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I thought I would share a few pics from a trip I took with my wife and two oldest kids last week. We did a canoe based hunt in the central part of the state for three nights. The focus was on getting the kids bucks during the two day youth hunt but figured we would try to find my wife something on Saturday morning if the kids tagged out.

On day one we drove 2.5 hours to leave a vehicle and trailer at the take out spot and then spent another hour on gravel getting back to our put in location. We were pretty full but tried to budget some space for game.



Our campsite was an island about halfway between the put in and take out points. I had camped further upstream previously but wanted to try working some new country. The camping on the island was perfect and we quickly located a nice spot in some cottonwoods.



After camp was in order we had some time before dark so my son and I climbed a ridge and did some glassing. We jumped a few does and a coyote on the way up but did didn't see any bucks from our vantage point. We found a few bighorns and were able to get a better look at some drainages that I had only seen from Google earth. We made a game plan for the next morning to work some country on the north side of the river and glass the south side whenever the terrain allowed. I was impressed with how well my son was getting around in the steep country and using his glasses.



The next morning we were in the canoe and across the river just at light. We quickly found the group of does from the night before and found another group further downstream working back up from their morning drink at the river. There were no bucks that we could see but the terrain was such that I am rarely confident that we ever see all the animals in any particular herd.

We decided to wait for those to drift back into some rougher country before we made a move. While waiting we spent some time glassing the south side of the river.



Within a few minutes I found a couple groups of deer and caught the reflection of antler on a lone animal. I made a rookie mistake and didn't mark his location very well. When I went to get a better look he had moved and I could not pinpoint him again and was second guessing which finger ridge he was actually on. While I was kicking myself I happened to see another deer move into the sun about two thousand yards away, a young buck with a narrow willowy rack. While watching him a wide racked buck came up below him and then a smaller buck. The willowy buck stayed on a finger ridge and in sight for close to a half hour, the wide buck went to the south out of sight to presumably bed down, and the smaller buck went into a small drainage closer to us. We hoped to see where all three bedded and then would make a move but never could determine for sure where the small buck and the willowy buck bedded.

My daughter is not picky at all so the willowy buck was plenty adequate for what she wanted to shoot and I am sure the wide buck would work for my son.

We hopped back into the canoe and across the river. We had to cross an open sagebrush flat and kept our fingers crossed that the small buck had bedded in a spot that even if we did spook him he wouldn't bust the other two that we believed were bedded over the ridge.

We got to the base of the ridge where we first found the bucks and decided to leave my wife and son near the bottom in a good vantage point to watch the bottom of the drainage should the bucks spook and decide to exit out the bottom. I would take my daughter on the north side of the ridge and pop over to where we expected the two bigger bucks to be, about 3/4 of the way up the hill. As I was positioning my son I felt the wind shift up my back and new we were risking disaster. I looked up the hill and the wide buck was on his feet.

My son had his youth model .243 with shooting sticks but we also carried a 6mm-06 for them set up with a bipod in case they had a longer range opportunity. My son had shot the rifle quite a bit last summer and I was confident he could make it happen. I told him to get on the gun and ranged the buck at 320 just as he started to move off. I dialed for 350 and told him if he stopped to hammer him.



I was watching through my binos when the deer slowed down for one last look down the hill. I didn't have time to say anything and the rifle barked. At the shot the deer humped, ran downhill and then turned back to the north. I told him to hit him again and the deer dropped and rolled several times before he was completely out of sight. I told my wife and son to stay there to make sure he didn't get up and ran back to my daughter to see if we could find the willowy buck.

We moved quickly up the ridge but never saw them. They must have hoofed it into some rougher drainages to the east once the shooting started. After a little screwing around trying to determine which cut the buck fell into (everything looks different from the top, so I had to go back to the shooting location) I looked up and saw the buck wedged as tight as could be in the narrow spot of a cut.