4 Years In The Making

Four years ago, I had the best hunting season of my life - I scored on a small buck with my cousin on a very memorable hunt in Idaho and less than a month later, I killed the biggest bull of my life - a dandy of a 5 point.  Since then, I’ve endured four years of learning to hunt with a bow.  I’ve been close - the story of every bow hunter’s life - but I’ve not closed the deal.  This summer, I found I was successful in drawing an Oregon buck tag - for my last year as an Oregon resident until who knows when.

 2004 Idaho Buck - my last deer before this season.

  2004 Bull - My last kill before this season.  Both the deer and elk in 2004 were taken with my cousin, Cody Waldo, along making for a very special season.

I am known for two things among my family when it comes to hunting - killing small bucks, and knowing where the trigger is a little too well (I can fire a lot of shots without doing much damage at an alarming rate!)  So, when this fall rolled around, I had high expectations.  I went out on my first hunt thinking I was going to kill nothing except a nice four point.  I was going to be all kinds of selective.  Opening day came and I spent all morning glassing the best deer country around and came up with exactly zero deer.  I went out in the afternoon for an evening hunt and saw seven does.  I was wearied, a little dissapointed, but still holding on to my resolution.  The next day, I found myself chasing a canyon of good looking deer pockets all the way to the bottom.  I made a real day of it this time.  I hunted from can see to can’t see and hiked back to my camp in the can’t see.  I saw exactly zero deer.  If it hadn’t been for a herd of elk that included a nice bull, I likely would have been extremely discouraged and gone home.  But, the elk kept me excited, but the lack of deer was beginning to be an issue.  The following morning, I awoke to a blanket of fog.  Slight discouragement turned to outright dispair in an instant.  I decided I would sleep in a little and pack it up and head for home.

  Cold, wet, and windy camp on opening day 2008.

I slept in till 8:00 - an attrocity in deer camp - and the fog was just as thick as ever.  I packed the pickup and started heading home.  I hadn’t driven real far, though, when I got out of the fog and I started looking at some pretty decent deer country.  So, I hopped out and hunted a small canyon for about three hours.  No deer.  Now, I was ready to call this country void of deer and I fixed a nice breakfast and headed down the mountain, again.  I happened to glance up the hill as I drove around a corner, and I spotted a white spot that looked suspiciously like the rump of a deer.  I pulled off the road - I know, I know - and started the hike up the hill.  Not really believing I’d seen a buck, I headed off at a good pace.  Closing the distance to about four hundred yards, I looked again through my binoculars, but the deer was feeding in the brush and I couldn’t tell if it was a buck or not.  I continued up the hill heedless of noise.  Suddenly, the deer heard me and started to trot.  I put my rifle up and spotted horns - and my resolution flew out the window.  I tried to steady myslef for about a 350 yard shot off-hand, which is admitedly probably a bit out of my range.  And I proved it by sending a bullet high and the buck scampered out of there.

I took a few days to re-coupe at home after spending two days of hunting about as hard as I’d like to hunt, and decided to head out a little closer to home for the last few days of my hunt.  My brother, Todd, joined me this time and we headed out into unfamiliar country.

We got high up on this ridge in the early morning and began glassing.  Nothing showed for a couple hours.  We moved up the ridge, then, and popped over and into another draw.  We sat down and began the tedious glassing process.  After about 15 minutes, I was about to tell Todd I was ready to leave when I spotted a few does feeding about 500 yards away.  I glassed some more and found a group of deer bedded down on the same side of the draw that we were sitting on.  I was watching one particular deer bedded in the thick sage and something just didn’t seem right.  I told Todd, “I think one of those is a buck - not very big, but I think it’s a buck.”

So, we opted to try and get closer - using the terrain in our favor as their is very little vegetation in that country to hide behind, a person has to take advantage of every little depression and rise they possibly can.  We snuck into about 180 yards and hunkered down on this ledge overlooking the bedded deer.  After some intense glassing, I found the buck!  True to what I thought, he was not real big, but now we’d put a real hunt on him, and I was beginning to feel the adrenaline flow.  He was bedded in that thick sage, so we had to wait.  As they were in the sunlight and the wind was blowing real hard, we figured it wouldn’t be much of a wait.  And it wasn’t.  In twenty minutes, one of the does stood up, and pretty soon, the buck followed suit.  Suddenly, there were deer all over the hill!  No other horns showed, though, and I settled in for the 180 yard broadside shot.  Forgetting my rifle was sighted in nearly 6 inches high at 100 yards (that’s another story - draw your own conclusions for now!) I air mailed the first shot.  The deer stood looking around, and a few more deer stood from their beds.  There was now close to thirty deer standing around, and only the one buck.  I still wasn’t thinking about my rifle shooting high, and I triggered again.  This time, I must have skinned the buck because he jumped up and started running downhill.  Living up to my name, I shot again, quickly - I don’t even remember taking that third shot, but later review of the video footage gave undeniable evidence of it.  Finally the deer was now about 270 yards away and he stopped for a second facing directly away from me.  I settled my scope on his rump and let ‘er go.  The buck dropped immediately from a broken neck - my rifle still firing high at almost 300 yards.

  My 2008 buck that was four years in the making!

What a hunt - an awesome memory with my brother.  It was yet another small buck for me, but I couldn’t have been happier with getting my first meat in the freezer in four years!  My wife, a serious connoisseur of wild meat, was extremely happy with the results.  So was I!

  A great memory to share with my brother.