Now for the story.
We woke up at 4:30 on Saturday and got to the gate at 060 after signing in and getting some info from the Security Guards, we headed out to some clear cuts to glass. After an hour and half after seeing lots of sign and a few elk, we moved on, up to the higher mountains. We put a few more miles in, but no luck. Emma had a soccer game (no subs, so she had to show, and they won) so we drove around some of the other area to try and familiarize ourselves for the next days hunt.
Sunday we showed up early and were ready to put a full day in. Started the morning with cool cloudy weather. Hiked up an overgrown logging road with the dew soaked ferns soaking us. Then up onto a higher mountains were we definitely found the deer bedroom, but the buck were not home, off chasing does I suspect. Alas after some steep scree scrambles and having to hold on the trees and shrubs to get down the hill, After telling her not to tell her mom how steep it was, we ended up at the truck 5 hours later and 6.5 rough off trail miles later as it was starting to rain. Lunch and stripping down to dry off in the heat of the truck. I drove around for 1.5 hours while Emma napped to recover.
We ran into friends down the road and stopped and chatted for a few minutes. Then back to hunting. We going to sit on the original clear cut where we heard there might be a nice 4x4. A mile down the road our friend stopped. We got out of the truck and he told me that there was a doe that had just crossed the road in front of him. Being the height of the Rut...where there are does..! As we were discussing how to proceed we saw a second doe. Then we both saw a tall buck...."Emma get your rifle!!!" Without waiting, she grabbed the rifle and ammo, put on her hunter orange while I grabbed the shooting sticks. We walked down the road until we had a clear lane then on the sticks and slowly squeeze...booom. Nice hit in the shoulder, took the lungs and down it went. We able to work it way back to standing on 3 legs went another 20 yards and collapsed and was done. Only then did we see the cool left antler...wha hoo. Tag notched
