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- Jan 28, 2003
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The great thing about hunting is that you never know what the outcome is going to be. I drew a hard to get eastern plains deer tag this year and secured permission to hunt on a nice little ranch out in the eastern plains of Colorado.
Pre season scouting was promising with many sightings of some impressive mule deer some of which were firmly in the 180" range. This ranch has several miles of river bottom and some nice deep washes that lead into corn and sackato (SP?) fields. Perfect habitat for deer. What we didn't see however, were any whitetails, in what looked to be perfect whitetail country. Go figure?
Two days before the opening of deer season we had one heck of a blizzard. The eastern plains were especially hard hit with drifts over 10 feet tall in areas. The ranch I was hunting was right in the epicenter of this storm. The weather seems to have put the mule deer into hiding and brought the whitetails into rut.
On opening morning we were able to get a 4WD truck into the ranch and started to hunt. We saw lots of deer early in the morning. Lots of Whitetail deer that is and not a single mule deer. And the whitetails we were seeing were definitely showing signs that they were starting to rut.
Well as they say never look a gift horse in the mouth! This had officially become a Colorado whitetail hunt. So shifting tactics from glassing the wide open plains and coulees we started working the dense river bottoms very slowly and very methodically.
While I'd love to give you guys a story of heroism, bravery and calm in the face of extreme danger and mental stress. What I am about to describe may well be the largest comedy of errors bad judgment and general bone headedness to ever be recorded in the history of hunting. Stand by to shocked and awed!
So here we are slowly cruising up a track next to a densely brush and tree covered river bottom in total stealth mode. You know with the sun in our faces the wind to our back and driving a 1 ton diesel pick up through a foot of crusted, icey snow, which makes a subtle sound noise that can only be described as that of a battalion of charging armored vehicles which are all in need of a lube job.
We are not really hunting just cruising around looking for a good place to hunt. My buddy looks up, squinting into the sun, in the the next bend in the road and casually declares "hey look at the size of that whitetail doe, have you ever seen a baldy with a body that big?" I reply that "Yep that's a big ole doe alright." and then I continue the story I was telling about what a hero I was several years ago single handedly packing out a 4000lb elk through two blizzards an avalanche with a raging hangover and a green horse.
About that time the "doe" turns and runs, at which point I notice that "she" must be a non typical "doe" because "she" is sporting one serious set of antlers on "her" head! of course in the true manner of professional hairy chested deer chasers everywhere all hell breaks loose binos come up, truck stalls because when we stopped "we" didn't push in the clutch, people are frantically reaching for a rifle case and trying to get a rifle out and loaded etc. etc.
Of course by the time all of the necessary precautions are taken said non typical massive whitetail "doe" is gone. We look at each other as the shock dejection starts to set in and begin hysterically giggling like a couple of 10 year olds on a sugar high. I can't think of anything to say except gee we sure are STOUPID!
In any case we continue up the track about a mile I keep catching movement in the brush ahead of us and I think it's the buck but can't believe that he wouldn't have taken cover in the deep tangle of brush like a any self respecting burley old whitetail should. So I don't say anything about it and contiue on. When we get to what we think is the end of the property line we stop and I get out of the truck to have a little look see around, taking my rifle with me just in case. I haven't gotten 20 yards from the truck when I decide that there is a little patch of something that looks suspiciously deer like about two hundred yards up in the brush.
I take a quick look at the suspect patch of deer brush with my binos and the patch of deer brush suddenly, with the help of 8 power and Lieca, materializes into the same one and only Mr. Burley that we had mistaken for a doe not 20 minutes earlier. We had been pushing him up the draw (Gee I guess I should have stopped and tried to look at him earlier!)
He, like all good whitetails, when they don't think you could can't see them is in frozen invisible mode, frozen yes, invisible no. I let the binos drop to my chest and raise my .30-06 quickly finding a rest on a tree limb and wait for Mr. invisible to turn to give me a shot as he was facing directly away with his head looking straight back at me. I waited with the cross hairs frozen on his midline level waiting for him to turn even the slightest amount so I could shoot.
