Sunrise Whitetail

Friday morning just after dawn my brother, father and I put a classic bush push into action. My brother and myself started at two ends of a forked coulee that's known to hold a few whitetails. Dad set up at the other end of the coulee after the forks converged. With the morning sun at his back, he gave the "go ahead" over the walkies.

Five minutes into the walk I was getting some footage of a giant rub when I heard a crash behind me. I swung around to see a whitetail buck headed directly towards the cresting sun. A quick announcement went out including the fact that I didn't get a good look at him because of his direction of travel. About 60 seconds later a single shot rang out from dads 270, and an announcement came back, "bucks down".

Rarely does a push work out that quickly or with such a good end result. The buck was headed directly towards the sun, and passed dad without seeing him at 60 yds. By the time the tag was on, and the buck was dressed, and in the back of the truck it was 8 a.m. If you look close you can see the fresh bark in the base of his antlers, presumably from the rub I was investigating when he bumped.

SUNRISE WHITETAIL PIC