rwc
Member
Last Tuesday I found a very nice mule deer doe just up from Shonkin Creek in Montana (East, NE of Great Falls). My father-in-law and I had hunted the South side of the creek the day before and I managed to get "busted" by a half dozen pheasants (They operate as a great early warning system for deer). I got close to one deer at the end of the day, but she saw me before I saw her. She was at full speed as she contoured the side of the coulie half way down its slope and pulled a disappearing act I could not unravel. That didn't stop me from spending the next hour trying...
As we drove off we spotted a group of mule deer in the wheat field adjacent to the North side of the creek and decided to come back and see if we could catch them before they got up the next afternoon.
For those unfamiliar with central MT the creeks can run a hundred or more feet lower than the surrounding terrain, having carved themselves deep into the ground. The "coulies" that feed down into the creek are a series of side ravines that radiate away from the bottom lands. Up on the "plateau" are range lands and wheat fields. Lots of wheat fields. The mulies spend a lot of time in the coulies and come up to the wheat fields to browse the winter wheat or stubble at night.
Tuesday afternoon we walked a mile or more out along the edge of the plateau, following a fence line E by NE, parallel to the creek. We peeked over the edge to our right and spotted five does running across the bottom lands away from something (or someone) we couldn't see. The weather was unseasonably warm for this time of year, high 60s, with only 5-10 mph wind coming from the NW. As we turned the corner of the fence line (which now ran to our left) the wind was in our faces and produced enough rustling of the grasses and sage brush to easily cover any noise we made. A series of coulies dropped down towards the creek from our left to the right and we decided to peek into the first one.
We slowly approached the edge of the coulie and as I got closer to where it started to drop off I crouched down to present a lower profile. I spotted a few deer one coulie past the one I was approaching and slowly dropped down to my knees behind some sage. I scoped them and hand signaled my father-in-law that we had three does (I had a doe tag). We did a low crab-walk another 20 feet or so to get a better perspective. He ranged them at 130 yards. I had a good seated shot, but prefer prone if I can get it. Where I was the sage and grasses were too tall to let me take a prone shot.
I crawled another 10 yards or so, head down, between the sage, yucca, and cactus until the edge of the coulie dropped off enough that I could line up prone. I waited a bit, worried that I would lose the shot, but one of the deer was superimposed in front of and a bit below the one I wanted. I waited and hoped. A couple of very long minutes later I took the shot and droped her where she stood.
My father-in-law and I descended the coulie, crossed over and up to where she lay. We quartered her out, packed up, and started hiking back to the truck as darkness fell. Three days later four of us spent three and a half hours processing all the meat down to ~55 lbs. of frozen, vacuum packed venison roasts, steaks, fillets, stew meat, and ground.
I even got lucky at the airport when the Horizon airlines attendant couldn't get her computer to charge me the over-weight penalty on my cooler. All in all a great hunt.
As we drove off we spotted a group of mule deer in the wheat field adjacent to the North side of the creek and decided to come back and see if we could catch them before they got up the next afternoon.
For those unfamiliar with central MT the creeks can run a hundred or more feet lower than the surrounding terrain, having carved themselves deep into the ground. The "coulies" that feed down into the creek are a series of side ravines that radiate away from the bottom lands. Up on the "plateau" are range lands and wheat fields. Lots of wheat fields. The mulies spend a lot of time in the coulies and come up to the wheat fields to browse the winter wheat or stubble at night.
Tuesday afternoon we walked a mile or more out along the edge of the plateau, following a fence line E by NE, parallel to the creek. We peeked over the edge to our right and spotted five does running across the bottom lands away from something (or someone) we couldn't see. The weather was unseasonably warm for this time of year, high 60s, with only 5-10 mph wind coming from the NW. As we turned the corner of the fence line (which now ran to our left) the wind was in our faces and produced enough rustling of the grasses and sage brush to easily cover any noise we made. A series of coulies dropped down towards the creek from our left to the right and we decided to peek into the first one.
We slowly approached the edge of the coulie and as I got closer to where it started to drop off I crouched down to present a lower profile. I spotted a few deer one coulie past the one I was approaching and slowly dropped down to my knees behind some sage. I scoped them and hand signaled my father-in-law that we had three does (I had a doe tag). We did a low crab-walk another 20 feet or so to get a better perspective. He ranged them at 130 yards. I had a good seated shot, but prefer prone if I can get it. Where I was the sage and grasses were too tall to let me take a prone shot.
I crawled another 10 yards or so, head down, between the sage, yucca, and cactus until the edge of the coulie dropped off enough that I could line up prone. I waited a bit, worried that I would lose the shot, but one of the deer was superimposed in front of and a bit below the one I wanted. I waited and hoped. A couple of very long minutes later I took the shot and droped her where she stood.
My father-in-law and I descended the coulie, crossed over and up to where she lay. We quartered her out, packed up, and started hiking back to the truck as darkness fell. Three days later four of us spent three and a half hours processing all the meat down to ~55 lbs. of frozen, vacuum packed venison roasts, steaks, fillets, stew meat, and ground.
I even got lucky at the airport when the Horizon airlines attendant couldn't get her computer to charge me the over-weight penalty on my cooler. All in all a great hunt.