After what seemed a small eternity he turned to his left about 30 degrees and raises his tail, he was getting ready to bolt when I finished the trigger squeeze. At the shot he kicked both hind feet into the air in the classic "been hit" reaction, took one leap and jumped the fence. I exclaimed an expletive as I brought the rifle from my shoulder. Turning to my buddy I asked the if he was sure that we couldn’t go across the fence. He said he didn’t think so. I went to look for blood both where I shot and where the ran and where he jumped the fence there wasn’t even a cut hair , there was no sign of a hit what so ever. My buddy was saying I think you missed him, I was saying that I was sure I hit him. But it was a mute point because he was over the fence and we needed to get permission to go look for him.
In any case we drove the 30 miles into town grabbed a burger at the “Dairy Hut” in Deer Trail CO. Just by the way the saying at the Dairy Hut in Deer trail “ A blizzard ain’t nothing, you should try a hail storm” Apparently that is the local version of a more well known ice cream treat. I am not sure if they are trying to knock off on a different more well established company that also has Dairy in it’s name or what, but it sure seemed suspicious to me..
After our culinary experience we drove about for several hours looking for the ranch owner with no luck. So we decided to drive back out to the ranch. On the way out I had almost talked myself into believing that I’d missed the shot. But after replaying the episode in my mind it was just too clear, the break was perfect the sight picture was perfect and the deer’s reaction was one of a hit whitetail. On the road back to the ranch we found the foremen working in the shop and explained the situation. He informed us two geniuses that not only was the fence we were describing on the ranch not a boundry it was 5 miles from the northern border.
On returning to the scene I was a bit shocked to find that in the 3 or 4 hours since the shot had been fired the temperature had risen to a balmy 67 deg F and what were once easy to follow tracks were now severely melted and quickly dissipating into a muddy mess. I got onto what I thought were the right tracks and started dogging them but it was impossible to follow them as they would cross large areas of grass and dead leaves with no snow cover making the trail all but disappear. After several miles of playing tracker I lost the original set of tracks and decided to head up out of the draw onto high ground to see if we could maybe find the buck by slowly cruising and glassing into the wash below.
We had pretty much given up and were kind of half heartedly looking for the buck and pretty much just slogging through the slush and mud on the now roughly 1.5 miles back to the truck when we came to a deep wash. Not wanting to slide down the steep muddy face and then have to climb it on then other side I decided to walk up to the head of the draw and cross it there where it was much more shallow.
Now here guys is where this really get weird. As we walk up the draw and get to the head both of us suddenly get that old cautious feeling and simultaneously go into high alert sneak mode. I don’t know why maybe it was a subconscious whiff of blood or deer scent but we both got hit with the need to be sneaky instinct at the same time.
As I crested the small lip at the top of the draw and there in the bottom is my buck laying “dead” I turn to my buddy and proclaim in a loud voice. “there he is, told you I hit him.” My buddy give a high five we both look the deer over with glass and assure ourselves he is dead and start to walk towards him. The “Dead” buck that started out as a huge “doe” springs to his feet and starts to rocket up the other side of the draw as he tops out and turns broadside running for heavy cover I drop him with a 180 grain Barnes TSX through the shoulders.
After I field dressed the buck we drug him the mile and half straight line back to the truck. Took pictures and loaded him. I handed my rifle to my buddy and asked him to please unload it. He did and I watched him pull the action back and then forward. And case the rifle.
It turned out that the first round had hitthe buck just behind the last rib entering at a shallow angle getting liver and then went forward into the left side of the chest but I don’t think it cut the lung rather it traveled in-between the inside of the ribs and the lung and into the neck meat. The deer was very sick but he was still alive after nearly 5 hours. The bed he was lying in has comprised of dead leaves and it must have had a half gallon of blood soaked into it from the liver wound. I really can’t believe he was still alive.
So let us summarize this comedy of hunting errors.
