It was 1995 a few miles outside Algonquin Provincial Park. This is thick forest, big woods hunting. The road into the lake had been much improved over the years from the two-rut goat track it was in the early years. My youngest brother accompanied me this year. When I say "accompanied", I mean we generally go in together in the pre-dawn and meet near the end of the day to go out together but usually don't see each other during the day. However, this opening day, we had decided on dropping him ashore in one bay of the lake while I paddled around the peninsula and entered the next bay. At first light, he was to still hunt the ridge towards the top of the peninsula where I disembarked, while I would still hunt up the spillway to the top and meet him there around 9AM.
While still-hunting my way up to the top, I crested an undulation in time to see a buck working his way down the spillway 30-40 yards ahead. He was moving steady and there were a lot of trees & saplings, but one shot from my Weatherby 30-06 put him down. I walked over to him and quickly looked at his 4x3 modest-sized rack, but since there was only about 15 minutes to the agreed meeting time, I left the buck there to go to meet my brother. The kid showed up on time and we went back to the buck. I gutted it and dragged it down the spillway back to the canoe (boy, deer slide good going downhill), while my brother took a stand where the spillway topped out at the ridge.
Upon meeting up again with the kid, I decided to follow the scrape line that this buck had been moving along, while the brother decided to continue along the ridge. The scrape line was fairly decent with several small scrapes and was leading back towards a beaver dam that I knew of over the backside of the ridge. Upon reaching the beaver dam, I sat on an elevated rock face overlooking the dam and ate my lunch. Finishing my lunch, I started to follow the drainage creek downstream while maintaining an elevated route. I paused for a couple of minutes at an elevated position overlooking a sapling-filled area, that the drainage creek flowed through. Moving on, my elevation advantage started to dwindle, which I did not like, so I turned around and went back to the spot overlooking the saplings. I noticed movement down in the saplings, a deer head bobbing up and down like they do when trying to test the air for scent. I brought the scope up and saw good antlers (turned out to be a 10 point typical, pic provided). The Weatherby cracked and he went down. The time was just past 2PM, so I knew I didn't have time to gut him and drag him back up over the ridge before dark, so I just gutted him and put a scent perimeter around him (tinkle, tinkle) to hopefully keep critters off him overnight.
We left both deer in the bush and, when arising the next morning, found that a fair amount of snow had fallen overnight . We left the guns in the cabin and went in after sun-up to retrieve both deer. Rather than try to drag the 10 point up and over the ridge, we opted to canoe and portage around to the backside of the ridge to the beaver dam. Once the deer and both of us were in the canoe, there was very little gunnel left above the water, so I paddled back with the deer while the kid hoofed it through the bush. I dropped off the large deer at the launch point, went back and retrieved the 7 point, then went back to pick up the kid at the peninsula.
I stayed with the deer while my brother went out to bring his pickup truck in to the lake from the hydro cut. I started to drag the deer a bit further from the lake when, after a while, I heard an ATV coming. My brother had met this local guy on the hydro cut and offered him $20 (my $20) to go in and help get the deer out rather than risk his pickup on the snow-covered rocky trail. This fellow and I tied the 10 point on the front rack of his ATV and put the 7 point in the canoe and tied the canoe to the back of the ATV. I held onto a rope on the trailing end of the canoe so it wouldn't ram into the ATV if he slowed down quickly. I told the guy to go slow as I had to trot behind, but one guys 'slow' is a trotters 'too bloody fast'! I was completely wacked when we got to the hydro lines 1 1/4 miles out, but I guess it was better than risking the truck on the rocks.