Hi Guys,
Big thanks to everyone who posted such great information on this board. I learned a lot, and this year was my first Eastern Oregon Hunt. Here is my story. It's a long one, but I hope you enjoy it.
Day 1 - Just getting into the groove of being in the forest, and working well with the GPS. I am not an expert deer hunter, but I tried to concentrate on these 4 things:
1) Keep the wind in my face
2) Walk slowly and extremely quietly
3) Glass frequently
4) Camo clothes
About noon I heard a loud cracking sound. My ears had adjusted to the quiet, and this sound was very jarring. It sounded like a limb had broken off and hit the forest floor. I froze and waited. A minute later, I heard another crack. Then I started noticing brown and tan patches all around me. I had hunted right into a herd of elk. I sat down and glassed them for 10 minutes. Calf. Cow. Cow. As I slowly panned, I came to a spot where I saw nothing but fur filling up the field of view in my binoculars. Holy smokes. I looked up and saw a big back scratcher 6 x 6 bull less than 40 yards away. Pretty neat to be within 30-40 yards of the elk and none of them saw me. I decided to get out of there before I spooked them. I figured if they took off, they might scare any deer that were around. At least I knew I was hunting right. That was a good confidence booster to an inexperienced hunter.
For the evening hunt, I saw a few does, and then what I am sure was a buck. The buck had a big black body and held his head differently than the does. Unfortunately, in both cases, they saw me before I saw them and they scurried off. I made a note to myself to go slower. I was getting tired and with darkness approaching, and in my haste to get back to the truck I had started to make too much noise. The day ended with a beautiful sunset. It was very peaceful watching the sun descend over a glowing canyon.
Day 2 - All the deer I had seen the day before were up high, so I figured I would start high for the first part of the day. I got dropped off a few miles from camp and hiked in 1/2 mile from the road. I was going to try to maintain this minimum distance and parallel the road back to camp.
The wind was about 5mph and in my face, and there was a light drizzle with occasional snow flakes. The first canyon I crossed had a lot of blowdown, but it looked pretty good. No deer or sign, so I moved on through.
I crossed over to a place where a small, scree-filled canyon dumped into a bigger canyon. There was a row of trees angling down to my left, and spine of trees off to the right. Between the spine of trees and me was 75 yards of scree.
I started across slowly. The big canyon was down below me, and there were some openings in the trees. Every 5-10 steps I would stop and glass the openings. About the fourth time I did this, something was different about one of the clearings that had been vacant moments before. It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing through my new Nikon Monarch ATB 8x42 binoculars. I was looking at the horns, head, and right shoulder of a buck feeding near the creek bottom. I sat down and my heart started pounding. I had counted 4 points on the side I could see. I wasn't horn hunting, so that was all the information I needed to know. The next thing to figure out was how to get closer for a better shot.
The wind was still in my favor, and I figured I was 250 yards from the deer. By staying really low, I was able to get across the scree field to the spine of trees. Then I followed it down about 75 yards to where the trees petered out. I wanted to get a little closer, so taking my time, I got down on my backside and scooched ever so slowly down to a huckleberry bush. For the past 10 minutes, I had managed to keep some cover between the deer and myself, so I figured I was in good shape. I thought to myself, "OK, here goes." I eased off the safety, and looked past my huckleberry bush 130 yards away to where the deer had been. He was nowhere to be seen. Ack.
Two things could have happened: He heard me and took off, or he had fed out of the 20 foot wide clearing and was out of sight on the thickly-wooded hillside. My mind was racing and my breathing was rapid. Had I done the wrong thing? Should I have taken a shot from back up on the scree field? Had he heard me? I looked at my watch. It was 9am. I had four hours before I had agreed to meet my hunting partner back in camp. I went through the past 10 minutes in my head, and I was pretty sure that I hadn't made any noise and that it was very unlikely that the deer had been alerted to my presence. I was doubting myself though. I decided to wait it out and see what happened.
