Mountain Mule deer
Part One
September 1st finds my youngest daughter and I headed up a mountain hunting for either white tailed deer or mule deer. The sun had already made it's appearance by the time we left the truck at 630am. We make our way across a friends property and into the crown land in behind and up the mountain. We hit the southern edge of logging block and use an old trail to make our way across and up the block into the wind. Half an hour into our hike a flock of turkeys sounds off up ahead so I scan the tree line looking for them. I don't find the birds but what I do see is a doe standing almost invisible in the long dry grass next to the road a little more than 100m straight ahead.
She has another doe and fawn with her when up comes a head with three velvet covered tines, per side. She is allowed any buck so he is legal. They stay grouped tightly together as they cross the road and up the embankment moving up the mountain in an easterly direction. No shot was presented. We make our way up to where they had crossed and begin scanning the block but can't find them, I've begun to move forward to glass from a different perspective when my daughter whispers that she had them located.
They had moved NE about 300m off the block and onto the ridge, they were slowly feeding their way up the ridge filtering through the open forest. Once again no shot. We decide to head up the ridge slightly to the N of them hoping they wouldn't drop down off the ridge into a very steep, brush choked drainage. Now all of this is steep country but that creek was crazy steep and deep, a deer shot in there might get lost and at the very least would not be fun to pack out of. If they went in there the stalk was postponed.
Three quarters of an hour later we see a doe at 50m feeding and moving upslope without realizing we were there. We slowly followed her and 15min later we see her again, this time at 25m and she knows we are there. She moves off more quickly and is soon joined by another doe and a fawn. Where's the buck? My daughter finds him feeding behind a huge downed fir tree 100m straight up from us, all you can see is antlers. We try to get her set up on our shooting stick with her kind of kneeling, me with my feet braced against hers to prevent her sliding down the mountain.
It wasn't going to work so slowly and with great haste we moved to a flattish spot next to an old fir and she got set up just as the buck stepped into the clear. I tell her to shoot when she's ready and her 7mm-08 went off as I watched through my binoculars the buck hunch up at the shot and run towards the creek drainage to it's north. I thought we were in for a ton of torture when he stopped reeled a few steps back and rolled down the steep ridge towards us half the distance. This is the part that my daughter finds really upsetting, watching an animal die. She gets very emotional and while not useless at consoling my daughter, I'm definitely not her mom. I get her calmed down and we have a cup of tea and she eats her breakfast before we go get her deer. She loves to hunt and has been raised for the most part on wild game. She understands why we have to kill, she doesn't have to like it.
In fairly short order we have the deer taken care of and is cooling in a fridge by early afternoon. It was probably the shortest hunt I have ever been on. The deer was down before 9:00am, 2.5hrs after we left the truck. I spent that Sunday butchering a very tasty young buck. Once again her Savage Axis Youth in 7mm-08 shooting 139gr Hornady American Whitetail puts a load of good organic venison in the freezer.
To be continued.
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