1. We were not paying attention and screwing around telling stories while driving into the sun in prime deer country. Sometimes you have travel into the sun but it sure makes it hard to identify what you are looking at.
2. I should have never taken the shot I took as it was a low percentage and somewhat rushed shot. And it was on what at the time we thought was the property boundary. While mistakes happen it is always a bad deal when the animal is made to suffer. And the very fact that we found him was just blind luck no two ways about it! For all intensive purposes that deer should have been coyote food.
3. Never walk up to a "dead" animal without having a weapon ready. This was just a deer but it sure could have gotten away if I'd of not been able to get a rifle unshouldered and into action quickly. And I've done way to much dangerous game hunting to pull a stupid stunt like that. Always be ready until you are sure it's over.
4. And here is the biggest one. Both my buddy and I have been around firearms for a very long time. But remember when I told you that I asked him to unload my rifle. He did and I didn’t check it. When I got home I uncased the rifle and as always checked the action. Low and behold I jacked a live round out of the chamber that had been riding around in my truck for several hours and then sitting on my living room floor in the house around my children. Oh and of course the SAFETY WAS OFF!! I don’t know how he managed to load a round when he thought he was unloading it but he did. It was a mistake that could have been fatal and I relearned a very important point. ALWAYS load and unload your rifle yourself. NEVER trust someone else to do it. Always check any weapons chamber every time you pick it up. It could save your life or more importantly save you killing an innocent by standard. This was a real wake up shocker for me, it scared the bejeezus out me when that live round went flying out of the action and I was standing there holding this rifle in my living room with my two girls innocently looking up at me with big blue eyes. SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY I can’t say it enough!
5. This was my first real hunting trip in nearly a year after my spinal surgery last December. I didn’t realize how rusty my skills had become. Hunting is like anything else if you don’t do it enough you forget things and loose your edge. So hopefully this was my trip to get the kinks out. Elk season starts in two weeks.
Here are some pictures of the buck.
I want you to notice the difference of the quality of the pictures from where my buddy took the shots and where I took the pictures. Notice how much nicer the buck looks when you get as close as you can, as low as you can and you use the flash to lighten and expose the antlers. Same buck, same camera, different lighting and angle.
Pre season scouting was promising with many sightings of some impressive mule deer some of which were firmly in the 180" range. This ranch has several miles of river bottom and some nice deep washes that lead into corn and sackato (SP?) fields. Perfect habitat for deer. What we didn't see however, were any whitetails, in what looked to be perfect whitetail country. Go figure?
Two days before the opening of deer season we had one heck of a blizzard. The eastern plains were especially hard hit with drifts over 10 feet tall in areas. The ranch I was hunting was right in the epicenter of this storm. The weather seems to have put the mule deer into hiding and brought the whitetails into rut.
On opening morning we were able to get a 4WD truck into the ranch and started to hunt. We saw lots of deer early in the morning. Lots of Whitetail deer that is and not a single mule deer. And the whitetails we were seeing were definitely showing signs that they were starting to rut.
Well as they say never look a gift horse in the mouth! This had officially become a Colorado whitetail hunt. So shifting tactics from glassing the wide open plains and coulees we started working the dense river bottoms very slowly and very methodically.
While I'd love to give you guys a story of heroism, bravery and calm in the face of extreme danger and mental stress. What I am about to describe may well be the largest comedy of errors bad judgment and general bone headedness to ever be recorded in the history of hunting. Stand by to shocked and awed!
So here we are slowly cruising up a track next to a densely brush and tree covered river bottom in total stealth mode. You know with the sun in our faces the wind to our back and driving a 1 ton diesel pick up through a foot of crusted, icey snow, which makes a subtle sound noise that can only be described as that of a battalion of charging armored vehicles which are all in need of a lube job.
We are not really hunting just cruising around looking for a good place to hunt. My buddy looks up, squinting into the sun, in the the next bend in the road and casually declares "hey look at the size of that whitetail doe, have you ever seen a baldy with a body that big?" I reply that "Yep that's a big ole doe alright." and then I continue the story I was telling about what a hero I was several years ago single handedly packing out a 4000lb elk through two blizzards an avalanche with a raging hangover and a green horse.
