We were back in our usual camp in Desolation this year. We waited until Wednesday of the first week to come over the hill. A lot of camps had pulled out before we started hunting. We had some weather on Wednesday night and decided to gear up for wet cooler weather Thursday morning. The morning looked good and I took my usual hunt, saw two guys in full camo cutting my back track and then the weather broke and turned warm. I soon turned back towards camp and before I got there I was sweating profusely. Definately not the way to start the season.
Day two started cloudy and cool but I stayed with the hammer jeans and sweatshirt. We drove to our drop off spot and I started a slanting hunt through the reprod that is just about over my head, this is thick stuff, but the ground is broken in spots and you can get a good look now and then. I planned on working down a false ridge and then crossing the creek and hitting a saddle and then head back to camp. I started moving down the false ridge and started jumping deer, but was not having good luck seeing them in the thicket. One deer bore off to my left and I followed even though I was sure it was a Doe. I wanted the deer trail to travel more to the creek bed and a clearer view of the far hillside. I broke into a hidden pocket in the thicket that had deer bed written all over it. There was tall grass with large willow patches with a small trickle of water running through it. I saw a nice buck track, but it was going the wrong way. I moved up out of the small pocket just enough to see across the draw and saw some deer on the far rim. Does and fawns. I stood there for a long time and was just about to turn down the false ridge and head off deeper into the canyon when I heard a deer get up and bound off just 30 yards to my left. I wasted no time and ran over to the spot because I knew I could see into the creek bottom. I reached the edge and soon saw a deer moving quickly through the creek bottom 150 yards away. Bringing the rifle up I could see good horn sticking out one side of the head. I fire a shot and the buck turned up hill and behind a snag, I could see him milling around trying to decide which way to go and then he came out trotting to the right. Wrong move, the next round hit him in the ribs, quartering through the chest and out the far shoulder. The buck pancaked on the spot. The buck thrashed for a few moments and then was dead.
Luckily my brother in law who let me out had not drove back to camp but had made a hunt next to where I was and so I did not have a 2 mile hike back to camp. We met up and went and got the pack boards (note to self-always take a packboard in the pickup) and whipped the buck out in one pack. I was only 3/10 of a mile from the road, it was an easy uphill pack indeed!
The buck was a nice 3X4, not very wide but thick horned. The buck was in great condition, lots of fat and scored a perfect body condition score.
Here's the proof of the pack, no tree length deer.
The vegetation is really growing up in the burn and the deer are getting hard to see, you would think there were no deer around and then they would come out of the wood work. Lot's of fawns with the Does and lot's of Does. Our group went 3 of 6, the other two bucks were spikes and were tree length if you know what I mean. The brother in law crippled and lost a buck larger than mine, the deer can get away real easy in that thick stuff.
Low points of the trip was the ATV'er the last day sneaking into the bermed logging spurs and the city slicker who I about went to blows with when I held him up to long while my Dad glassed a buck off of the road.
Here's the rack. Sorry the wife had all the good cameras and I was left with the hi-8 and I don't pack that bulky thing.
Rank Amateur
Desolation 06 buck hunt. Pictures added.
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