Seeing only does that I night, I felt I just had to sit the rest of the hunt there in the hope that a true Alberta cranker would appear. I had a very close call climbing down that night. Almost at the bottom , I turned my head and one of the ends of a tree peg caught me in the corner of my left and dominant eye. At first I thought I had done some serious damage to myself. But upon close inspection, I missed the eye ball and only caught edge of the socket. Whew!
The next night a few does with fawns were in the field when a massive ten point buck came into the field from the NE corner just liked we had hoped. Seeing a 175+ buck in velvet was awe inspiring to say the least. He fed heavily in the new alfalfa for twenty minutes or so. I was enjoying watching him in my Bino's. As he started to feed to the South rather the desired direction of West, I decided I had nothing to lose by throwing a few social grunts his way. Each time his head would jerk up and he would stare my way! but he had some where he wanted to go and there was no changing his mind that night. Wow what a buck I though over and over and over!
The next and last night of the hunt found me back again in the little island of trees. There was no question of hunting elsewhere. The wind this night was also more in my favor as it was straight out of the
East and lightly blowing in my face.
A doe and fawn were the first in the field. A spike buck who's body color was gray matching his velvet came out next only to harass the doe for the next fifteen moments or so. Then a red forky buck who's velvet was red matching his coat came next. the two bucks engaged in some light sparring with the grey spike clearly being the more aggressive of the two.
Soon I audibly heard a deer walking thru the thick brush and a doe stepped out directly North of me on the very edge of the funnel . The red buck trotted over to check her out and was rewarded with a hoof on his neck . The little buck literally jumped to avoid her second strike and ended up directly below me. Seeing that, the grey spike ran over with his ears laid back flat. The doe spun and ran down field and now the spike and forked buck are sparring right under me!
The two bucks went back to feeding and moved off to my right. Suddenly another red colored buck with red velvet antlers steps out from the very spot the doe had before him. I always try to be standing on stand and my bow is always in my hand. So I was ready to shoot if need be.
At twenty yards I really had no desire to shoot this buck. I still had forty minutes or so of shooting light. I so wanted that massive ten point to reappear. This new buck was feeding and moving towards me at the same time. Now at fifteen yards, then at ten yards. I reminded my self that I have never shot at much less killed a buck in velvet. When the buck was at nine yards he turned broadside, looked the other way and even opened up his sweet spot behind the shoulder.
My hill country bobcat came to life and my arrow zipped thru him and stuck in the dirt on the other side of him. He made no reaction at the shot other than bolt forward. He ran 40 yards, turned hard to his left and was gone into the thick bush. I thought, did my arrow really zip thru like that? So I lowered my bow, climbed down and went to look at my arrow. Standing on the ground 9 yards from it I could see it was painted bright red from stem to stern . YEAH!
I walked over to where he darted into the bush and found a single blood drop. Marking that spot I then walked out to the road to meet Bob. When we returned one hour or so later, we had a hell of a time finding the 2nd drop of blood. I knew the shot was perfect and that he was laying some where close by. We found five more drops of blood in thirty yards and then Bob said " there's your buck".
He has an unusual point coming out below the right brow , and his right ear is half gone due to being frozen off. Or so we think that is what caused that. How does anything live in the woods at minus 30 for weeks at a time.?
After cleaning him up a bit we took the standard hero photo's back at camp. Nothing like killing a great deer the last 40 minutes of the last day of one's hunt. And if that was not enough, the northern lights came out to mark the end of a remarkable day .
Here is my velvet trophy
velvet buck by
jgilmer2010, on Flickr
Topic: Chasing Velvet in far northern Alberta (Read 2757 times)
