Day 4:
Fog.....
The fog from day 3 was back. With 7mm and One Shot back home for Grey Cup, only Skittles and I were left to give it one big effort. We set up an hour before legal light: I sat over the slough bottom where One Shot has taken his mule buck two days previous and Skittles over an Ag field.
I settled into the patient wait while staying alert enough to pick up movement. Visibility was reduced to 250yds, really limiting the deer sightings. Two small mule bucks around 8am, then a whitetail doe and fawn an hour later. My heart jumped in my throat when I saw the whitetails, hoping that a rut-crazy buck may be following. No such luck. As I watched them disappear into the mist, I began to come to terms with the likelihood of another year with an unfilled whitetail tag.
As I walked slowly back to the truck around noon, I felt happy and thankful for another great trip amongst friends and family, and of the amazing places and emotions we get to enjoy through hunting. I hopped into the truck and drove to pick up Skittles. We ate lunch in the truck as we slowly drove down the gravel road toward a shooting range. We had decided to kill an hour in the midday by confirming our zero before heading out for one last kick at the can that afternoon.
I had hoped to bang a gong at 500yds, but since visibility (read: FOG) was only a hair over 100yds, we put up some paper and each took a couple shots. All was still good to go, as it had been when I last zeroed the rifles in October.
We piled back into the truck to head back to the hunting area. Hiking was out of the question since the crunchy snow gave away our presence much sooner than we would be able to even see a deer in the mist.
Again, I sat over a slough with heavy deer trails on all sides. Skittles settled on a hillside about 1000yds to my South. We occasionally checked in on each other by text message. Skittles was seeing mule does. I picked up movement a couple of times which my spotting scope confirmed to be mule bucks.
With 15min left in legal light, I packed my gear up, with hands shaking from the cold. I walked slowly down the hill to get a better look into the patch of aspens at the bottom. Nothing.
Because I was pretty cold, and still had about 10min left until dark, I decided to jog up the big hill so that I could warm up before getting back up to the truck. I was nearly out of breath as I topped out on the big hill. Taking a quick look to scan the plateau in front of me my heart jumped. A deer was walking away from me in the fog about 150yds ahead. I could tell from its gait that it was a whitetail, and a look with my binos confirmed a medium frame with a good number of points.
Because the buck was within a few steps of walking right out of sight, I decided that I couldn’t pass this gift of an opportunity. I threw my rifle to my shoulder and flicked off the safety. I then gave the deer (which was walking straight away) a loud enough “MAAA” to get it to stop and turn toward me, exposing his right flank.
I love those moments in hunting when everything happens automatically. I don’t remember squeezing the trigger, but it must have happened because within 2 seconds of the “MAAA” my Kimber sent 150 grains copper and lead traveling at 2989fps at the buck’s chest. A load “whap” confirmed a hit.
The buck took off running like his tail was on fire, with no obvious signs of injury. After two leaps he disappeared over the hill and out of sight.
My first instinct was that the shot released a bit far back. Knowing that light was running out, I quickly pulled out flagging tape to mark the position from which I fired.
Skittles, who was also nearing the truck as I shot at the buck and had jumped with surprise at the shot, came running over to me. I gave him a quick run down of the situation and we walked to the last seen point. Headlamps on, as legal light was now done, we searched on hands and knees for blood.
I was elated to find light colored and frothy lung blood spattered on the snow. Not lots, but much better than dark and livery blood.
The going was slow, but within a couple minutes was had gone 15yds, to the point where the plateau turned to downhill. About 20yds straight down the fall line of the hill was a big patch of buck brush. With all the frost covering the wolf willow from the past two days of fog, a 2m-wide swath of frostless brush stood out conspicuously.
I signaled Skittles to jump forward and check out the brush, as I continued step by step to trail the blood. A minute later he hollered up to me “deer down!”.
After 4 days of hard hunting, we were overjoyed to have this 11th hour success. After big hugs and high fives, I took a moment to give thanks to the deer. What a feeling!
Pulled the buck to the truck and cleaned him up after taking some pictures. A nice young 5x4, probably aged 3 1/2 years old. By no means my best buck, but definitely one I will never forget.
Thanks for reading!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
FP’s 2018 Deer Trip
I’m sure I frustrated my
Linear Mode
