We set out the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving, the truck loaded up, our gear double checked, and our tags in hand. This began the 1st of 2 hunts planned for the fall. Our trip to our deer unit was only a 45 minute drive, and we drove to our spot in the dark. We made our way up the mountain. We would need to ascend approximately 2000 feet to get to where we needed to be to get to where the whitetail play. We found out quickly that we should have been hiking all year to get ready for this. We made it to our spot, much later than we wanted, light was 20 minutes away and already starting to show a little. We passed a spot that smelled of skunk badly. "This is where the dog got to interested in a skunk last week" my father in law informed me. A week earlier he hiked the trail scouting for deer. We decided to send someone up the hill to glass from the ridge. As we sent a man down across the ravine to toward the ridgeline, immediately 2 whitetails jumped out, there was barely enough light to tell whether or not there where any points on the deer we were looking at. One of the whitetails stopped. I made out a fork, very faintly. I stopped to double check to make sure that the points weren't sticks from some brush in the background. It was still hard to tell I told myself. The deer made its way toward the ridgeline. We were losing it, I quietly told my father-in-law that I was pretty sure he was a buck. I moved my eye back into the scope, and got back on my target. He was squinting through his scope struggling with the lack of light to clearly make out the deer. I popped off my safety, and began my breathing routine. The deer kept its speed up the hill. My father-in-law whispers to me that he can't make him to be a buck. I move my finger away from the trigger, better safe than sorry I tell myself. The deer made its way over the ridgeline, but would be seen again.
The sun came up, and we began to hike to some high spots to glass. I crested the ridgeline 700 yards to the left of where the deer had crossed over and out of sight. As I staggered my way up the steep slope, I scared something up. I heard a loud exhale and thundering away from me. I quickly brought up my gun and moved into a sitting position and retrieved a shooting stick and sat and waited for the deer to pop up again. A buck sprung out and in an instant disappeared down a canyon, but another deer remained stationary in the brush blowing hard at me. 30 minutes of training my rifle on the bush the deer calmed down to come out thinking I must have passed. I was a doe. I resafed the rifle and watched her tip toe her way down the slope toward the direction the buck had taken, deep into the guts of an extremely deep canyon.
The same deer eluded us, later in the week I would get a shot on him only to miss him on the run, and my brother-in-law shot at him only to have the wind that had been pretty nasty, blow him off target as the trigger broke. Our deer was harvested on Sunday, while we were at church. We came up the trail to find hair along the path and a gut pile down the hill. Unfortunately our skill cost us in the end. I am preparing already for the next season by putting in for a leftover Javelina tag. We will likely return to the same area next year, the place was crawling with deer, just mainly does. With some attention to detail, hopefully next year's post will have a great picture to go along with it.
-A.A.
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