Now I know for most it's not that big of a deal, but for a guy who has only really hunted blacktail deer it's pretty darn cool. I've been out in the desert before, but only to camp and fish at potholes and I've always wanted to know what it was like to hunt it. This year I was lucky enough to draw the 2nd deer tag (not the tag I really wanted in 290 but exciting none the less). Well what an adventure it turned out to be seeing as I live in Vancouver and our most recent "arctic blast" happened the day I was supposed to leave. What kind of guy will drive 9 hours through snow and ice to fill a doe tag? Well...... this guy! Anyway, I'm glad to say I have a cousin that's just crazy enough to go with me so I didn't have to battle it alone. Plus he's got a darn good set of deer spotters on his head. We got into moses lake at 330am and slept a few hours before heading out to hunt. The first set of deer we saw were very far off and across the water from us so we decided not to go after them. A short time later we spotted two does that were a little farther off than I thought as I took a poke and missed. (250 is a little hard free hand shot for me but I was still feeling a little bummed about missing, doesn't happen to me all that often). The next herd we ran into had about 10-12 deer in it with several of them being in the "huge" variety, at least in my opinion. We spooked these deer and again I missed, this time a running shot. I will say that the terrain in this unit makes it very hard to judge distance. After that miss I was feeling pretty deflated.... missed not once, but twice?!! What the heck?! At that point, my cousin with his eagle eyes and a really nice set of binoculars spots a pile of deer about a mile away so we begin our stalk. In and out of dips and valleys having to re-spot them every time we come up on a hill (Very exciting to me since I've never been on a deer hunt like this). We finally close the gap to 400 yards with no cover to get any closer. I laid down, got comfortable, put my 400 yard drop compensator on her and let her rip! Got her right in the heart. Now I've killed bucks before so maybe I shouldn't have been so excited, but man it was awesome! I've never had to shoot so far. Well she wasn't the biggest doe we saw, but she also wasn't the smallest. Plus with only one day to hunt I wasn't going to hold out long. Big thanks to my cousin for helping me out on this one!
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