41magsnub
Member
sorry for the novel...
Take off from work a bit early on Thursday and head to Great Falls.
At 0 dark 30 Friday morning meet up with Dave and head to a ranch by Fort Benton we can hunt on. We know this property pretty well and know where to go. I head for the top of one coulee and Dave heads for another. I'm eyeballing spots to plop my butt down and wait for a mule deer. I haven't even sat down yet and 5 muley does and 1 small buck come around the bend and all start staring at me. I pick out the biggest one and drop it and the rest bolt over the side of the coulee towards where Dave was setting up. Under a minute later I hear a shot from that direction. I climb down to my deer and dress it, then climb out to go get the rigging because it is going to be a minor hassle to recover it since it tumbled all the way down to the bottom.
Dave meets me up top just ticked off, he didn't see the horns on the buck and shot it, they were about 5" with a tiny little fork in the end, just over the 4" where you can still call it a doe in MT. One A tag wasted!
We rig up and drag my deer my deer out. His deer did not die right away and ran out of the coulee then died next to the road. Perfect!
The rest of the deer are either down on the river bottom where we really did not want to shoot or out in the fields where we would have a really hard time working in close enough for a shot so we switch up to pheasant hunting. We tool around the coulee's again for a few hours and both of us limit out. Dave's dog , Betsy the springer spaniel, made an awesome retrieve. She was down in the brush and pointed and then flushed a bird. Dave shot it but it fluttered across a channel on the Missouri and landed on an island. It was dead or close to it since I could see his tail feathers sticking straight up out of some brush. Betsy did not see it go down. Dave and I are pointing and gesturing across the water and Betsy was unsure what to do. Finally something clicks and she swims across getting carried about 30 yards downstream and then runs back up even with us, finds the bird right away and swims back with it. Dave was getting ready to strip and swim the river and I was thinking up my story to tell his wife why he drowned...
In the evening we planned on staking out another coulee and right after we got done with pheasants. As we are getting out the truck to hike into our spots we see a really nice buck chasing two does at the base of a big coulee. We stalk in on them and get to a knoll about 250 yards away. I shoot at and hit the buck, he stumbles and hides in some brush for a couple of minutes. We just wait, he gets up again and runs down away from the coulee and stops in the middle of the road and I shoot him again, drops right there. The first shot only got a piece of one lung. The second got his heart and the other lung. He was a really nice large 4 point buck, not a trophy or anything but pretty big. We set up in the coulees again since I had 2 more muley doe B tags and this was the last day we could hunt this spot this year but don't get a shot at anything else. We pack up and head home at dusk. One cool thing while I was sitting in a coulee was a rooster and 2 hen pheasants walked to within 10' of me before spotting me and flushing out of there.
Saturday, we sleep in a little and take the deer from the previous day to the processor at 8, then head out to Ulm to hunt some white tail does on a friend of my parents place since we are both out of A tags. They save the bucks for their family but love to have people come and shoot does. I park my butt at one end of a patch of trees and Dave goes to the other end and works towards me. He chases what looked like hundreds of deer out of there at me and I easily shot 2 nice big does at under 30 yards. One is dead in the road and the other was all of 20' off to the side. We then pheasant hunt the coulees and both limit out before noon. We take the afternoon off after dropping the last 2 deer off at the processor.
Sunday, we do a half day pheasant hunting some land by Belt and both limit out on birds before noon when I needed to head back to Missoula.
Great time and undoubtedly the most productive hunting I've ever done!
Take off from work a bit early on Thursday and head to Great Falls.
At 0 dark 30 Friday morning meet up with Dave and head to a ranch by Fort Benton we can hunt on. We know this property pretty well and know where to go. I head for the top of one coulee and Dave heads for another. I'm eyeballing spots to plop my butt down and wait for a mule deer. I haven't even sat down yet and 5 muley does and 1 small buck come around the bend and all start staring at me. I pick out the biggest one and drop it and the rest bolt over the side of the coulee towards where Dave was setting up. Under a minute later I hear a shot from that direction. I climb down to my deer and dress it, then climb out to go get the rigging because it is going to be a minor hassle to recover it since it tumbled all the way down to the bottom.
Dave meets me up top just ticked off, he didn't see the horns on the buck and shot it, they were about 5" with a tiny little fork in the end, just over the 4" where you can still call it a doe in MT. One A tag wasted!
We rig up and drag my deer my deer out. His deer did not die right away and ran out of the coulee then died next to the road. Perfect!
The rest of the deer are either down on the river bottom where we really did not want to shoot or out in the fields where we would have a really hard time working in close enough for a shot so we switch up to pheasant hunting. We tool around the coulee's again for a few hours and both of us limit out. Dave's dog , Betsy the springer spaniel, made an awesome retrieve. She was down in the brush and pointed and then flushed a bird. Dave shot it but it fluttered across a channel on the Missouri and landed on an island. It was dead or close to it since I could see his tail feathers sticking straight up out of some brush. Betsy did not see it go down. Dave and I are pointing and gesturing across the water and Betsy was unsure what to do. Finally something clicks and she swims across getting carried about 30 yards downstream and then runs back up even with us, finds the bird right away and swims back with it. Dave was getting ready to strip and swim the river and I was thinking up my story to tell his wife why he drowned...
In the evening we planned on staking out another coulee and right after we got done with pheasants. As we are getting out the truck to hike into our spots we see a really nice buck chasing two does at the base of a big coulee. We stalk in on them and get to a knoll about 250 yards away. I shoot at and hit the buck, he stumbles and hides in some brush for a couple of minutes. We just wait, he gets up again and runs down away from the coulee and stops in the middle of the road and I shoot him again, drops right there. The first shot only got a piece of one lung. The second got his heart and the other lung. He was a really nice large 4 point buck, not a trophy or anything but pretty big. We set up in the coulees again since I had 2 more muley doe B tags and this was the last day we could hunt this spot this year but don't get a shot at anything else. We pack up and head home at dusk. One cool thing while I was sitting in a coulee was a rooster and 2 hen pheasants walked to within 10' of me before spotting me and flushing out of there.
Saturday, we sleep in a little and take the deer from the previous day to the processor at 8, then head out to Ulm to hunt some white tail does on a friend of my parents place since we are both out of A tags. They save the bucks for their family but love to have people come and shoot does. I park my butt at one end of a patch of trees and Dave goes to the other end and works towards me. He chases what looked like hundreds of deer out of there at me and I easily shot 2 nice big does at under 30 yards. One is dead in the road and the other was all of 20' off to the side. We then pheasant hunt the coulees and both limit out before noon. We take the afternoon off after dropping the last 2 deer off at the processor.
Sunday, we do a half day pheasant hunting some land by Belt and both limit out on birds before noon when I needed to head back to Missoula.
Great time and undoubtedly the most productive hunting I've ever done!
