New to Ifish...story(long)

GameChaserFid · 10-22-2008, 06:38 PM

Hello all my name is Stephen. I have been checking out Ifish for a little while now and have read some great info and seen some cool pics. I like how you all help eachother out...so maybe I can learn some things from you!!! I love hunting and fishing. I hunt just about anything. I have only killed 2 deer one a doe and a buck. Here is the story about the buck.

2 years ago in the silver lake unit my brother and dad and I were hunting together. My dad got a nice 3 pt opening weekend and went back to work and my brother and I stayed for the whole season. My bro and I hunted a lot together and saw deer pretty much every day of the hunt. We kept seeing a group of bucks, one 4 pt and a couple forkies and another that looked to be a 3 pt. We never got a shot at any of them. But it seemed that every day for about the first 5 days we were seeing these bucks, (or atleast the 4 pt) but they were always on the move and I didn't wanna pressure them by chasing them around. Once they were about 150-175 yards away but couldn't get a clean shot. When they took off my brother said to me, "there goes your chance" but I always thought I would get that 4 pt. Then we didn't see them anymore!

I started to wonder if we were gonna see any more bucks? Then my dad came back up to camp on the last weekend and that following monday my brother missed a forkie. We gave him a pretty hard time about it. The closer the season came to ending the more frustrated we were getting(atleast I was). Then we decided to go back to an area we were seeing the bucks early on. Nothing was there until my brother said "theres one". It was him...the nice 4 pt. I shot 3 times and never hit him. I then said a prayer..."God Please let me get him". The 4th shot connected right in the neck. He was with no more bucks...but with a doe. I sent in the tooth to the ODFW and they sent me a card back and said he was a 2 year old. I can't even think of how big he would be if he was still around??? This was all up on the Winter Ridge area. Beautiful area. On opening weekend of duck season every year you can hear them shooting all the way down at summer lake. Hope you all enjoy this story...Part two I will add later.

quit wishing · 10-22-2008, 06:43 PM

Welcome aboard! Good first post. QW

Rauly · 10-22-2008, 06:52 PM

Welcome and good story. Hope to see many more posts from you.

baltz526 · 10-22-2008, 07:05 PM

welcome, and silver lake unit is a hard hunt anymore. any buck is a trophy from it

sliverpicker · 10-22-2008, 07:11 PM

GameChaserFid · 10-22-2008, 09:15 PM

So after I got my buck we still had my brothers tag to fill. We went out that tuesday night and my brother was hunting and my dad and I were just walking together when we heard a horn start honking. My dad said, "that sounds like my horn doesn't it?" I said I'm not sure? So he went back to camp and I waited there for my brother as it was getting dark soon. When I met up with my brother he asked "where's dad?" I asked him if he heard the horn and said that dad went back to check out to see if it was his. So my brother and I walked back to camp and my dad was standing there talking to a gentleman. I asked my dad if he found out what the honking was? He said to go and look at my deer (which was hanging in the nearest try about 100 yards from our trailer). So my bro and I went to check it out and we could see that the game back was pulled down from the deer. As we got closer we could see where there was a tear and a bite mark near its shoulder!

The honking that we heard was from this man who was driving on an old road behind our camp to take his mother over to the edge of winter ridge to show her the view of summer lake below. When he saw a bear on its rear legs trying to rip down the deer! He started honking to try and scare it off. At first the bear didn't leave but stayed and after more honking it finally took off. So the man wrote a short note putting it on the trailer door saying, "camp there is a bear on your deer" So I took the deer down because we thought it might come back. And I put it in the back of my pickup and parked as close as I could to our trailer. No bear came back...till the next day. The man said it was a big bear...sure enough it was, we saw it when we were leaving camp to go get a tree stand that I had. The bear probably came within 75 to 100 yards from us and didn't even care we were there. Just making a b-line for where he last knew the deer was. I have seen 3 bears up there in 2 seasons and had another one near us on another occasion...never seen it but heard something tearing something up...it was a bear cause we talked to some hunters who saw it and asked us if we saw it? The biologist out of Lakeview said there isn't a lot of bear up there but the ones that are....are big!

Mossyhorn · 10-22-2008, 09:36 PM

Really cool story, thanks for sharing. Winter Rim and Summer Lake is sure a great area, congrats on the buck.

arkansasbasser · 10-23-2008, 04:41 AM

Great story. Welcome aboard.

thefishslayer · 10-23-2008, 06:13 AM

i have property near summer lake, christmas valley. i think i know where you hunt

Big Unit · 10-23-2008, 06:31 AM

Welcome!

BU

Hunt'nFish · 10-23-2008, 08:54 AM

VERY Cool story......next time make sure you have a bear tag in your pocket and WHACK that bad boy.

WELCOME ABOARD!!
Hunt'nFish

buckhunter · 10-23-2008, 12:22 PM

Cool stories! Welcome to ifish.

BH

nevermiss · 10-23-2008, 12:36 PM

Excellent stories. My dad, uncle and I used to hunt that Silver Lake unit for years and my uncle got a 6 by 6 one year and I got a nice forkie the next, but before that my dad and I used to call it our "camping trip."
And, yeah, we did see some BIG bucks bounding away at too far a distance to even think about shooting. No bears, but a huge bull elk one morning trotted by.

GameChaserFid · 10-23-2008, 01:11 PM

Nevermiss-
Did you hunt up there on the Winter Ridge area? We seen a bear last year down almost at the bottom from where we were at the top...Huge bear, the next day we tried to find a road that led down there and after finding it we were probably just over a mile away and came to a gate that said road closed! We were a bit frustrated to say the least...not to mention all the cattle that frequent the areas we hunted...but I guess thats just the way it is out west!

STRUTTIN-1 · 10-23-2008, 02:46 PM

Welcome.

ElkTalker · 10-23-2008, 04:39 PM

Welcome to ifish,

My first hunting trip was with a bow to Winter Rim in 1989, we hunter on top from Government Harvey Pass all the way out the 2901 rd and below the rim to Slide Lake. I hunted it 10 years straight and some of my cousins still hunt it. You can blame part of the low deer population on the Hansen family, after last year we have killed 49 deer from Winter Rim, 47 with bows and 2 with rifles. My wife killed her first deer up there and every other year asks if we can go back. I took her three years ago after the burn and it was a much different hunt then when I was a kid. We hunter hard and saw very few deer. I have no doubt that one day it will be a great place to hunt again.

Thanks for bringing back the memories of some of my first hunts. ET

Nw dukn · 10-23-2008, 07:52 PM

Welcome:d

DominantPrey · 10-23-2008, 10:56 PM

Welcome and thanks for the story!