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Huntin' n Killin' With Stu n Adam - Kaibab Scouting
By NAHC Member: Stu Farish
Well, I need to catch up and fill in with our scouting trips. I've been so busy with the new job and getting ready for the hunt that I let that slip.
We went up for Labor Day weekend and spent 3 days riding all over the top of the mountain, looking over the terrain and habitat, also looking over any deer we saw. Mostly, that was does with fawns, but we did see a few bucks. Unfortunately, none very big, most were spikes and small forkies.
At one point, I was walking on a logging road when I saw something small moving up ahead of me. It turned out to be a small porcupine, the only one I've ever seen. He was about 18 inches long. I hollered for Adam to bring his camera and grabbed a stick, so I could keep him from taking off before we could get some pics. They must have some serious claws on them, because I couldn't turn him over, at least not without using a great deal of force, and I didn't want to hurt him. I just wanted to see what they looked like on the ground side, but he was able to hang on harder than I was willing to pry, so he won.
On another forest road, in an area with some open meadows, we saw 2 flocks of turkeys, maybe 20 or so birds each, some hens and a lot of poults (this years young).
Altogether, we drove about 500 miles of forest and logging roads that weekend, and while we found some areas that looked good, nothing really good stood out to us.
We planned on going back in a couple of weeks, during bow season, to scout some and see how other hunters worked the area, but Adam had some conflicts come up and we didn't make it. We finally got to go up on friday, Oct 15th, after work. This was 2 weeks before the hunt started.
For this trip, I had studied the Forest Service and topographical maps, and had thought that a designated Wilderness Area might prove to be good, so we headed for that. About 1:00AM, we ended up at the dead end of the road we wanted, only it was a few miles in the wrong spot, farther west than we had intended. We decided to crash there until dawn, then take a look around. As it wasn't too cold, we decided to just lay out our sleeping bags and not bother with the tent, because we'd probably move to a different area during the day. That worked pretty good, until about 4:00AM, when the wind picked up and the temperature dropped to about 20 degrees. We finally crawled out about 7:00AM and discovered that we were on the edge of a barren desert canyon that dropped off about 2500 feet below us. We'd missed a turn in the dark a few miles back, so we jumped back in the Jeep and went back to it. This road took us to the area we wanted, but it looked like it would be a poor area for the early hunt, unless some serious snow moved in before then, so we picked a couple of other areas and went off in search of better hunting grounds.
Unfortunately, while they showed some promise, nothing really struck us as being really good, so we had lunch and studied the map some more. This is when I noticed a road that I'd missed on our last trip. It went north, above a spring located in the bottom of a canyon, so I matched the F.S. map with a topo map. It turned out this road went up on top of a high ridge above the spring and had several ridges running north from it. It looked really good, so we took off.
Almost immediately, we started thinking it looked really good. Soon, we bumped into a group of bedded deer, including what looked to be a decent sized buck, though we didn't get a real good look at him. Shortly, we bumped into some more deer. At first I thought they were does, but they turned out to be a group of small bucks. For the rest of the day, everywhere we went we bumped into deer, a few does with fawns, but mostly bucks. The last group was about 12 to 14 deer, as near as I could tell they were all bucks. Most were small bucks, but 2 or 3 looked pretty good. We didn't want to pressure them out of the area, so we backed off and made camp for the night
Again, it got down to about 20 that night, and the wind got up so it sounded like a freight train in the trees. This time we had the tent, but we used a tent Adam got from Frank, a cabin tent that proved to be more suited to the summer, as the windows (by design) were open along the top and the door was open all along the bottom. This encouraged the nice, cold air to come on through, but in the morning we used a small propane heater I have to take the chill off when we got up.
We pretty much decided we would camp and hunt this area, and hope that it didn't get too much pressure, so we broke camp, looked around some more and then headed home.
As a result of our experience with the tent, and the Kaibab's history of having cold, nasty weather during this hunt (including blizard conditions) Adam decided that he wanted a better tent, so he bought a Cabela's Alaskan Guide tent, which turned out to be an excellent tent during our hunt. We used the airy cabin tent as a cook tent, and this combination worked really well for us.
The next weekend, we each made range trips, checked our scopes with fresh ammo and started sorting out gear to take along. Adam decided that he'd like a tree stand, too, so he got a Tree Lounge in and managed to get it painted before the hunt. Our plan was to work early thursday and try to leave early, maybe to get up there before dark and start getting camp set. Adam thought he'd get away around 11:00AM, and I figured on 2:00PM, but it turned out a bit different when the day came.
Huntin' n Killin' With Stu n Adam - Kaibab, the hunt
Thursday:
The day before the hunt, on thursday, Oct 28, we both went to work, our gear piled in our garages. The plan was to bail out as early as possible, go home and load up, then go. As it turned out, I was able to leave work at 11:00AM, Adam wasn't so lucky. I ended up on the Interstate about 1:40PM, and Adam thought he'd be about an hour or 2 behind.
The run to Flagstaff was quick and uneventfull, where I turned east onto I-40. Briefly, my thoughts went back to the east: if I stayed on this road about 1500 miles, it would take me back to my family and friends I left behind in TN. Maybe one day I'd make that drive, but not today. Today, my destiny awaits to the north. How little I knew...
