Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 2020 wasn't so bad

Katie finally got to hunt, but I couldn't help her until after the opener. She screwed up with elk at 60 yards by trying to chamber a round, feeling resistance, then backing the bolt and trying again, causing a double feed. While screwing with the gun, the elk heard it and took off. She had a bull in chip shot range but blew it. So when I saw her a few days later, she was still pretty down on herself, knowing you only get so many chances. While glassing up the area at dawn she said she was hearing bugles the night before, we found a lone elk about 900 yards away (either sex license, so as long as it wasn't a spike we would have been good). It was in an isolated pocket, surrounded by timber, so we quickly bailed off our ridge and hustled over there. We slowed down considerably as we approached, but were busted by two elk. Don’t know if the original lone elk was one of these or not, but there was no elk to be found in the park where we left it about 20-30 minutes prior.



A week later Katie was back in the same area, but a little lower, with a girlfriend and a deer tag. Once again, I couldn’t help her for the opener but was available later in the week. On opening day I randomly ran into her girlfriend’s husband and his mom unknowingly blew my wife’s secret of the deer she shot on opening morning. Apparently the girls climbed up a mesa, seeing lots of does. She glassed up what she thought may have been a buck back towards the road, and climbed back down, shooting him barely a 100 yards from the road at less than 100 yards with her 308. She was pretty tickled to have gotten the buck and packed it out with no boys involved but tried to sneak it home through my web of spies without me knowing. Thankful for my sneaky wife.



I then picked up a reissued deer license for one of our favorite deer spots. The season opened on Saturday and Wednesday I drove 4 hours to our spot. I had until Friday to get it done. I climbed a ridge, seeing hunter after hunter in each of my preferred draws. Dejected, I snuck down into the main draw, continually glassing with the waning light. Just after sunset, I realized there was a dark shape in the light grass watching me descend the ridge. I dropped down with my binos but couldn’t make out any antlers in the draw. Instinctively, I knew it was the body of a buck, but I couldn’t confirm until he turned his head and I could see the movement above his head through the brushy background above him. But as he moved, I lost my shot, and all of a sudden other does appeared at various distances between 50 and 100 yards. With the bad light, I frantically tried to sort out where my buck went. He knew something was up, but the does were content and he didn’t want to leave them. I couldn’t get a shot from the seated position with shooting sticks above some brush as I found him walking toward the cliffs with heavier timber. It was now or never time, and like the fatal flaw of all mule deer, he stopped and turned broadside at 150 yards. So I stood up and shot him offhand with 5 minutes of shooting light remaining. But now I had to find. I ran over there, setting my pack where I thought he was standing and began to circle and I instantly smelled buck. I found him about 20 yards further than where I thought, dropped in his tracks. 280 AI did the trick. 4 hour drive, 2 hour hunt. I got out with the first load way after dark. Spent the night at an AirBnB, and went back at it in the morning, finishing with two more loads. Thankful for a great spot and a little luck to get a better buck than my wife.



cuz I apparently didn't have any paracord this time to hang quarters overnight, still figured something out







With a day left of the season, I offered to help my father in law with his tag and got him into some deer that morning, but he wasn’t comfortable with the shot presented and was tired after 6 days of hunting, so he called it quits.



Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and here’s to another great year.