Well, what a disappointing opening weekend. Pathfinder Jr and I had our area scouted out pretty well. Had a bachelor herd of three legal muley bucks that we could find pretty reliably, plus on other legal 3 point that was running with a herd of does. Though our spot is Feel Free to Hunt, it is a bit isolated, and we usually only share it with 5 or 6 hunters opening weekend.
So, we got up and got out there by 5:30 am and hiked an hour to get back into our spot. Wouldn't you know it? Fog. Lots of fog. In fact, we were socked in with fog until 7:30 am. When the fog lifted.... OH MY GOD.
There were hunters EVERYWHERE. It seemed like there were two guys in every draw
I am used to things being a bit crowded opening weekend, but this was ridiculous.
To make matters worse, 3 of these idiots had driven right out into the middle of the CRP and were just glassing out their %$#@ truck windows!!
And, to top it all off, they changed Pathfinder Jr's football game from noon to 10:00am (told us Thursday
), so we had to leave by 8:00am to get him to warm-ups.
What a bust. As we were hiking out, the shooting started. We did manage to see a herd of does with thier tounges hanging out running from one draw to another ducking bullets.
After the game Jr was wiped out, so I told him to take a nap and I went out alone, hoping things would have cleared out. I put 6 miles on the boots Saturday afternoon, did a beautiful stalk on a bedded deer in the tall brush that I swore had a rack. Unfortunately, when it stood up, the antlers stayed where they were
About 2 hours before dark, the mob started moving back in. When the second pickup truck pulled out into the middle of the CRP I just left.
We hunted whitetails that night in another spot. We saw 2 does and 10 hunters
The next day was not much better. We hunted hard all day and saw about 8 deer. Nothing legal.
At that point, Pathfinder Jr said that he would be OK with shooting a whitetail doe this year. He has football practice every night this week except Monday, so we decided to try for a whitey doe when he got home from school the next afternoon.
I took Monday off work, hoping that the crowds would have thinned a little. I decided to go back to our opening day spot and see if anything survived the onslaught. I left the truck at 5:30 and hiked an hour and 15 minutes to get to the canyon I wanted to watch. I got there in the dark, got situated, and as it began to get light, I started to glass. At about 7:00 I spotted a gray figure about 600 yards away, feeding it's way towards me through the brush. By 7:10 I could tell that it was a decent buck. It made it's way into the bottom of the canyon. At this point, there were about 5 draws that he could have worked it's way up, so I was getting ready to move to intercept him if I had to, when lo and behold, he chose the draw that I was sitting at the top of. About 300 yards from me, he spotted me. I had him in my scope, but the brush was so tall, all I could see was his head, (and not very clearly as there was condensation all over my scope lense and I was looking into the rising sun). He stared at me for about a minute, figured everything was OK, then started working his way in my direction again. About every 20 yards (his body still obscured in the tall brush and the contour of the hill) he would stop, look at me for about a minute, then go back to browsing and walking. At 200 yards something spooked him (not me, I wasn't moving and the wind was perfect), and he ran 10 yards to my left. I thought the gig was up, but he stopped, looked at something out of my view (maybe a coyote?), and slowly started working his way up the draw again.
I had never seen this buck before. He has a pretty distinctive rack, and I don't think he was a "resident". I think he may have been run over to this area from another ranch.
At 150 yards he stopped and looked at me again. Unfortunately, I had chosen that moment to shift my rifle to be in line with him, and he picked up the movement. He threw his head up, and took a step backwards like he was about to bolt. All I could see was his head and neck, and I figured it was now or never. I had a steady rest with my bipod, so I touched off a round. I heard the bullet hit, and when I recovered from the recoil, I couldn't see the deer.
By the time I got to him, he was dead, his spine, windpipe and jugular shattered by the 130 grain Nosler.
After a short prayer of thanks, tagging and gutting I looked around to assess my situation. It had taken me over an hour to walk in there, and I was easily 3 miles from my truck. I have shot several bucks in this area, but never this far back in the brush.
To make a long story short, thank God for CoryTDF's deer cart and JohnnyTDF's willingness to help pull. Thanks guys. We got him out by noon.
I'll tell Pathfinder Jr's story in another thread...
