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Author Topic: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)  (Read 2636 times)

Offline 206dawgfan

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First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« on: October 18, 2014, 10:18:27 PM »
 First of all I would like to thank all of you on this site.  :tup: The information and inspiration you can gather from this site is great.  I look forward to learning so much and offer all  the knowledge I can in return

Backstory

My brother in law and I just began hunting over the last 2 season.  We don't have hunting family members so we are doing this DIY.  I have been looking for weeks at satellite maps looking for cuts in the wood near our house in Duvall.  I found this clear cut that looked to be pretty fresh and looked to be a good size.  The only problem was that it was a pretty steep hike and about 5 miles in.

 We left this morning and headed for the top of hill where the cut was.  We arrived about an hour from before sun rise and sat overlooking the cut.  It seemed nice but it was also dark.  I brought out my thermos and decided to have a cup of coffee.  Looked at my phone and realized I had great service.  Or so I thought.  My phone was draining battery fast.  I posted about sitting drinking coffee it was very nice sitting  at about 1600 ft and looking over the snoqualmie valley watching the forest wake up.  :IBCOOL: We start to hear some movement to our left 3 deer start coming up over the road right by us.   We get a little pumped.  We make our way over to them.  Its shooting light but its still not easy to see.  We start stalking them.  They start moving up into the cut higher than us .  The cut is full of ferns and vine maple.  My brother continues on the road as the move above him.  I go up a skid road and try to make my way over to them.  I can see them in my binos 2 does and a small spike maybe 3 to 4 inches.  The seem to be small so we are a little bummed.  They move up behind a big slash pile we began trying to decide to take this spike. 

We decide not to take him from the distance we were at he just seemed to small. We said we would take him next year.  We keep stalking them just to  observe and see where they go. Thats when I took the picture, I wish I would have had better cell service so I could get all the replies you guys left me it would have saved me al lot of time.  :bash: It was such a learning experience today being in the woods.  So we decide to let him live another day and move on exploring the top of this hill.  There seems to be tracks everywhere we are pretty excited to see more dear later.

We continue to hunt all over this hill.  We walked back down this road and go check out a few more spots.  It rained all day, it was not bad being that it was like 60 degrees.  We explored and sat and waited and glassed all day.  We also debated whether we should of taken the spike we had seen in the morning.   :bash: I was torn I felt his was too small and we should wait, but I also thought that it would be a good learning experience for us to field dress a dear.  I had never done it or see it done live only on YouTube.  I am an avid home cook and BBQ so I feel pretty comfortable with a knife in my hand so I felt pretty confident about doing it.  But you never know.   

We start up a road that goes up to the cut but goes around the other side.  It was way steeper than the first road.  We hiked up to the top and sit and watch and glassed some more.  I start making my way up a skid road down the center of this cut.  Off to the distance we see 2 dear running through the woods away from us.  Damn maybe they smelled us.  We continue through the cut and decide to sit lower on the cut then we did in the morning after about 45 minutes I see a dear up the hill about 200 yds.  Its raining and its not super easy to see through my binos to verify sex.  I radio my bother in law and  he being moving up to the deer.  I move up the cut trying not crash around like an idiot.  I get up to about 150 yds and see its the same spike.  I tell him we both look at each other do we take him.  It takes us about a 1/2 to sec to both say lets do it. 

I tell my Brother in law to take the shot (I got to keep my hunting partner hooked).  :tup: :chuckle: He takes a pretty good shot, it could of been a little more forward.  He drops and twitches just a sec and then no movement.  The 2 other does are near and they seem a little shocked.  They start to move away slowly.   I catch eyes with one of the does.  I am not going to lie.  I felt kind of sad seeing them walk away it seemed like they didn't know what to do like they were in shock.  But oh well that is how the world works.  I like to eat wild delicious animals.  We gut him which goes really well I bought one of those razor knifes that have the replaceable blades.  It worked great.   Now we start bashing our heads together because we left the game cart at home.   So luckily our phone works well enough to call my father in law and have him bring out our game cart.  We tie up the deer on a pole and began trying to carry him.  Well, we thought he was small, he was actually bigger than we thought he was.   If we would have known how big he was we would have harvested him the first time we saw him which was like 6 hrs earlier.  :bash: He was pretty freaking heavy to carry.  We made it down the hill and gave up without the cart.  My father in law made it to us.  We were so relived even though we had about 3 miles to go.  So long story short we have about 50-60 lbs of boned meat in the fridge.  That I will cut and grind tomorrow.  I am sorry for no pictures.  I don't know why we didn't take pictures.  I think we just got down to business after he went down and was focused on getting him out of there and in the truck.
I learned so much today it was very much a growing experience as a man.  To go out in the wild and find, hunt, and harvest an animal is special thing I think.  Everyone should do it at least once.  Today was a great step on my journey.  I am looking forward to heading out for elk this friday.  Only a 4 day work week.    :rockin: Thanks again for the interest in my story,  sorry for being so long winded.  Cant wait to do it again.  ;) ;)

Offline REHJWA

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2014, 10:34:03 PM »
Congratulations! :tup: :tup: At least you were up hill from the truck.... :chuckle:

Offline lokidog

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2014, 10:52:40 PM »
Woohoo, congratulations!  That's more meat than a four year old deer out here....

Offline Boss .300 winmag

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2014, 08:02:52 AM »
Congrats to the both of you on getting it done, now enjoy the labors of your hunting success! :tup: Nice story too.
"Just because I like granola, and I have stretched my arms around a few trees, doesn't mean I'm a tree hugger!
Hi I'm 8156, our leader is Bearpaw.
YOU CANNOT REASON WITH A TIGER WHEN YOUR HEAD IS IN ITS MOUTH! Winston Churchill

Keep Calm And Duc/Ski Doo On!

Offline Boss .300 winmag

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2014, 08:02:53 AM »
Congrats to the both of you on getting it done, now enjoy the labors of your hunting success! :tup: Nice story too.
"Just because I like granola, and I have stretched my arms around a few trees, doesn't mean I'm a tree hugger!
Hi I'm 8156, our leader is Bearpaw.
YOU CANNOT REASON WITH A TIGER WHEN YOUR HEAD IS IN ITS MOUTH! Winston Churchill

Keep Calm And Duc/Ski Doo On!

Offline Blacktail Sniper

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2014, 09:31:30 AM »
 :yeah:    :tup:
It is better to be consistently incorrect than inconsistently correct...

Sarcasm: The ability to insult stupid people without them realizing it. 

My level of sarcasm depends on your level of stupidity...

Sarcasm makes smart people laugh and stupid people mad.

Offline iwagner

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2014, 10:02:37 AM »
Nice work, that's haul to get out of there!

Offline Old Man Yager

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Re: First Spike Down in the 460 (sorry no pictures)
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2014, 12:22:02 PM »
Good job, funny how they get heavier the further you have to carry them!!! :chuckle:
My Dad always said, " Get a bigger hammer "

 


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