before she crossed the road and jumped in the lake. I ran down to the lake and watched in horror through my binoculars as she swam for the other bank. it got dark just as I saw her reach the other side. But I couldn't see her get out of the water. An hour and a half later we were walking the shore hoping to find the deer down from the swim. We were wrong and we found her alive. She was bedded a few feet from the water and when we got close she jumped back in the water and started swimming to the other side!
At that point I was feeling about as low as I could possibly feel. It was never my intention to make her suffer like that. So, we backed out of there and went back to camp. It was now 10:00pm and had been on her trail for 6 hours! We figured she would swim across and bed down like she had done earlier.
Sunday morning we woke up at first light and headed to the lake. I glassed the lake looking for a floating doe while Brandon walked the shore. Within ten minutes Brandon walked up on her and she was down this time. floating a few feet from the bank. Using a tree branch I was able to get her in. I hung my tag on her ear and admired her. I was proud. Not poud of the shot I made but proud of the effort we made to find her. I owed it to her to do anything I could to recover her.
I feel like this experience will only make me better. I'm trying to take anything positive I can from it. As far as the meat goes, I think the lake was my saving grace. we got her skinned out and quartered at camp and I spent a couple days after work this week cutting steaks and taking my grind pile to the butcher for burger, breakfast sausage and pepperoni.
Here she is...my very first Deer! And my first ever big game animal!
This was back at camp. Didn't get a chance to get an actual field pick.
Thanks for listening.