About that time the "doe" turns and runs, at which point I notice that "she" must be a non typical "doe" because "she" is sporting one serious set of antlers on "her" head!
of course in the true manner of professional hairy chested deer chasers everywhere all hell breaks loose binos come up, truck stalls because when we stopped "we" didn't push in the clutch, people are frantically reaching for a rifle case and trying to get a rifle out and loaded etc. etc.Of course by the time all of the necessary precautions are taken said non typical massive whitetail "doe" is gone. We look at each other as the shock dejection starts to set in and begin hysterically giggling like a couple of 10 year olds on a sugar high. I can't think of anything to say except gee we sure are STOUPID!
In any case we continue up the track about a mile I keep catching movement in the brush ahead of us and I think it's the buck but can't believe that he wouldn't have taken cover in the deep tangle of brush like a any self respecting burley old whitetail should. So I don't say anything about it and contiue on. When we get to what we think is the end of the property line we stop and I get out of the truck to have a little look see around, taking my rifle with me just in case. I haven't gotten 20 yards from the truck when I decide that there is a little patch of something that looks suspiciously deer like about two hundred yards up in the brush.
I take a quick look at the suspect patch of deer brush with my binos and the patch of deer brush suddenly, with the help of 8 power and Lieca, materializes into the same one and only Mr. Burley that we had mistaken for a doe not 20 minutes earlier. We had been pushing him up the draw (Gee I guess I should have stopped and tried to look at him earlier!)
He, like all good whitetails, when they don't think you could can't see them is in frozen invisible mode, frozen yes, invisible no. I let the binos drop to my chest and raise my .30-06 quickly finding a rest on a tree limb and wait for Mr. invisible to turn to give me a shot as he was facing directly away with his head looking straight back at me. I waited with the cross hairs frozen on his midline level waiting for him to turn even the slightest amount so I could shoot.
After what seemed a small eternity he turned to his left about 30 degrees and raises his tail, he was getting ready to bolt when I finished the trigger squeeze. At the shot he kicked both hind feet into the air in the classic "been hit" reaction, took one leap and jumped the fence. I exclaimed an expletive as I brought the rifle from my shoulder. Turning to my buddy I asked the if he was sure that we couldn’t go across the fence. He said he didn’t think so. I went to look for blood both where I shot and where the ran and where he jumped the fence there wasn’t even a cut hair , there was no sign of a hit what so ever. My buddy was saying I think you missed him, I was saying that I was sure I hit him. But it was a mute point because he was over the fence and we needed to get permission to go look for him.
In any case we drove the 30 miles into town grabbed a burger at the “Dairy Hut” in Deer Trail CO. Just by the way the saying at the Dairy Hut in Deer trail “ A blizzard ain’t nothing, you should try a hail storm” Apparently that is the local version of a more well known ice cream treat. I am not sure if they are trying to knock off on a different more well established company that also has Dairy in it’s name or what, but it sure seemed suspicious to me..
After our culinary experience we drove about for several hours looking for the ranch owner with no luck. So we decided to drive back out to the ranch. On the way out I had almost talked myself into believing that I’d missed the shot. But after replaying the episode in my mind it was just too clear, the break was perfect the sight picture was perfect and the deer’s reaction was one of a hit whitetail. On the road back to the ranch we found the foremen working in the shop and explained the situation. He informed us two geniuses that not only was the fence we were describing on the ranch not a boundry it was 5 miles from the northern border.
On returning to the scene I was a bit shocked to find that in the 3 or 4 hours since the shot had been fired the temperature had risen to a balmy 67 deg F and what were once easy to follow tracks were now severely melted and quickly dissipating into a muddy mess. I got onto what I thought were the right tracks and started dogging them but it was impossible to follow them as they would cross large areas of grass and dead leaves with no snow cover making the trail all but disappear. After several miles of playing tracker I lost the original set of tracks and decided to head up out of the draw onto high ground to see if we could maybe find the buck by slowly cruising and glassing into the wash below.
