As I mentioned, the weekend spent hunting was a lot of fun. The majority of the time I was sitting right here:
I kind of jammed the camera into some grass to try and give you prospective into the area I was hunting. It didn’t work all that well, and the pictures when I was actually looking at the camera came out blurry for some reason. Anyway, what you can kind of see is that I am setting above a canyon. What isn’t real clear is that I am sitting in a little niche under a tree and that just a few feet from where I am sitting the wall drops 40 feet straight down, and all the trees in the background are a lot bigger than maybe they appear.
Having set the scene, I will just skip to the part I got to retell over and over again…
I found the spot Saturday afternoon, after having decided my initial hide wasn’t giving me the visibility I needed, nor was the deer traffic as good as we had hoped. I was trying to be quiet, but alerted a deer to something being in the area when I slipped into the spot. I never got a good look at it, but I don’t think the deer really knew I was there ether… just casually moved away from that sound that didn’t seem quite right.
Then things were quiet for probably close to an hour. I thought I had a great idea of exactly where deer would enter and exit the canyon, and at what points I would be able to see them. Somehow a patch of deer colored fur was moving across the other rim of the canyon… and I was going to have a hard time getting turned to really look at it without making some noise. After I lost track of it, I got probably a little too free with craning my head around to try and find an angle to see down through the brush into this unexpected approach.
I must have shifted my entire body, although I don’t remember when, but I was squared up with the last known position of the soon to be discovered buck. He stepped into a spot where I had a clear line of sight, and I started bringing the rifle up without even thinking about it. All I remember is getting the scope view lined up and feeling like the horns took up the entire view! My reaction wasn’t what I expected, on the one hand I flipped the safety off and stabilized myself without having to think about it, but on the other hand my heart-rate went up by about 200 percent and I couldn’t control my breathing in that moment.
It didn’t end up mattering, because he didn’t stop walking and the window through the trees only gave a few seconds to soak all that in. Nothing indicated to me that he was spooked, but at the same time he didn’t come out on the trail farther up the canyon like it appeared he should have.
I was disappointed and relieved at that point. Obviously, I wanted to get a better look at the buck and a shot, but relieved that I wouldn’t have to try and take a shot with my heart pounding like that. I sat very still for the next 20 minutes doing little except trying to prepare myself to be relaxed if this happened again.
Three doe started working their way down the path towards the spot my elusive buck vanished. I took the opportunity to observe where the trail intersected good shooting lines. I felt pretty prepared, and just hoped maybe another buck would wander through.
The doe worked their way past the big blind spot the buck had vanished into and came out on the trail I had initially expected traffic to use. I decided it would be a good idea to practice holding the scope over a deer and doing the “deep breath, release slowly” thing to make sure I was being stable. The only problem was that doing that required me to drastically shift my body position.
The process of getting shifted around, made a little bit too much noise. Not enough to scare the doe off, but enough that they looked all around and started sniffing the air. I froze. They were cautious, but apparently figured things were ok, and stared to move again.
Then I saw movement back at the other end of the canyon, and it was moving out of the blind spot!
I managed to revert to my initial position real quickly, and without making much noise. Then the buck held up sniffing the ground perfectly centered in my last realistic shooting lane on the trail!
I heard the safety click off, and thought something like “GAAAAAAAH!!! this is too perfect, calm down….”
brought the cross-hairs into the center of his shoulder and back a little, let out a big breath in what was meant to be a slow fashion, but wound up being like trying to blow out candles 10 feet away and….
**boom**
I switched back to binoculars and scoured the area, finding…. nothing. It was kind of a long walk around to get to the spot he was standing… no blood, nothing.
In hindsight I am sure my trigger-pull was every bit as gentile as my breathing had been, but it was a really frustrating thing to have happen!
So, in conclusion, I learned that ‘Buck Fever’ is a very real thing.
/sigh
-Jordan
ps. The story of the buck in the picture I posted before isn’t interesting at all, but at least I was able to relax and put a round into the vitals of a buck.
Nelsons 