Here is the families 2014 season in a nutshell. To start the whitetail and the cow elk are my animals. The 4 point blacktail with just the head is my dads. The two point and the nice 5 point bull are my brothers. The mule deer is my cousins. The big three point blacktail is my best friends and the big two point is my other cousins. I'll tell a quick story of each. Okay to start with my season. My passion is hunting blacktails in Southwest Washington. This last year I started working for a power company in northeast Washington and moved 8 hours away from my familiar hunting areas. Without having blacktails to hunt I had to resort to whitetails or mule deer. Opening day I went after mulies. Seen a couple that were shot and a few does. Just after seeing them I spotted a nice bear working its way through a cut. Range found it at 200 yards and took a good solid rest. Needless to say after two shots I didn't get the bear. Looked for any sign for three hours and nothin. Oh well though. The next day seen a nice little 4 point but that didn't work out either. Here came the work week. I was able to get out for the last couple hours of light but it was so foggy where the mule deer are. I had to abandon that idea and head down low. I started down and old overgrown road and spotted that whitetail standing 40 yards away in some thick brush. As soon as I put the binos up I knew he was legal. The .270 and the Berger did the trick. As for the cow that's a little more interesting. I only bow hunt for elk and have been very successful at it. As I mentioned though I live 8 hours away from where I have always hunted. The only chance I would get to wack an elk was going to be the three days I would be home for thanksgiving. The gf and I got off work thanksgiving eve and headed for the coast. We got into town around midnight and hit the hay around two. Cousin who shot the mule deer is one of my archery hunting partners next to my brother when he bow hunts. Anyways cousin and I met and headed out three hours after getting into town. It poured down rain that morning and our rain gear was soaked. No thanks to under armour. We got on some elk and the cousin went after them. He got busted though. Around eleven we met up and I was done. I told him i was headed back to the truck. He wanted to go hit another timber patch down by the gate. Not 10 minutes after splitting up spotted a herd on a hillside that's a newer cut. After watching for a half hour coming up with a plan I started the stalk. I had no cover. After basically army crawling in the mud over a hundred yards I was about a hundred yards from them. I waited for a couple hours hoping they would work my way. Obviously they decided not to. Now here's the catch dinner with the gf family was at five. It's now almost three. I needed to make something happen. I range found the closest cow and let the arrow fly. She went twenty yards and was done. And I was in trouble for missing dinner. Now for my dad. He passed up some smaller bucks through the season. The two point my brother shot was a buck dad spotted. Luckily they weren't very far apart from each other and it all worked out. Last year my brother killed a monster 4 point seconds after I left the spot. Jerk. Haha. Just kidding. The last day of general season dad decided he would shoot any decent little buck. After spotting a nice two point he tried to get a shot. Right as he was squeezing the trigger a truck came flying up the road and the buck was gone. Same type of thing happened that day on another buck. Opening day of late buck he went back to that spot and didn't see much. Around two in the afternoon he went down a road we have hunted lots and never see anything. It's just one of those spots you have to check out though. Sure enough he spots a doe and that big boy right behind her. He settled in and shot. The buck just stood there. He settled himself down and shot. The buck dropped in his tracks. The shot was over three hundred yards which is a poke for my dad. He cut the head off cause he was by himself and ended having to leave it to get help. He has shot a lot of big bucks and didn't plan on mounting it. Now for my brothers bull. He drew a muzeloader bull permit around the St. Helens area. I gave him all the advice I could. He scouted and had a general idea of where he wanted to go. Opening morning him and my dad spotted a nice five point waking away. He took a quick shot and missed. He was pretty bummed. He hunted hard for the next five days and got on elk but no shots. After getting pretty down in the dumps I kept giving him encouragement. Basically just told him to keep hammering and persistence is key next to keeping the wind in your favor. Told him to just keep hitting those old grades and he would kill one. Sure enough one of the roads he had been hunting paid off and the bull was feeding on the old grade with his cows. Lucky sucker was able to get a rig to it and get it out whole. I can't temeber the exact story of my cousins mule deer but that's a Montana buck and his first mule deer. The big three pint blacktail my friend shot I was very proud of. I've taken him hunting lots and he has shot smaller bucks but nothing ever big. I've always told him to take his time and glass glass and glass some more. Then Keep glassing. He spotted this buck in a jack for patch and was trying to get a friend of his on it. After his friend was not able to see the buck his friend told him to shoot it knowing it was big based off my buddies excitement. He shot it twice with a .243 before it went down. The first shot the buck didn't even flinch. I'm proud of him. I told him that's a buck a lot of people won't get a chance to kill. As for the two point in the back to the truck that's a buck my cousin shot. The deer was dogging some does in a thick cut and he dropped him. So that's our season in a nutshell. We have always been very lucky to harvest good animals seems like every year and thank the good lord above for giving us the opportunity to do it. I'm sorry if there is typing errors. I'm doing this off an iPhone. I was scrolling through and decided to post some pics and the story just kept going. Good luck this fall everyone
