2024 As He Lay

[jmscon]

First buck!
After hiking for miles that day he was five minutes from the truck, 30 minutes before sunset.
Modern, Monday the 14th
Shoutout it IFunk for finding the spot!

[nwwanderer]

Excellent WT Dark2Dark!!!

[bearhunter99]

   What a brute!  Congrats!

[Mtnwalker]

First buck!
After hiking for miles that day he was five minutes from the truck, 30 minutes before sunset.
Modern, Monday the 14th
Shoutout it IFunk for finding the spot!

Congrats on your first, nice work

[PastorJoel]

 

[TeacherMan]

This one needs a story!

[ThurstonCokid]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[grundy53]

Wyoming

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[Dark2Dark]

This one needs a story!

I have had quite a few long and adventurous hunting tales, but this was not really one of them.

This was an Idaho rifle deer/elk hunt with a group of friends that have hunted over there for coming up on 20 years. It was my first hunting trip over there.

My buddy shot a very nice six point bull in the morning and we spent the middle part of the day as a group getting the elk out and partially broken down.

For the evening, I was planning to go to the vicinity of where he shot his bull because there had been a whole herd in that area and it would be a reasonable place to find a deer, as well. My other friend that has spent more time over there suggested I go to the ridge he hunted in the morning because he had seen a whitetail buck there that he would consider a nice representation of the area/species. He had gotten a brief look at it in the morning before it bedded down and said he thought it was an 8-point, which he likely would have shot later in the season but not on the first day.

I went and posted up on the ridge top and began glassing. With warm days, animal activity seemed fairly limited (and this continued to be the case for the week I hunted). Most animals were popping out only in the last half hour of daylight. True to form, right about sunset a few mule deer popped out about a mile away. I was glassing them for fun, then scanning the areas closer. At one point I turned back to the ridge I was sitting on and I had a pair of whitetail does right behind me at about 100 yards. They were staring intently behind them and I figured perhaps a buck was following them, even though it's a little early for that.

My buddy that shot the bull in the morning was about a mile away on a higher point- on overwatch duty, trying to find a bull for those of us that still had tags. In the couple minutes where I was distracted by the nearby does, the buck from the morning stepped out of his bed about 550 yards behind me. He let me know it had come out and I quickly glassed him up- his light-colored, substantial antlers were not discrete. I spent a short time making sure I had an accurate range, evaluating odds of getting closer, etc. With zero wind, my bipod and my backpack, I felt confident at that distance.

It felt like I had all the time in the world, but had about 10 minutes of daylight left and he was moving to where I would lose him from my position to a tree halfway between us. (I would have been able to relocate a short distance to see him again if he didn't clear it on his own). I decided to shoot before I had to move. I wanted to take a little bit of shoulder to keep him from potentially going down the very steep hill he was on. The first shot knocked him down and did a pretty good job of incapacitating him- high-shoulder. I lost him in my scope for a moment and when I found him again, he was trying to get his feet (I don't think it was really going to happen, after looking at video). Again, thinking about the hundreds of feet of elevation he could drop if he took a few steps and started rolling, I shot again and hit just a few inches from the first shot, but high enough to break his back just behind his neck. I was able to watch him stop moving in the scope a few seconds later.

Even with the advantages of a ranger finder in conjunction with OnX, it was a little tricky to find him on the mostly open hillside as it got dark quickly.

I was stoked when I got to him. I hadn't taken the time or focus to see exactly how big he was before I shot. I'm admittedly not an experienced whitetail hunter but I knew he was a good one and I was stoked to have him.

I'm very grateful for my friends getting me into the right place at the right time AND helping me get him out.

Sorry for the hijack!

D2D

[HntnFsh]

Awesome!

[ASHQUACK]

Not my biggest, but he is my 1st archery buck.

[OutHouse]

Great job everyone!. Dark2Dark, more pictures of that please!!

[NOCK NOCK]

Not my biggest, but he is my 1st archery buck.

They are all fun with archery!!!  Congrats!

[Dark2Dark]

Great job everyone!. Dark2Dark, more pictures of that please!!

[JakeLand]

2024 blacktail