I left Gatehouse's house @ 4:30am en route to the hunting area. My partner and I headed through the timber in the darkness, head lamps lighting the way as we followed blocky buck tracks, through the cedars, tons of rut activity from the night. Hopefully we would luck into a mature buck! Things were looking good, from the amount of fresh tracks in the snow.
My partner circled above me, trying to push something my way. Nothing showed until he waved me over to join him, where he had cut the trail of a hammer blacktail buck.
Not far into the trail, he told me to chamber a round in my Remington 700 Titanium 260 Remington, as he was confident that we would be into some action within minutes, due to the large amount of rubs in the area. We carried on, together up the mountain.
We come across an opening, periodically calling, and mere moments later I heard a hissing sound from above us. I passed it off as a bird, or something. We slowly made our way to the far side of the opening and called more, and again it I heard the hissing, and I asked my partner if he had heard it too.
As we whispered about his lack of hearing
, I seen his eyes go like this : ....... and he said "shoot that deer,........ shoot that deer........" I slowly turned, to see a hammer blacktail buck peering at us. Not one to doubt my partners experienced judgement, I simply flipped up my scope lens covers, pushed safety forward and took aim at the bucks shoulder, a mere 22 yards distantkabooom >>>>>> the echo of the 260 Remington reports across the foggy morning air. The buck leaps forward and out of sight down the hill to our left, a few seconds of crashing and all is silent. I look over at my partner, who's eyes are still like :
His hands are shaking and I am not sure what the big deal is, all I did was shoot a deer we walked up, found the location of impact, noted some hair in the snow, followed them for about 40 yards then found the blood, and shortly after spotted the buck ahead
green scores 146".....probably will be the largest blacktail buck I will ever see in my lifetime even if I hunted them every year (10 hour drive from home to get to their homerange). Thanks to Gatehouse for hosting me, cooking me wonderful meals, letting me sleep in his reloading shed....and thanks to Steve, my guide for taking me into the HOLE - I owe it all to you!
tb
