Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting On the road again... Black Hills or bust

That cabin is bad ass!!
Glad you made it!

Good luck buddy. Sorry you can't make out to Camp Opa this fall. I'm sure the deer are breathing a sigh of relief though.

Good luck! Sounds like a great trip!

Looks like the weather out there sucks also take care!!! Out there and one the way home!!!

Denny

Temp on the way out this morning:



View from the cabin:



Going where no Prius has gone before:



Saw one buck from this lookout at lunch:




Saw a bunch of bucks. Three in particular I coulda shot... one was quite nice but I walked over to get Jim and when we got back the messing around to get him a shot blew them out!!

Key was burns:



We were out all day and comfortable but I’ll tell ya what... 15 in the dark is colder than -5 in the sun!!

Unbelievably awesome experience here thanks for looking!

Awesome day!! Keep at it! I’m sure some bucks will be taking a ride in the Prius!

Looks like a great time, Eric. Hope you guys can close the deal with a nice buck. I'm going to be in SD myself Friday and Saturday chasing pheasants, weather is supposed to be warming up some by then.

Ernie I’m surprised you didn’t post last night. I hope everything is going good!

Hopefully he was cutting deer and drinkin bourbon!

👍

I don’t think he drinks bourbon!

Ok sorry fellas it’s been an insane couple of days. After our first experience on that burn we decided to try and let in on burns & cuts. We hit a spot that I’d visited years ago and it wasn’t worth anything; thick pines.

We found a great looking burned off hillside with deer all over it and were trying to find a way to get within a half to quarter mile of it and realized after investing a couple hours into it that, upon close inspection, it was on private land.

We went to the USFS HQ and asked about burns and cuts and a firefighter there said there are deer everywhere don’t fixate on those. We took his advice yesterday early afternoon and hiked about a mile up several hundred vertical feet (with no other human tracks but our own) to what turned out to be a big cut full of deer. Problem was we spooked them out!

We sat last night the view was spectacular:




An hour or so before sundown I decided to get up and make my own luck. I started slowly walking into the wind but forgot my shooting sticks. A couple hundred yards into my slow, quiet walk I saw a deer. Instead of siting and taking aim as is my typical practice I stared at him through the binoculars. Having realized he was a definite shooter... like bigger than anything I’ve ever shot (which admittedly isn’t saying much) I dropped down and got into my sling, only to find him bothered by my movement and walking quickly. Again I broke my routine and instead of using my call to stop him I shot as he walked. He kept walking and I shot again.

I went over after a few minutes and found his tracks. No blood, no hair, nothing. I followed his tracks for 45 minutes and he side-hilled and then turned back uphill toward where I’d been seated. He was fine. I was pretty irritated with myself; I should not have taken those shots. Glad he got through unscathed!

Today we walked into an area closed to anything but foot traffic. It was awesome. We crossed a cougar track on the way in:



And stellar views after a long hike up:



But weather was rough; high winds and low temps kept deer down other than first thing. I did see a buck that Jim would have been happy with but we weren’t able to relocate him.

More to come...

Keep after them...Your pard will get his chance 😎

Keep after them Ernie. You and Jim will get them!

You didn’t use that 257 did you!!! 😁

Our you 1 or 2 hours behind our time?

Keep after it. You’re on em now! Loving the stories and the pics!!

Ernie always writes an awesome story, and great picks!!

Like button for this thread

Cool story so far,hope it has an even better wrap-up

Thanks for the compliments and encouragement here gentlemen!



So Jim and I were trying to figure out what to do. Wind was intense, pretty cold... felt colder than it had on Monday in single digits. We were in a great spot with lots of fresh sign nearby but the deer were holed up pretty tight and we kinda wanted to join em. We decided to go into town for a hot late breakfast/early lunch and look over OnX and my paper maps to see what to do next.

As we were walking down we were talking about our rifles. His is a Savage 110 .30-06 that he has never killed an animal with but was already wondering about a lighter-weight option in a small cartridge. While the previous day I’d been carrying my unproven Springfield 03-A3 in 6.5-06 flinging 100 GR TTSXs at 3400-ish, after my miss I switched to my Mauser 1996 straight-pull .30-06 which I’ve had since 1999, have customized a bit for me, and have a great load using 168 GR NBT & RS-Hunter. Almost as if to condemn myself (“pride cometh before the fall”) I said, “I LOVE this rifle cuz when I shoot it $h!t dies”.

As we were walking and whispering about all this we did something that I feel makes us great hunting partners. On our way up when we saw those mountain lion prints Jim observed that the drainage where we were walking was a lot of great-looking whitetail habitat. It was thick alders with thick buck brush. We decided we should take a different trail that appeared to offer a view down into that great habitat which was, as a drainage, also sheltered from the wind. The snow had melted off this South-facing trail, so we could creep along quietly as we peeled down into the drainage beneath us.