We had pretty much given up and were kind of half heartedly looking for the buck and pretty much just slogging through the slush and mud on the now roughly 1.5 miles back to the truck when we came to a deep wash. Not wanting to slide down the steep muddy face and then have to climb it on then other side I decided to walk up to the head of the draw and cross it there where it was much more shallow.
Now here guys is where this really get weird. As we walk up the draw and get to the head both of us suddenly get that old cautious feeling and simultaneously go into high alert sneak mode. I don’t know why maybe it was a subconscious whiff of blood or deer scent but we both got hit with the need to be sneaky instinct at the same time.
As I crested the small lip at the top of the draw and there in the bottom is my buck laying “dead” I turn to my buddy and proclaim in a loud voice. “there he is, told you I hit him.” My buddy give a high five we both look the deer over with glass and assure ourselves he is dead and start to walk towards him. The “Dead” buck that started out as a huge “doe” springs to his feet and starts to rocket up the other side of the draw as he tops out and turns broadside running for heavy cover I drop him with a 180 grain Barnes TSX through the shoulders.
After I field dressed the buck we drug him the mile and half straight line back to the truck. Took pictures and loaded him. I handed my rifle to my buddy and asked him to please unload it. He did and I watched him pull the action back and then forward. And case the rifle.
It turned out that the first round had hitthe buck just behind the last rib entering at a shallow angle getting liver and then went forward into the left side of the chest but I don’t think it cut the lung rather it traveled in-between the inside of the ribs and the lung and into the neck meat. The deer was very sick but he was still alive after nearly 5 hours. The bed he was lying in has comprised of dead leaves and it must have had a half gallon of blood soaked into it from the liver wound. I really can’t believe he was still alive.
So let us summarize this comedy of hunting errors.
1. We were not paying attention and screwing around telling stories while driving into the sun in prime deer country. Sometimes you have travel into the sun but it sure makes it hard to identify what you are looking at.
2. I should have never taken the shot I took as it was a low percentage and somewhat rushed shot. And it was on what at the time we thought was the property boundary. While mistakes happen it is always a bad deal when the animal is made to suffer. And the very fact that we found him was just blind luck no two ways about it! For all intensive purposes that deer should have been coyote food.
3. Never walk up to a "dead" animal without having a weapon ready. This was just a deer but it sure could have gotten away if I'd of not been able to get a rifle unshouldered and into action quickly. And I've done way to much dangerous game hunting to pull a stupid stunt like that. Always be ready until you are sure it's over.
4. And here is the biggest one. Both my buddy and I have been around firearms for a very long time. But remember when I told you that I asked him to unload my rifle. He did and I didn’t check it. When I got home I uncased the rifle and as always checked the action. Low and behold I jacked a live round out of the chamber that had been riding around in my truck for several hours and then sitting on my living room floor in the house around my children. Oh and of course the SAFETY WAS OFF!! I don’t know how he managed to load a round when he thought he was unloading it but he did. It was a mistake that could have been fatal and I relearned a very important point. ALWAYS load and unload your rifle yourself. NEVER trust someone else to do it. Always check any weapons chamber every time you pick it up. It could save your life or more importantly save you killing an innocent by standard. This was a real wake up shocker for me, it scared the bejeezus out me when that live round went flying out of the action and I was standing there holding this rifle in my living room with my two girls innocently looking up at me with big blue eyes. SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY I can’t say it enough!
5. This was my first real hunting trip in nearly a year after my spinal surgery last December. I didn’t realize how rusty my skills had become. Hunting is like anything else if you don’t do it enough you forget things and loose your edge. So hopefully this was my trip to get the kinks out. Elk season starts in two weeks.
Here are some pictures of the buck.
I want you to notice the difference of the quality of the pictures from where my buddy took the shots and where I took the pictures. Notice how much nicer the buck looks when you get as close as you can, as low as you can and you use the flash to lighten and expose the antlers. Same buck, same camera, different lighting and angle.
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