Ok so the title is probably a bit misleading, I apologize. I have been a fisherman my entire life and only in the last few years have I really become a hunter. With fishing stories you are allowed to give the fish a few extra inches every time you tell the story, so I figured with hunting maybe a guy can get creative with number of parts and I have already told this story to a few people.
Seriously though I just wanted to share my last hunt and I am pretty sure my girlfriend is sick of hearing about it and I am still jacked up about it. So first off there were two heads, it is just that they are on two different deer that were shot just minutes apart by me and my hunting partner. It all started by us deciding that this year we were not going to hunt by patrolling roads like tons of people in our area do (sorry to say we did this a lot last year).
So fast forward to yesterday and there we were perched up on a ridge looking over a spot we had previously determined holds a lot of deer. We were tucked away hidden waiting for legal light. Once legal light showed up so did the noise of not so distant gun shots and the buzz of countless quads. For us this was our first season of swearing off road hunting for something more wholesome so the distant audio of the internal combustion army was not working for us. On the way back we pulled off on a side road to stretch our legs and glass an area we had never really hunted before.
BINGO spotted a buck. My buddy grabbed his rifle since we agreed he would take the first deer since I have an LEH for a doe in November. We creeped closer and closer to this buck him with the gun me with binoculars. Half way through stalking this buck we realize there are 4 others with him My friend gets ready for a shot and then he tells me they are all bucks. So off I go sneaking back to get my gun thinking about how dumb it was not to bring it in the first place. Once I return we decide we need to get closer to take our shots. Right after deciding this the 5 bucks plus a few other doe's we had not seen before decided they needed to run at top speed through a valley and through the bush out of sight. It would have taken us 25 minutes to cover the ground they covered in 2 minutes.
So we decided to run/hike to the truck and see if we could drive to a different location that we could hike in and re-spot them and re-stalk them. At this point we realized that we might both be able to harvest a deer each we got pretty pumped up. Agreed that if we had a shot we could make that we should take it. The next parts are a haze of the sound of brush scraping down the side of the truck mixed in with lots of hiking and being out of breath. Follow that with one of us on top of a cliff and the other down below. We had walkie talkies but we left them in the truck so it was really cool when we finally spotted the bucks again that we at least had a visual of each other.
They were about 600-700 yards ahead of us and disappeared over the next ridge over. It is important to note that by ahead of us I really mean below us on a steep steep hill that higher up was the cliff and then hill we slid down. Being very tired at this point we both waited until the last one went over the ridge and then we just b-lined as fast as we could to the ridge they went behind. Once there we crawled up to the apex of the ridge tried to half catch our breath bi-pods down we got our choices in our cross hairs. They were about 390 yards out so this is the only time in the hunt I was glad I had my savage 10fcp that has seen lots of range use and literally no hunting until today really.
I only brought it because I thought I would be sitting in one spot all day lying down on the first ridge we were on. Damn it is heavy. So anyway bi-pod down, Scope on 18 power, biggest of the bunch in my sights.I was half waiting for the deer to give me a good shot and half waiting for me to catch my breath and calm down enough to be honest with myself on weather or not I could/should take a shot that would kill the buck. I gave myself the green light and took my shot. I hit him in the kill zone and he took a few steps down into a gully out of sight but my partner said he saw him pumping out blood big time so we gave him a minute. I had another round ready and backed off the zoom on my scope so I could see if he came out of the gully. He didn't. He made it about 25 feet from where he had been shot.
So I hiked down to him and my hunting partner went up the other side of the gully to see if any of the other bucks were there. He saw them running at full blast again and watched one break away from the bunch but still go out of sight. We high five and start to come to the harsh realization that we are sooooooooo far away from the truck distance wise not to mention how many hundreds of feet lower as well when I think I see something running in our direction. Sure enough one of the bucks is coming right at us at half speed and stops. My friend gets down bi-pod out as well and around 200yards takes the shot. His buck jumps 3-4 feet straight up and then also disappears into a different gully. It also never comes out. It died not 10 feet from where it was hit. The great feeling of shooting these deer was complimented nicely by the fact that we were now both in for one of the most physically demanding days of our lives and the clock was ticking.
We both gutted and propped open our deer and decided we needed re-enforcements, water and food in order to get these deer back home. Good thing my hunting partners family is pretty much composed of the nicest people on earth and this task was made much easier by them. Lots of dragging, pulling, lifting, dragging dragging and what seemed like endless dragging and some really amazing driving and we were done. Now they are skinned hung and we are all stoked on the whole hunting in the bush far away from any roads. All I can say is gotta love those double headers.
