So I spent most of my weekend hiking and sitting through wheat fields and mountainous terrain. On Saturday morning, we were all up at 5:30am in order to get into position before dawn. When we finally left camp, it was 6:15am and the sun was casting a dim light across the countryside. When we finally got to where we all needed to be, the daylight was more than fully on the earth and we proceeded to get to our locations as quickly as possible and without disturbing any possible victims. When I arrived at my location (where the 1st 3 pictures below were taken from) I began to use binoculars to 'glass' the hillside and determine where and if the deer would be. After I spent a good time 'glassing' the hillside, I noticed a funny looking bush...that moved...HOLY COW its a buck and upon further investigation, he had two does with him. That is when I realized that where the deer were may not have been our property, so I respected what I have been taught, and refrained from jumping to the rifle and making a bunch of noise. I waited for another hour, whereupon the deer decided to bed down and when I thought it was safe, I began to move back to my rig to verify the property lines. When I began to move, the deer were startled and decided to leave town in a rapid fast sort of way. When they crossed the line into where I was sure was our property, I fired, only to see that the dust cloud verified the survival of the buck. And off they pounced. So with that, I grabbed my gear and left.
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| On the left hillside, is a water tank. Its approximately 375 yards across the draw to the right. |
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| This is looking opposite of the above picture. |
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| Where the brown turns to yellow at the top is approx. 550 yards. Its 375 yards to the dark patch in the middle. |
After that adventure, my day progressed into a lazy afternoon and then a fairly easy evening of scouting and spotting for every one else while my boys played in the truck. When it got to be an hour till dark, my mom, sister, and wife came by to pick up the boys and take them back to camp. After they left, I moved down the road to where I was hoping to sit until dark and hopefully shoot a monster buck. As i progressed over a small hill, I noticed a bunch of white butts moving on the hillside in front of me. I slowed and turned of the truck and sat and 'glassed' the deer. Now it was almost too dark to see and guarantee that any bucks would be legal, and there was only one with horns in the group of 7 deer, so I sat and waited just outside the truck...and waited...and waited... when all of a sudden they all took off back across the field they had been grazing through. Then just as they were about to jump back over the fence, they stopped and watched behind them (and to my left, away from me) then the culprit showed themselves, a coyote. LAME!! so the deer hopped the fence and proceeded to graze the hillside they originally came from until it was too dark to see. Still no dead monster buck.
So the next day began and we were all prepared to leave half an hour earlier than the first day and when we finally got all the kids situated, we ended up leaving at the same time (if not a few minutes later). I went back to my location from the previous day, accompanied by my sister, to see if we could get lucky and the buck I had seen might be back. No such luck, and after 2.5 hours of sitting, we gave up and went back to camp.
Later that day, I saw a small but undetermined buck run past where we camped and decided I would go for a hike through the wooded are it ran into. So 2 hours later (and about 1.5 miles) I had managed to scare off about 10 whitetail deer which I could not see which sex they were, and scattered about 50 wild turkey's into the trees. So with all that, I gave up and began hiking back to camp along the road, where I was then picked up by my fellow hunters and my dad.
For the evening hunt, we all decided to try a new area and maybe we would be able to draw out a monster buck in order to fill our tags (and freezers). So we decided to surround this one area of wheat fields and have a company (actually 2) trek through the lower end in hopes to push the deer to where my sister and her husband were and also where I was sitting (shown below). So for the next 2 to 2 1/2 hours I sat in this spot and proceeded to watch birds fight over a field mouse, a coyote (the closest of 4) pounce on and eat field mice, and about 20 does and a small 2 point walk across my path.
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| There are two little rolls in the field ahead and the first is roughly between 100 and 150 yards from where I'm sitting. The first roll is where the picture below is taken about an hour from when this picture was taken. |
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| Success!! |
The location of where I shot the deer allowed for a quick gutting and then an even quicker retrieval into the back of the truck (this is the first deer I have shot in such an accessible location, as I am generally known for getting the worst location to retrieve a deer) whereupon we retreated back to camp to finish dressing down the deer. What a weekend!
