Been hunting behind my house the last three days without success. Although I did have a small buck under my stand for close to 30 minutes Monday afternoon.
I needed a change of scenery, so this morning I headed up into the national forest to some country I've worked in and hunted in the past.
Last weekend it had dumped close to 2 ft of snow in the higher ridges, so I figured the river bottom might be a good place to start. The road was a bit greasy with wet snow, but I began noticing quite a bit of deer traffic going back and forth, so I found and old road and pulled off as it was getting daylight fast.
I found an old skid road winding through the timber and had gone about 1/8 of a mile while seeing numerous deer tracks, some small, some big!
I was scanning the timber for movement for about the fourth time and saw something off to right and up ahead that caught my attention. Bringing my binocs up I watched the area and finally picked out a deer moving in my direction, which turned out to be a doe as it got closer. The first doe was followed by another doe and a small forked horn buck.
I slowly nocked one of my homemade douglas fir arrows, slipped off the trail and waited to see where this might take me. Everytime the doe would stop the buck would approach her and she'd jump forward, not falling for his advances. This went on for 10, maybe 15 minutes and the deer slowly got closer to my position.
The rest is sort of a blur, but I can kind of remember the doe's going by and the buck entering a shooting lane. It was 15 yards or less between me and the buck as my arrow quickly did it's job. The buck made it about 60-70 yards after my broadhead sliced through it's heart.
This was a bit of an emotional moment for me. Last year I was unable to hunt after having a heart attack and quadruple bypass at the end of August. One year ago I really had no idea if I'd ever be able to draw my bow again, let alone be out hunting my beloved Blacktail's.
Topic: Blacktail makes meat! (Blacktail down) (Read 1998 times)
