We're sitting on a open sage finger ridge in a saddle that splits uphill and downhill with timber on the west and north... We're on the uphill side... We're watched this grouse feed up the ridge to 15 feet in front of us... Right after I took this pic a nice buck pop's out of our blind spot from our left on the downhill side trying to stomp the grouse to smithereens! The grouse is between the bucks front legs fluttering around before flying out towards us then veering down ridge... It was a surprise to say the least and made both of us react a little... We both kinda flinched back some and I may have made an audible noise... Our next reaction was to shoulder the rifles... It all happened so fast the buck's reaction was way faster than ours and he was gone well before we could get a bead on him into the timber to the west... Never seen that before, we couldn't believe it... All we could do was laugh... I don't blame him either... They had scared me a few times on this trip before this... Not to mention any other times... I couldn't imagine what he goes through on a daily basis with those things to want to stomp it out!
It was a solid 4x about 20" wide kinda heavy not very deep... My dad would've loved to tag it...
The weather could make up it's mind... I was hoping it would dump like 2020... We'd get 4" then it would warm up... Then another couple inches... Saw lot of deer moving around... But wrong place wrong time, too far, or just couldn't get a shot... If I'm hunting next to my dad I always give him first shot opportunity... Started doing that in my 20's after he taught me how to hunt and I became more selective in certain situations...
Amazes me how much of this area is burnt compared to where I hunt in south central WA... They don't let fires burn so much area as they do up here...
Another area of the regrowth years after a burn...
