Weekend hunting reports?? Here's mine!!!!!!

[Dogfish]

Here's mine!

I took my nephew, Michael age 14, out deer hunting this weekend. He had drawn a doe tag for the Quilomene unit outside of Ellensburg.

We left my gramma's house in Ellensburg, (his great gramma) at about 3:00pm and told her we would be back for dinner with a deer. She said, "yeah sure."

Thirty minutes later, and about 300 yards into the unit, we see a nice doe and a fork horn. They are standing right next to a no trespassing sign, but now Michael knows what to look for.

We saw a number of deer hanging in the camps on the way up to our spot, so Michael is getting excited. We stop to pee twice!

About 6 miles into the unit, as we approached my grouse "honey hole" we ran into a guy and his 13 year old daughter. We asked if she had a doe tag, and they said that she had just filled it about 20 minutes earlier. She was SOOOOOOO excited. It's was great to see a girl out hunting with her dad. We said congrats, and went on our way.

10 minutes later, we were at our spot, and I see 7 deer move up into the woods, but I don't tell Michael. I suggest we head up to a small pond (where the deer he didn't know about were headed) and scope it out. After about 5 minutes we get to the pond and he spots the deer at the same time that they see us.

The deer move back into the woods, but split up. I send Michael into the gap between the two groups of deer. He stops, crouches, raises the rifle, and BOOM!

I see a deer jump straight up, and then make a three legged trot through an opening. I head there and find the doe, about 2 years old, on the ground. She went all of 15 yards. Michael walks up, fires a finishing round that wasn't necessary (nerves only), but he wanted to make sure he put her down quickly. It was his first deer.

His shot was from 22 yards with my little Ruger .44 mag Deerfield rifle, peep sights, using Hornady Custom 300 grain XTP ammo.

She was quartering away, but as we had talked about shot placement with the first doe we saw on the way up, he figured out a shot and hit both lungs, and the shoulder on the far side. The bullet traveled through over 20" of deer and exited the far side after clipping the shoulder.

He had trouble dragging it, and after 20 yards and a couple of tears, I helped him get it to the road, about 70 yards. He helped me dress it, and got his hands dirty. We took a few pictures, and then headed back to gramma's house. It was now 4:44 pm, and we made it back in time for dinner at 5:30.

We camped that night, near where Michael had taken his deer, and survived a windstorm with 70 mph winds while skinning out the deer by lantern light.

The next morning we went out grouse hunting, saw 18 more deer, nothing bigger than a 2 point, and Michael got his second grouse ever, a nice big blue. I never fired a shot the whole weekend, but I had a great time. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Andy