Seriously though I just wanted to share my last hunt and I am pretty sure my girlfriend is sick of hearing about it and I am still jacked up about it. So first off there were two heads, it is just that they are on two different deer that were shot just minutes apart by me and my hunting partner. It all started by us deciding that this year we were not going to hunt by patrolling roads like tons of people in our area do (sorry to say we did this a lot last year).
So fast forward to yesterday and there we were perched up on a ridge looking over a spot we had previously determined holds a lot of deer. We were tucked away hidden waiting for legal light. Once legal light showed up so did the noise of not so distant gun shots and the buzz of countless quads. For us this was our first season of swearing off road hunting for something more wholesome so the distant audio of the internal combustion army was not working for us. On the way back we pulled off on a side road to stretch our legs and glass an area we had never really hunted before.
BINGO spotted a buck. My buddy grabbed his rifle since we agreed he would take the first deer since I have an LEH for a doe in November. We creeped closer and closer to this buck him with the gun me with binoculars. Half way through stalking this buck we realize there are 4 others with him My friend gets ready for a shot and then he tells me they are all bucks. So off I go sneaking back to get my gun thinking about how dumb it was not to bring it in the first place. Once I return we decide we need to get closer to take our shots. Right after deciding this the 5 bucks plus a few other doe's we had not seen before decided they needed to run at top speed through a valley and through the bush out of sight. It would have taken us 25 minutes to cover the ground they covered in 2 minutes.
So we decided to run/hike to the truck and see if we could drive to a different location that we could hike in and re-spot them and re-stalk them. At this point we realized that we might both be able to harvest a deer each we got pretty pumped up. Agreed that if we had a shot we could make that we should take it. The next parts are a haze of the sound of brush scraping down the side of the truck mixed in with lots of hiking and being out of breath. Follow that with one of us on top of a cliff and the other down below. We had walkie talkies but we left them in the truck so it was really cool when we finally spotted the bucks again that we at least had a visual of each other.
They were about 600-700 yards ahead of us and disappeared over the next ridge over. It is important to note that by ahead of us I really mean below us on a steep steep hill that higher up was the cliff and then hill we slid down. Being very tired at this point we both waited until the last one went over the ridge and then we just b-lined as fast as we could to the ridge they went behind. Once there we crawled up to the apex of the ridge tried to half catch our breath bi-pods down we got our choices in our cross hairs. They were about 390 yards out so this is the only time in the hunt I was glad I had my savage 10fcp that has seen lots of range use and literally no hunting until today really.
I only brought it because I thought I would be sitting in one spot all day lying down on the first ridge we were on. Damn it is heavy. So anyway bi-pod down, Scope on 18 power, biggest of the bunch in my sights.I was half waiting for the deer to give me a good shot and half waiting for me to catch my breath and calm down enough to be honest with myself on weather or not I could/should take a shot that would kill the buck. I gave myself the green light and took my shot. I hit him in the kill zone and he took a few steps down into a gully out of sight but my partner said he saw him pumping out blood big time so we gave him a minute. I had another round ready and backed off the zoom on my scope so I could see if he came out of the gully. He didn't. He made it about 25 feet from where he had been shot.
So I hiked down to him and my hunting partner went up the other side of the gully to see if any of the other bucks were there. He saw them running at full blast again and watched one break away from the bunch but still go out of sight. We high five and start to come to the harsh realization that we are sooooooooo far away from the truck distance wise not to mention how many hundreds of feet lower as well when I think I see something running in our direction. Sure enough one of the bucks is coming right at us at half speed and stops. My friend gets down bi-pod out as well and around 200yards takes the shot. His buck jumps 3-4 feet straight up and then also disappears into a different gully. It also never comes out. It died not 10 feet from where it was hit. The great feeling of shooting these deer was complimented nicely by the fact that we were now both in for one of the most physically demanding days of our lives and the clock was ticking.
We both gutted and propped open our deer and decided we needed re-enforcements, water and food in order to get these deer back home. Good thing my hunting partners family is pretty much composed of the nicest people on earth and this task was made much easier by them. Lots of dragging, pulling, lifting, dragging dragging and what seemed like endless dragging and some really amazing driving and we were done. Now they are skinned hung and we are all stoked on the whole hunting in the bush far away from any roads. All I can say is gotta love those double headers.
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