2014 Buck
JBird
10/22/14 5:57pm
What's that in my rearview mirror?
More to come, stay tuned.
More to come, stay tuned.
17,165
This was my first year in dedicated hunter program and to be honest I was getting a little discouraged as I had not found the quality of bucks I have found in past years, during the archery and muzzle loader seasons. It didn’t help that my honey holes on the rifle hunt depend a great deal on getting a little cold weather and snow in the high country to help push the deer down, with temps in the mid 70’s the week before the opener it didn’t look good.
The opener rolled around and to my surprise there were a surprising number of deer in the low country but with temps still in the 70’s they were heading to bed early and staying there till late. We were still seeing a few deer here and there, with a missed opportunity on a giant buck late one morning. But overall it was a slow hunt with some in our camp not even seeing a buck until three days into the hunt.
Unfortunately I had to head back to school Tuesday night and I didn’t think I would have much time to get and hunt till Friday. Wednesday morning I decided I would get up early anyway and check out a spot south of town. I had scouted it out the day before the hunt started and the deer hadn’t moved in there yet but I figured I could kill one from my bed.
As I was heading down the road I noticed that there were two trucks in front of me already. Luckily they turned down a road that led to a big chunk of private property and I was left to myself, so I continued up the road. As the sun came up I slowed down and began glassing up and down a big draw, but didn’t turn anything up. I drove over the ridge to glass another big canyon on the other side. I had just stopped the truck out and was getting my tripod out when I decided I better glass up the oak ridge that I had just driven across. I put the binos to my eyes and to my surprise all I saw were antlers. I was looking at a pretty good 4 point feeding across the top of the ridge. I quickly put the spotter on him and decided he would be worth shooting if I could get a shot. At this point he was 700-800 yards away and there was no way I could sneak on him from where I was at, so I jumped in the truck again and cruised up the road another ¼ mile where a finger ridge came down. I grabbed my gun and headed up through the oaks.
After about 100 yards I was wondering what I had been thinking. I wasn’t making much progress in the oak, not to mention is was steep and I was not being very sneaky, at one point I fell down and rolled backward down the hill for a while. After I got myself back on my feet I couldn’t decide if it was worth the effort to keep going or come back that afternoon and find a good way to the top of the ridge and hoped he walked back out. About then I noticed a clearing a little ways above me. I made my way up to it and found that I had a pretty good view of the top of the ridge. About that time it dawned on me that I was looking at an old fence post that the buck had been standing by so I quickly began glassing the hill side and to low and behold there stood the buck not 20 yards from where I had originally seen him.
I surveyed the area and found a little depression that I laid down in and laid the .270 across the small berm it created cranked the scope to 9x and found the buck in the scope. I settle the cross hairs in the crease and squeezed off a shot. When I got back in the scope I couldn’t see the buck so I grabbed the binos and looked around, but still could see him. I thought “He’s dead where he stood or he made it into the oaks real fast.” I loaded another shell and started up the ridge to see what I could see. As I made my way up the hill I began thinking that maybe he was a lot further away than the 300 yards I thought he was, but as I topped out next to the fence post there he was!
I was super pumped. He was better than I had thought. More mass and wider. My best buck to date for sure. I fist pumped a few times and gave out a whoop. Then the work began. I realized I had left my good knife in the truck so out came the pocket knife, luckily it got the job done, and I had also left my phone home on the charger so I got to do all the work of getting him off the hill solo. But I didn’t care it was well worth it. He turned out to be a solid 26” wide with good mass.
Moose