It has, admittedly, been a very difficult year of deer hunting. What with people illegally baiting deer in the area I had spent a good 40 hours learning and scouting, weather, people driving where they do not belong on 4 wheelers, my own countless mistakes, breaking a dang nice pair of binoculars, and holding myself to higher ethics.
With Thursday's debacle with breaking the binoculars, I was seriously considering hanging up the gun and quitting. My attitude was almost unrecoverable, despite the best support from iowabow and other friends in here and around home. Thursday was supposed to be a good day, what with a cold, snowy front coming in. Friday I had to work and the snow on the ground taunted me. Around here, a skiff of snow quiets the stalking and highlights the deer. The cold gets them moving, and we are in the
PEAK OF THE RUT right now. There, literally, would be no better time to hunt for deer. But I was just not feeling it.
I didn't even set an alarm yesterday morning and I slept until the dog had to walk all over me in bed to get me up so she could go out and pee. I took my sweet time making coffee and thawing a mouse to feed the kestrel. A second cup, an hour noodling with Facebook, cleaning the kitchen, taking the dog for a walk to a friend's house, picking up groceries....finally I ran out of excuses. I had to look myself in the hairy eyeball and ask if I was a going to be a quitter.
I had successfully shamed myself to action, but had done nothing to adjust my own attitude. I decided to strike out into new territory (easy to do with the Black Hills is 1.25 million acres and has more miles of logging roads than the entire state highway system). I hit Estes Creek Rd and kept my speed low. I was looking for recent logging activity, thinning operations, and aspen filled valleys or draws. Those three are usually solid bets. Twenty miles north of Rapid City there was more snow on the ground and the very lightly travelled gravel road was slick with snow. Still, fresh wheel tracks were common, roadhunting is the norm around here.
I found some slash piles of ponderosa pines on a high pass over a ridgeline and thought I'd try working thru the thick cover to the ridgeline. I would have the sun over my right shoulder and the wind in my face, good enough! As soon as I got off the road and into the dog-hair pines, the payoff was deer tracks! And plenty of 'em! Every 10 ft there was another set of tracks meandering thru the brush. No heavily worn trails, just browsing deer trails everywhere. But in this sort of cover, the view is limited to about 10 yds. These stunted pines were also loaded with fluffy, powdery snow and my shoulders could not help but brush against them dumping snow on me at every step. I pushed on, keeping ever uphill, seeking to top out and get a view. After nearly half a mile and countless spooked deer (none of which I saw hide nor hair), I reached the top of the ridge. I walked the top looking for a meadow to set and rattle, but all I found was a small patch where some prior snowstorm had flattened most of the scrawny saplings.
I sat and rattled a while before thinking I should look thru the scope to get the feel for the range. The front of the scope was packed full of snow. Right then all the snow down my neck, the dense cover blocking any view of game, and the entire weight of the season crashed against down on me. I stood up with a few expletives and charged straight in the direction of where I thought my vehicle was downslope. Within a double handful of yards I was working up a sweat and the steam was starting to leak from my ears. I heard a whitetail blow a warning behind me and I spun around. The rifle slung over my shoulder whacked against the trunk of one of the very rare large pines dislodging it from my shoulder. The butt hit the ground just as my hand caught the barrel and leaning the muzzle away from me. An icicle of fear went thru my heart as I realized I needed to drop my childish attitude and stop this tantrum before I killed myself with stupidity.
When I got back to the vehicle, I carefully brushed snow off the scope and unloaded the gun. I got inside and fired up the heater on full blast to dry the rifle as best it could. I decided I was done for the year since I could not behave like an adult. Didn't mean I couldn't drive to the end of this new (to me) road, exploring new scenery. After all, the snow in the pines made it look like a holiday card.
An hour later, I saw a Forest Service side road with a great amount of logging activity sign. I cranked the wheel and drove in about half a mile. I'd emptied my small thermos of coffee on the drive, eaten an apple, a banana, and a Snickers bar. I had laughed as I unwrapped the candy, saying out loud, "You know, you just aren't yourself when you are hungry.) I parked the Jeep on a flat spot just off the road, reloaded the gun and got out. the coffee wanted out, so I made necessary adjustments to my garments and relaxed.
Talk about being caught with my pants down. Two fat does walked out from behind a 50 yd long slash pile and gave me the eye. They seemed neither scared nor impressed with me. In fact, I was only second on their list of immediate concerns as they kept flicking their tails and looking back behind them into the tree line. I hastily finished up my tasks just as their amorous and adventurous companion hurried to catch up. I saw antlers, and enough of 'em.
At about 65 yds, he finally saw me and stopped. As I moved the gun to my shoulder, he turned to go back to the woods. I laid the crosshairs in the pocket and pulled the trigger. He went down, backend first. BAD SIGN! He struggled to get up and I worked the action, firing another round. He went down again, but his front legs pumped to lift himself.
The memory of whacking the gun on the tree and dropping it to the ground hit me like a PGA drive off the tee box right between my eyes. This was no time for dawdling and I slipped another round in the chamber, slid the safety on, and ran up on the poor struggling beast. Gutsick and ashamed of myself, I fired the third round from 10 yds, sighting down the action and along the barrel, not the scope. He was down and down hard, and my magazine was spent.
Guys, there was no glory in this hunt. My failures added up to this animal's agony in passing. The only explanation I can offer is my lack of experience with scoped modern rifles. I have only owned a couple and never really got comfortable with them. Certainly not as comfortable as I am with my flintlocks. Still, it's done. Start to finish, I doubt it took 30 seconds from when I saw the buck appear until he expired.
