First whitetail
After striking out in my first year of hunting (2013), I took it up a few notches this year and also started bow hunting, I was very close on a bull moose in October and had numerous close calls recently with several mule deer. My first kill came a couple weeks ago when I filled my muley doe tag (draw). Yesterday saw me walking for several hours up and down lines on my buddy's property east of sherwood park, I bumped a huge doe early in the morning and had a bull moose broadside at 40 yards a short time later, too bad I wasn't in the bow zone. Lunchtime arrived and we had a fire in the cabin, my buddy debated staying in a drinking beer as I was falling asleep by the fire. At 130 I finally said "I can't kill anything sitting in here" before asking my buddy about the east side of their property which apparently hadn't really been hunted before. I decided to go for a walk and as soon as I got to the quad trail near the gate I noted quad tracks on my friend's private property (posted), I decided to follow and quickly realized that this person had been following some buck tracks in the fresh snow, 15 mins later the quad tracks stopped and appeared to turn around, I walked another 15 mins until I hit the property line and encountered the signage from the next landowner, I decided I would walk all the way back to the trailhead where the majority of the buck tracks were, I back tracked to a large slough and looked up the trail asking myself why I was going to climb back up this hill. Out of the corner of my eye I see the ass end of something going up a hill into the trees on the other side of the slough (400yds), scope up, BUCK! Hit the primo's can 3 times and followed with a grunt, he stopped dead in his tracks and literally wagged his tail. I knelt in behind some cover and got the bino's up as I thought he was now gone, but he was still standing listening, but facing away. 3 more bleats with the can and oh boy, he was on a mission, covered the ground quick and came dead straight toward me. He got to about 50 yards and was not turning, I knew he would see me so I leveled the 270wsm just below his neck and dropped him in his tracks. Quick text to my buddy whom was about 2kms away, he had the quad there in 20 mins. I walked up and immediately knew I had shot an old warrior as he was broke off on one side and looked like he had been going hard. I couldn't be happier, paying my respects to him with a euro mount! I've hunted 4 different areas this year (private/public) and put in 20+ days with scouting etc and this was my first chance at a WT buck. New hunters don't get discouraged, just know that you either have to put the time in or be really lucky.
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