Not a ton of story this year.
I was covered up in deer on Saturday morning. I had scouted enough that I knew which deer I wanted and had decided I was going to hold out for him. He (and his twin brother, who has the same rack just not quite as heavy) showed up at about 7:30 in a canyon I was glassing and bedded down with a few does. When they settled into the bottom of the canyon I looped around them and came in downwind on a stalk. When I saw them, a couple of does were up and feeding, so I sat down and waited for the bucks to get up too. While I was waiting, deer kept filing into the canyon in groups of 5s and 6s. After a while a 3 point that was with the group I stalked popped up about a 100 yards away and spotted me. He turned around and started to trot off, and the rest of the group got up and followed. At about 250 yards they stopped on the opposite hillside long enough for me to get a shot. He was dead on the ground at 8:15.
Not a lot of spread, and he's only a 3 point on his left side, but I am happy with him. He was the best buck that I saw out there in the time I scouted. Body-wise he is huge. I don't think I have ever killed a deer that weighed that much. At first I didn't notice, because I was actually able to drive up to him. But when I tried to load him in the back of my truck, he wouldn't budge. It took me an hour and a tangled mass of ropes (I didn't have a ratchet strap with me) to finally wrench him in there. I have never had trouble loading a deer in my truck by myself before. Usually, I just hop up on the tailgate, grab him by the horns and pull him in. Nothing doing with this guy.
My buddy Cory built a walk in cooler, so I drove to his house to skin and hang him. When I got there, there were 4 other deer hanging in the cooler, all bucks. This deer's carcass dwarfs them.
PathfinderJR had a cross country meet on Saturday (who the %^$# does that
), so he couldn't be out there with me. We gave it a good honest try yesterday (walked about 9 miles), but came up with a goose-egg. We'll be out there this week trying to correct that.
