Well finally made it up to our camp on Wednesday morning. Three of the guys were still up at the spike camp and the other three were down low getting ready to pull out the next day and stated they had not seen any shooters for two weeks (they had been up for the muzzy elk season)
This season was different for me, for as long as I can remember, opening morning could not come soon enough and all I could thing about was getting to camp. I almost did not go this year, work has been really hectic, new dog at home, and a bunch other things had me talking myself out of going this year. Then my boy came up to me and said that he really wanted to go to deer camp. I remembered the last 2 years he has come and the fun I had showing him the variety of things we encountered while in the woods and it was a must that we get up there.
He had his new animal tracks book with him and wanted to look at tracks in the woods and also brought his "deer of north america" book, which he had been reading, I just couldnt say that I did not want to go!
Anyway, after getting the wall tent set up and BSing with the other guys we headed out for an evening hunt an easy mtn. bike ride behind a gate not far from camp. We were seeing lots a variety of track that we were stopping at and looking, trying to figure out how old it was which way it was going etc. etc. same with all the scat we encoutered. A couple of miles in we ran into a dozen or so elk moving through the timber which kept our binos busy for a good hour or so, then a a couple of ruffed grouse in the road to to far past the elk had us busy again.
After another few miles we came to a nice little meadow with a couple of ponds on one end that my son said he really liked this spot and wanted to camp here next year. We decided to take a rest and watch the area for awhile Meanwhile we chirped on our predator calls..I was explaining that we could have bear,cougar, bobcat or coyote coming in from any direction. He learned pretty soon that animals could come in anwhere and didnt like the fact that the timber to our backside was pretty close. He said that he wanted to carry a gun if we were gonna try and get the animals to come to us and instead we should go for a hike..
It was getting close to sunset and we had a good jaunt back to camp so back on the bikes to camp we headed.
Thusrday morning we woke to a rain snow mix coming down and the boy said dont ya think its gonna be to muddy for the peddle bikes maybe we should just go on ahike. I agreed, so we headed out to one of our spots up the road, at our parking spot the snow was coming down pretty heavy. The hike to our rock usually takes me alone a good hour but with the short legs of the boy behind me it took a little longer.
Even though I was moving pretty slow getting the boy over the various obstacles I was working up a pretty good sweat and the glasses kept fogging up as we crested up to our rock spot there was a nice shooter buck across the the canyon browsing some leaves. The sideways snow, the clowds/fog drifting by along with my fogged up glasses, scope and binos made for a few tense moments but he had no clue we were in the area. After getting everything in working order, what seemed like 20 minuets, prolly more like a 30 seconds, I was able to squeeze off a shot which humped him up real good and then a follow up shot that rolled him over and down. He did the tumble through the bushes and dropped out on a real nice log were we could keep an eye on em. Was able to range the shot at 254 yards, at 3800 elevation, shooting a 150 grain Federal Premium through the Remm 7MM mag.
That was at 0830 and by 0930 we had reached him and field dressed ..Stashed him up real good and went back to camp waiting for the boys to make it down from the high camp to help with getting him down.
I was not packing my digital camara, thought I had forgot to pack until I found it the next morning in that spot you always put stuff so ya wont forget where ya put it, well I forgot! so there are no log shots up on the hill with a smiling kid.
Here are a few from the next day once I found the camara...
This is the country we were in, as we are hunting the gut pile the next morning.
A day after smile, not quite as big as the previous day but still happy as a clam!
and my mug shot...
and a profile shot....
