2017 hunting season has come to an end for my wife and I. We had a great season here in Saskatchewan and were very lucky to draw two either-sex moose and one mule deer tags.
I started off the season by filling my draw either-sex bull moose tag with this beautiful 49 inch bull. I ended up shooting him with the smoke pole, early morning on a week day and couldn't get any help from my buddies as they were all working. I ended up gutting, skinning, quartering and packing the moose all by myself. Took me about 4 hours and slept like a baby that night, woke up sore as hell for the next two days though.
Then I filled my draw either-sex mule deer tag with this beautiful mule deer buck with the muzzle loader. Taking care of that guy by myself was nothing compared to that moose, I had forgotten my camera tripod so we headed out back behind the house for a photo shoot the evening!
Next, my wife managed to get time off work and we got to spend a couple days out looking to fill her moose tag. We ended up finding three bull moose chilling together, she remained calm, took her time and took a great shot on this 37 inch bull moose at 150yds, then proceeded to freak out, to be honest, I kind of freaked out like a little girl myself, I was and still am very proud of her. It was her second animal after filling her 2016 draw mule deer tag with a 194 4/8 non-typical mule buck. She had no clue what she was getting herself into, she had seen me field dress deer before and realized just how big a moose was until she walked up to it! Took us about an hour to field dress, quarter and pack it back to the truck.
I finished off our season filling my regular either-sex whitetail deer tag with my biggest whitetail buck to date. Very proud of this deer, he completely caught me off guard. To recap, I had missed a 140-150inch buck the day before and ended up giving him a haircut, no blood and even caught a glimpse of him while I was staring at a huge pile of hair on the ground, what I saw was a great looking deer with a tuft of hair missing on its back. I didn't sleep much that night, kept replaying it in my head, tossing and turning and trying to convince myself that it wasn't so bad after all, that I hadn't injured the deer and that I might get an other shot at him this season or the next if he pulled through winter. When my alarm clock rang the next morning I snoozed three times, dragged myself out of bed and took my sweet azz time, I was still kind of bummed out about the deer I had missed the day before. I finally regrouped and kicked myself in the butt and made it to my blind at first light. It was around -20C that morning, no wind and the snow was dry and crisp, every step I took felt like the whole forest could hear me, there was no wind and it felt like sound could travel for miles. Apparently not, I made it to my blind and what I saw surprised me, about 8 deer standing about 100-150 yds in front of my blind. I start looking at them and notice that one of them is a smaller buck and the rest were does, until suddenly I catch a glimpse of a MASSIVE "doe". Gave it a good look and said to myself, Holy F&cking Sh*t that's a shooter. At that point I was directly behind my blind and they had no idea I was there. I rested my rifle on the frame of my pop-up blind, put the crosshairs right behind the shoulder of the buck and BANG. I couldn't see anything, the concussion of my .300 Win Mag had blew a giant hole on the roof of my blind (lesson learned) and snow was flying all over the place. Once everything settled down, I scoped the area and could see four legs straight up kicking snow for about a second right where the deer was standing, success! As I walked up to it, all I could see was the right side of the antlers with those two kickers/drop tines sticking straight out, I didn't even make it to the deer before I had my phone out and had my wife on the phone, I could barely speak straight, it had been a while since I had truly had a case of buck fever.
In the end, we kept a bull moose to fill our freezer, processed the second bull moose and distributed between three families, gave my mule deer to an other family and we wrapped up our season by donating my whitetail to the Hunt for Hunger program. This season will be hard to beat, lots of work, miles on our boots and countless hours enjoying the outdoor!
Saskatchewan 2017 season
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