We rounded the corner and there’s a buck going at a little shrub pretty intensely. I pointed it out to Jim but he didn’t see it immediately and because time was running short I said ok I’m gonna shoot him. The buck was distracted by the recipient of his rut-fueled aggression but was only 75-ish yards away and we were looming over him so I felt a rush. I raised my rifle and fired, and he quickly moved toward us & behind some pines. We though he was dead but I racked a shell and held out my sticks just as he came sauntering out quartering away from us. I got solid in the sticks and in my mind drew that “line of death” through him from my crosshair & let loose. No response; he kept walking.

I racked another shell as he turned uphill and paused, and a flaw in the rifle I thought I’d cleaned up that cost me a buck in 2017 kicked in, with a light primer hit. I cocked the rifle again, found the buck now 150 yards away broadside and put one where it counts. He stepped forward (uphill) and out of sight.

Feeling like a re-run, even tho I’ve practiced this stuff like crazy for these shots my failure the night before was in my head. A 150 yard broadside shot into a standing deer from a slung-up, stick-rested position is a chip shot at the range. I’ve regularly taken out 20 oz bottles at 300 yds with that rifle.

I took a minute to assess landmarks and talk through a plan with Jim. He would stay up top ready to shoot and I’d swing wide to the left and drop down toward where he was last, assess the shot locations (which had snow), and see if I’d bump him back in front of Jim. With me safely off to the side making him able to shoot.

I zig-zagged down the hill watching closely for fresh tracks and blood as I worked my way down. Nothing. I found the general area I remembered him being last and followed his tracks back in the snow. No signs of blood whatsoever. I went to where he was when I shot the first time and there was a fresh hole in the ground right near where a miss might have hit? I looked around thinking no, I couldn’t have missed, he was digging after minerals or roots or something but no, no dirt tossed aside or hoof marks, and to the right was a tree he’d been working on when we came up. I backtracked and looked closely and where I recalled him being for second and third shots. Nothing near second which was in the snow, and I got on my hands & knees searching through pine needles behind where I thought he’d been at third shot and nothing there.

Jim came down and we searched the two options available; had he continued uphill toward the private to the north which was mostly snowy but not completely and where I’d already zig-zagged carefully through, or was he dead on the hillside between the trail where I’d shot and the last place we saw him?

We decided to sit down and rest, let our feet air out, and eat lunch. Jim dozed a bit but I obsessed over what I considered to be extraordinarily poor performance on my part. I worked out a plan based upon our parameter search which I felt confirmed that if I had hit him

1. he hadn’t bled
And
2. He hadn’t left the immediate area

So we grid searched the area thoroughly, re-covering what we’d already done and expanding the area down lower and right up against the private property line. We were looking for a dead deer or at least blood so I could call a houndsman in to help search.

Nothing. I’m convinced that he somehow avoided the snow and made his way north into the thick young pines on private land, or I missed. I want to believe the latter but have a hard time with that. Terribly mad at myself to have pulled off such crumby performances two days in a row!

During the search I rolled my ankle, and told Jim my tag was punched. I was (and still am) pretty irritated with myself over the whole thing. We raced (I hobbled) to the top to see if we could spot deer out to feed as the sun set. We saw nothing but grouse, but being completely spent after the emotional rollercoaster of a day the nudge he gave me to go up w/ him was welcome. I proved to myself I could climb even when I felt empty, and that there was not anything to fear in digging deep. Love western sunsets almost as much as western sunrises:



Jim bought me dinner at the Alpine Inn which serves filet mignon ONLY. It was incredible. We needed to check out of our cabin Thursday so we headed back and got things packed up. We’d hunt the next morning and hit the road in the early afternoon. Jim has been very devoted to attendance at his son’s college football games and couldn’t spoil a perfect record with a deer hunt which I admire.

I popped ibuprofen but had been limping pretty badly and my ankle was swollen. I didn’t sleep well at all just feeling sorry for myself and Jim saw my ankle the next morning, asking if I’d be ok hunting. He asked if we should get dressed as if hunting and play it by ear but I was flat out depressed and really having assholish (ie selfish get me outta here wah wah wah) thoughts and jumped on that to say probably shouldn’t hunt let’s go home.

By the time we got the car packed I told Jim my ankle would be fine if we hunted but our stuff was packed. The cabin owner had said he saw almost all mulies at the place so we’d not hunted adjacent public land, but we quickly realized as we drove out that that had been a mistake. A big whitetail doe was in the yard, and this little buck was bedded across the street on private:



I suggested we hunt in our “riding clothes” but Jim had gotten in “head for home gear” after I said no to hunting. We literally lost count of the bucks... some ENORMOUS... we saw as we drove out. We realized that all week long we could have been catching whitetail coming off private onto public to bed. That assured our return to that cabin as soon as we have a couple Black Hills points!