Opening Weekend

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Well we had a decent weekend for the firearm opener. Weather was ideal Saturday and Sunday morning. I hunted my usual ridge top that has been left alone all season. I went up there to hang a stand Saturday two weeks ago, and it was littered with rubs, some of which were very large. My buddy and his boy that hunted with us during youth season were invited back, especially since Nate wasn’t able to take a deer during the youth portion. They sat on the complete opposite end of the property from me, but were very familiar with the area since they hunted there in the youth season. Dad went down to his usual “hole” in the bottoms that was also torn up with sign, and our other guest sat out on a ridge finger where we had been getting a bunch of pics. The morning started off pretty quickly, as I had to medium sized does come in at about 7:30. Had them at 20 yards, but elected to pass hoping something bigger would follow their trail. 30 minutes later, I had another lone doe feed by at about 8 yards out and passed her as well. At 9:00 I heard a shot from the opposite corner of the property…NATE!!! I waited a minute and texted Jason to see if that was Nate and got a reply of “Call me.” I knew then he had shot something good. We had a pic of a pretty nice 10 pointer over there at noon on Wednesday the 5th, and Jason said he was pretty sure Nate just shot that deer. I was pumped and told him to wait a bit and let me know when he finds blood. He texted me back and said they had good blood with bubbles in it and they started tracking. Meanwhile, at 9:30, I look to the southwest and see a deer walking north, heading right past me. Another doe, I kept looking behind her and caught movement…another doe. These two were both significantly larger than the previous I had seen but I kept watching behind them. They never looked back or showed any signs of being pursued so at the last possible shooting lane, I placed the cross hairs behind the shoulder of the second doe and eased back on the trigger. At the shot, she jumped with the high rear leg kick, turned and ran right at me and then dropped 20 yards from my stand. With a full antlerless tag, I sat for another hour hoping for some antler but none showed up. Their tracking job had ceased, because the deer crossed our driveway and was heading towards our other hunter, so they backed out. I got down, drug my deer off the mountain and met up with them. The blood trail was very good, not just a trickle, a constant stream, with some pretty good pools along the way. I didn’t think the deer would make it very far…WRONG!!! Larry had come out so we were free to track, but Dad was still on stand. We tracked the deer across the driveway across our old logging road, along the side of the ridge to the finger where we found 5 different beds, all full of blood, but all dry, not super fresh and we were almost three hours after the shot now. Normally, I would have backed out at this point, but we were heading right towards my Dad. I called him on the radio and let him know the situation. We kept tracking, he turned and started heading straight down the hill towards my Dad and we started easing down the side when BOOM!!! I looked at Jason and told him my Dad just likely finished off Nate’s deer. Then a radio call confirmed it. We hustled down the hill to find that Nate had not killed the deer we thought, but instead had killed the giant that we had a few pics of over near where I was hunting. This is the deer I was really hoping to catch up with this year. Unfortunately, he broke the fork off his left G-2, but other than that, this is an exceptional deer. He turned out to be the highest scoring deer taken off our farm, since we moved there in ’92. He rough scored 146 3/8. I am super excited for Nate. The young man passed a spike in youth season hoping to kill something bigger. He was rewarded big time. I don’t think any of us had this in mind though!!!

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Good weekend. Our guys saw plenty but took nothing. We still had a good time as usual.