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Continued….


Long before I was ready, I had to pack my things and head out to pick up Greg at the airport. The weather was about to turn cold and I had a hunch the boys were going to have some luck in my absence. Turns out that hunch was correct.

I picked up Greg and after a night at my humble abode, we headed east to get moose camp set. We were two days into that hunt when my InReach pinged. I had a message from Matt….good buck down! In a fitting turn of events, it was actually Cadon that found the buck.

Cadon had filled his tag in a different unit prior to arriving at elk camp, so there wasn’t anything he could do about the large, bedded buck he found himself staring at. He and Matt had been hunting together barely 15 minutes prior though, and Cadon hustled down the mountain as fast as he could. He caught Matt (and Jake) in short order, and convinced Matt to follow him back up the hill.

Matt slid over the crest of the hill to find the buck still bedded slightly below him at just under 100 yards. The buck knew something was up but figured it out just a little too late. Matt hit him with three rounds of 150 BTs from his 7-08, even if the first one was probably sufficient.

The irony of how this hunt played out was thick, and goes back more than a decade. Many years ago Matt was hunting with another good friend of mine in a different part of the state. Matt had killed his first bull the day prior with the assistance of my other buddy (Troy) and he had decided to stay up and help Troy. They ended up a drainage apart when Matt spotted a good buck. Even though Matt had a deer tag in his pocket, it never occurred to him to shoot the deer himself. Instead, he ran Troy down and they doubled back to try and give Troy a chance to kill it. Sure enough they relocated it, only to have the buck get blown out by a herd of elk JUST as Troy was about to kill it.

The thing is, Troy said it was the biggest deer he’s ever layed eyes on, and he’s seen (and killed) a loooot of big deer. To this day, Troy swears he’d break 200”. The only thing more amazing than the deer itself, was that Matt had passed on it to try and give a Troy a chance at it.

That’s Matt though…generous to a fault. Thusly, it was only fitting these many years later Matt’s best deer would come by way of Cadon locating it on his behalf. I think the take home lesson here is to surround yourself with good people and good things tend to happen.

Here is Matt with his buck. A tip of the cap to Cadon for setting the stage for his success…



To be continued…