Two lessons learned so far were, (1) keep the dog away from the deer meat and (2) have more than one arrow available with the bow, so I borrowed a bow quiver from Jim and left the Catquiver behind, as seen above. By the way, I'm shooting an old Brackenbury Drifter with 50# limbs, carbon arrows and Snuffer heads.
Day 5 dawned rainy and foggy, so Terry and Edddie stayed in camp to take care of the meat and capes, while Jim and I headed for Buck Ridge, which was about an hour's walk from camp. We soon reached the top of the ridge and encountered a huge flock of ptarmington, maybe 50 birds. These are the first animals I ever shot at, that laugh at you when you miss. We each carried only one judo-tipped arrow, so when those arrows lay harmless on the ground in the midst of 100 laughing birds, it got a little frustrating!
The wind began to blow, I mean REALLY blow, from the east and Jim and I split up to cover several big drainages, as the deer where down out of the wind. Jim ended up with several good stalks, coming very close to killing a very nice buck, while I had several stalks blown by the swirling wind. It was obvious that I had MUCH to learn about spot and stalk hunting - it was hard to resist the urge to charge right in after a bedded buck, and to realize that the wind does all kinds of contrary things in those drainages. Each stalk ended in frustration, even my rematch with the "Rainbow Buck". I found him bedded with a nice 3x3 buck, and I looked the situation over and thought I understood the wind direction. But when I peeked over the last little ridge, expecting to see 2 bedded bucks about 10 yards away, I saw instead the rear end of a rapidly departing rainbow buck, about 300 yards away! The 3x3 went the opposite direction. I was making my fourth and final stalk of the day when the rain started, and when I finally got back to camp 2 hours later, there wasn't a dry spot on my body!
Topic: Yet another western adventure (CO/AK/MT) (Read 8725 times)
