Well, my hunt has come to an end.
I seen a few really big bucks, 160"+ or so. First of all, I only seen two bucks that I potentially could have taken with my bow. Both were inside 50 yards. Not sure how much closer I could have gotten to them. Both were hanging out near the road and were smaller bucks. I chose not to use the bow and try to get one of these bucks. I think as skiddish as the deer here are behaving, even in the rut, I don't feel confident that I could have gotten a shot on either.
With the rifle, I had a three hour stalk on a 180" buck get blown before I had a shot due to some other hunters packing out their own deer over the ridge beside him. I had a good stalk on a 160ish buck that I missed a 150 yard shot on as he busted me and bounded away. This morning being my last day, I took a 400 yard shot at a big fork horn, maybe even a regression buck. A much smaller buck stepped into the shot at exactly the wrong time, and he is now wearing my tag. I spent most of the day feeling sick about my mistake, replayed it in my mind a hundred times, and every way I look at it, I pulled the trigger when I should have waited for more separation between them.
After my wife gave me the "We are luckier than a lot of people who are eating tag soup..." and "You'll get a trophy buck next time..." speech, I felt a little better about the buck. She has that effect on me. Not letting myself off the hook for the shot, but feel better about the deer I am bringing back. He'll eat good.
Now, the better story, and the main reason I went on this rifle hunt was to hunt with my dad. The hunt for his buck was a great memory that I will cherish forever.
Here is a pic of my dad and I with his 5x3:
He first spotted and shot it from about 275 yards, and it jumped up and ran over the ridge out of sight. We both walked down and started looking for deer/blood where we last seen him. I spotted him on the next little ridge looking at us and as soon as we seen him, he turned and ran again. We walked up to that ridge and finally I found small blood spots where he was last standing. My dad is colorblind so he cannot see blood unless it is obviously a big grey wet spot. This blood trail was a few drops every 20 yards or so, making my dad and I quite a great tracking pair. We set out together following the tracks and very sparse blood for about 400 yards or so, and every time the buck crossed the tracks of another deer, we would slow down and find blood and make sure we were on the right track. A few times we had to back track to the last blood spot and get back on the track to figure out which track was his. After a total of two hours tracking the buck, we finally jumped him again on the back side of the next ridge. As he ran across the bottom, dad pulled up his rifle and put a great 50 yard shot on him to put him down.
Dad will be 67 in a month. Last year, he had stints put in his heart and despite that, he is actually in very good health for his age and has no plans on slowing down anytime soon. Still I know that he won't always be able to go on these hunts and I will always remember how much fun we had tracking down his buck. He quartered it, and my cousin and I packed it out for him. All he had to pack was his own backpack out.
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