I took a sip of water, glassed, waited, glassed. I was going through everything I could think of in my head. The wind was still good. I was 1/2 mile from the road, so no road hunters were likely to spook the deer. I had so much time that I even moved my 3x9 scope to 6, which I thought would be a good setting if the deer decided to present himself. I even thought about the time when I was 15 years old and shot over a deer that was downhill from me. I missed that one clean, and I didn't want that to happen again. I kept saying to myself, "Bullets rise when you are shooting downhill. If you see him, make sure to aim low."
Ten minutes had gone by, and my mind was still racing with all of these thoughts. As if by magic, I glassed again and he had fed back into the clearing. He was 15 feet across the 20 foot clearing before he paused to eat some more. I raised my rifle, eased off the safety, and rested both elbows on my knees. I concentrated on my breathing.
It's funny what goes through your head at a time like this. Everything is in slow motion. I hadn't been deer hunting much in the past 20 years. I moved away from where my uncles and my grandpa lived, and I just hadn't stuck with it. But here I was, 36 years old, and I was thinking all of these random thoughts about being 15 again. My grandfather passed away in 1999, and my grandmother had given me his wool sweater with his name embossed on it. I had decided to wear the sweater this day. It was under my camo jacket, and I could feel it gently scratching up against my neck as I aimed the rifle. I was thinking I need to make a good shot, so I wouldn't let my grandfather down. I was with him when he took his last buck. He got it with a miracle shot through the neck at 400+ yards. The reason he had to shoot it at 400 yards was because I had just emptied a 30-30 open sight lever action at the deer and had come up with nothing. I was a terrible shot back then and I flinched a lot. Looking back on it, I suppose it was because I was a little kid and I was afraid of the noise and the recoil.
Fast forward 20 years. I am staring through my scope at this beautiful animal and I want to do this right. There is no way I want to mess this up. It's either do this ethically or do not take the shot. I kept repeating to myself, "You are not a flincher. You can do this. Stay calm. Stay Steady. Don't jerk the trigger. Squeeze."
I held the scope behind the leg at a point where I figured the lungs were. As I applied steady pressure to the trigger, the cross hairs held steady. The report was loud, and the smoke combined with the kick of the .270 Winchester Model 70 XTR Featherweight meant that a few seconds were lost before I could see what had happened. I looked up and . . . nothing. Not a sound. Not a hint that a deer had ever been there. About 30 seconds later, I saw a buck running up the hillside. I figured this was another buck, because it seemed too far away from where my buck had been to close that distance in 30 seconds.
Now the hard part. I waited for 30 minutes before I moved down there to check it out. If I had hit him, I wanted him to bed down. I ate a sandwich. I thought about everything under the sun. I was alternately confident and worried. The watch seemed to stand still, but eventually, it moved to a position that showed a half hour had passed.
I got up and walked slowly down there. Bright red lung blood and a piece of lung, but no deer. Good blood trail for 15 yards down to the creek bottom. I put little pieces of tin foil by the major drops of blood so I could find them again if they started to dry. Now the hard part. I have seen tracking on TV, but I have never done it. I made a grid pattern, and started slowly working the area. This is painstaking work on a thickly forested hillside, but I was determined to look under every log to make sure I did not rule out a single square foot before moving on.
About 1 hour later, I saw a white patch on some leaves about 40 yards away. I raised my binoculars, and the white patch transformed into belly hair, and I could see my beautiful buck lying there. He had made it 200 yards down the canyon with a double lung shot. He was fat and in perfect health. I thanked the noble animal for the food he would provide, and for allowing me to hunt him an honorable way. Taking the life of such a beautiful creature was a profound event for me. I felt sadness, happiness, gratitude, and awe.
I took off my jacket and my grandpa's sweater and got to work. Just before I left for the hunting, my buddy had given me a present for good luck. It was a knife that his dad had given to him. His dad is a former hunting guide, but unfortunately is now in poor health. As I unfolded the knife, I dedicated the buck to my grandfather and to my buddy's father. I wish they both could have been up there on the hill with me to celebrate.
Cheers,
Motor
First Eastern Oregon Buck
Hookset
Fishing isn't a matter of life or death, it's much more important than that!!
Re: First Eastern Oregon Buck
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