Blind squirrel

[justyhntr]

I'll be the first to admit that I suck at blacktail hunting. In the 10 years that my wife and I have been chasing blacktail we've killed 1 branched buck, in that time we've eaten 2 westside quality tags and the blacktail raffle tag.  We are convince that the "rut" is just a never ending bad joke you all are playing on us. Only once have we seen what appeared to be rut activity and that was the year crowinghen killed a nice 4X3. Our inability to kill deer is what has turned us into hard core predator hunter and that opened up doors for us this year.

Back in March a friend of mine had a beef cow killed by a cougar in Thurston county. The WDFW was called and beings they could not confirm that a cougar had killed the cow they said they could not do anything about it,( the throat was ripped open, claw marks on the nose and the front shoulder was missing). He asked if I could try and get that cougar, I told him that it wouldn't be easy but I gave it a shot.  I sat on that cow from first light to dark the first couple days and also set up a camera to see if he was coming in at dark. He never came back. The next weekend crowinghen and I went back in a set up 10 cameras on the timber land that my friends farm buts up to  to see if he was still around. He did not show up again for 3 months, we did get him on camera but only once in the months since then. What we did get on cameras were lots of deer. Through out the summer we had multiple bucks on camera and we got to watch their antler growth, a few were quite large. I shared these videos with my friend never thinking we would get access to deer hunt, his wife is not big into hunting and she likes her deer. We do know of another access point to the timber land but it's quite a trek to get to this spot.

It was the wife that was appropriate of our effort to get the cougar, ( we did a lot of calling) and she offered us access to hunt deer, we took it. We ran cameras all summer and then into the fall watching the fawns grow and the buck antlers fill in nicely. We set up 3 blinds on some well used intersections between feed and bedding, bought 2 cell cameras to keep an eye on their movement and waited. Our plan was to hunt the last 3 days of Oct. and late buck. If we didn't get it done we had the late archery/muzzy season so we felt we were good. Now anybody that has hunted the flat lands of Thurston county knows the winds can be brutal and the area we were hunting is a jungle, close quarters hunting. Any slight wind change can screw you. That is what happen Oct.29th the winds were all over the place. We ended up doing some moving around to get the wind in our favor, never happened so we backed out frustrated.

The morning of the 30th neither one of us felt like getting beat up by the winds so we laid in bed contemplating not going. As crowinghen always says, can't shoot anything from the couch, so we dragged our butts out if bed and headed for our blinds. On our way in we bumped a deer right off and when we came to the edge of the only opening in the area, ( about 30 yard wide and a 100 yards long), we bumped another deer. At this point we just stopped and waited, the winds were perfect and we felt maybe something else may cross. A few minutes later we hear what sound like a hippo moving through the woods towards us, it would crash for a few seconds then stop for a minute or 2 then continue. This went on for a while and I don't have to say my heart rate was through the roof. After what seemed like an eternity I catch movement to my left, it's a set of antlers moving into the open area, the brush is so thick that all I can see is antlers. All crowinghen can see is the tips. I bring up my scope and follow his movement, there an open spot that I can see vitals, I pull the trigger, click, crap, I forgot to chamber a round, my luck with blacktail. I instantly chamber a round and take 2 steps forward found his antlers in the scope and followed his movement just as he was about to enter the timber I had one more small opening, as his vitals entered it I fired off a round. He jumped and he was gone. I turned to crowinghen and said I think I had a good shot but wasn't certain. She thought that I had shot one of the bigger forkies but couldn't tell because the brush was so tall.  We headed over to the spot I last seen him, found 2 small spots of blood but that's it. We decided to give it 30 minutes then head in and start looking, during the wait I was stressing quite a bit, second guessing my shot. I could only take it for 10 minutes or so, I had to go look , we just went in about 10 yards and started looking for his exit tracks hoping to find blood. as I went from left to right I spotted my buck piled up not 30 yards from where he was shot. As I walked up it quickly realized this was no forky but the old buck that we had on camera all summer/fall. For me, this is a buck of a lifetime made all the better by having crowinghen with me. We've worked our asses off for this and we finally found a nut. Hopefully we can find her a nut during the late muzzy season then it's back to calling predators. 

[Alchase]

Beautiful blacktail!
Nicely done.

[JakeLand]

Well done ! Nice blacktail !

[Boss .300 winmag]

Even a blind dog finds a bone every now and then.🤣

Nicely done.👍

[Turner89]

Stud Bt

[Turdle]

SWEET....

[pd]

Well, you two certainly deserve this buck!  Beautiful creature.

(While is he smiling?)

[lewy]

Hard work pays off!

[boneaddict]

Solid trophy

[elkboy]

 That is a beautiful buck, amd certainly well earned!

[NOCK NOCK]

   Congrats on a beauty

[fishnfur]

Super nice mature buck.  Congratulations!  Did you send in a tooth to get him aged? 

[redi]

Dandy buck congrats and good story thanks for sharing

[Skyvalhunter]

Love the story and pics thanks for sharing

[justyhntr]

Super nice mature buck.  Congratulations!  Did you send in a tooth to get him aged?

Yes, I sent in both the front teeth. I took him to Rick at Cedar River, he felt looking at the teeth that he was around 9 years old. His back hams were pretty thin, had good fat just not very full.