Shortly after getting through Flagstaff on Highway 89, headlights are required day and night, so I tuned mine on. After getting through the mountains and covering a chunk of desert in Navajo land, I came to some road construction where they were repaving the highway. I ended up sitting there for about 20 minutes when they flagged us to go through. As I accelerated and hit third gear, I discovered that I had a problem. A serious problem. The engine started cutting out when I gave it gas, though it would idle fine. It occured to me that my lights were on, so I killed them and it suddenly gained power and got up to cruising speed.
Now, the truck had broke down on the way to work tuesday morning. Firestone was right there, so I had them check it out. They told me the battery had failed, but it was charging fine, so I bought a new battery from them and had it installed. As far as I knew, it had been fine, but here I was with a 2 day old battery, in the middle on a desert with the nearest repairs hours away, and no electrical system on my truck. If I turned on my lights, even a turn signal, the engine would cut out. So I turned off everything, radio, CD player, AC fan, EVERYTHING that sucked current. I knew there was a gas station after crossing the Colorodo River at Glenn Canyon, then nothing else until getting to Jacob Lake Lodge on top of the Kaibab. About 40 miles seperates them, and I knew I didn't have enough gas to make it without stopping. But if I stopped, the truck might not start again, and I had no jumper cables.
To make it even better, I was stuck behind a couple of cars with CA tags on them, and they were pissing me off. Constantly faster/slower, slowing down in no-passing zones, speeding up where I might get around. While the truck could still do 80 or so, I didn't have any power left, so passing someone doing 65 or better was out of the question. I was racing a setting sun, with a mandatory stop for gas, and stuck behind these people. Finally, when we turned off on 89A towards the Kaibab, one car kept going north and I was able to get around the other and made a pretty good run down to the station.
I'd waited 3 years to get this tag, 3 years to hunt deer. Sometimes it seems that fate conspires to squeeze all the joy out of life. I decided that I wasn't having any of it, there simply HAD to be a way to make the top of the mountain. I could fix the truck later, if I could only get up there.
I left it running and filled up, and the store had some jumper cables, so I bought a pair. I asked about the possibility of repairs or at least charging the battery, but there was nothing closer than Page or Jacob Lake. Since Page was almost as far away, and in the wrong direction, I decided to keep heading for Jacob Lake. I knew that they had a garage and could charge a battery. They also were on the boundary of my hunting unit, so if everything else went wrong, I could leave on foot and hunt from there. The only questions were:
1) Would the truck keep running another 40 miles or so?
2) Could I possibly make that 40 miles before the sun fully set?
Question 1 was a crap shoot. Question 2 was almost certainly "NO", but since that was the closest source of help anyway, I figured that I had little to lose by trying, so off I went. As I hauled butt across the desert I saw a pickup ahead of me, even as the sun dropped lower in the sky. As I closed on the truck I was struck with a desperate plan: if I could stay with him, I could see the road by his lights, should it get dark on us. I caught him, and stayed back a bit. I didn't want him to think I was tailgating him. We reached the base of the mountain while it was still a bit light, but getting dark fast. I didn't think we'd make the top before full dark. As we wound our way up, I found that my plan worked very well. I could see, both by his head and tail lights, both the road and the sides, should my truck crap out and need parking. This could be important, as in some places there was plenty of room to pull over, in others there was absolutely none. Higher we climbed, 4000, 5000, 6000 feet, and it's DARK! But I'm keeping up and it's working, finally we get up on top and I know the lodge is just a few miles away.
Of course, this is when my plan started to fail.
With less power being used to climb, the truck ahead sped up. Unfortunately, mine would no longer do that. When I stepped on the gas, it sputtered and started to cut out, though it would still cruise a bit slower. They were about a half mile ahead of me when I saw them pass the sign I needed, the one that said Hwy 67 was 1/2 mile ahead. That's where the lodge is. Almost there, so close to the shop, a truck passed me headed back east. No sooner did he pass me than I saw him hit his lights. Those special ones up top, the blue and red ones, while he pulled a U-turn. I figured that he could write the ticket in the parking lot just as well as the side of the highway, and spare me a towing fee, so I went on, signaled by hand and coasted to a stop in a dead truck in front of the service bay.
The ticket for driving without headlights in northern AZ is \\$55, by the way. He wasn't very happy with me.
The shop put it on a charger, left it on for about 2 hours, until they closed at 9:00PM. Figured Adam would be along by then, but no sign of him. I had met another hunter in the diner, who was hunting/camping alone and bored, didn't want to go back to camp alone when they closed up the lodge. So I got him to follow me, just to make sure I didn't get stuck on the mountain in the dark. I had to go south on 67 about 13 miles, then turn off and go west on a Forest Service road, about 9 miles, to where we wanted to camp. I lost my lights just before the turns. Same deal, running, but no lights. He agreed to stay close behind and be my lights, and we'd try to make my intended camp sight. Longest 9 miles I've ever driven, Pucker Factor about 8.5, but it worked. I parked the truck, it died, and that's where it sat. My helper left, to go back to his camp. No sign of Adam, I was first in, so I unloaded my truck.
Got my tent out, started to set it up. I simply could NOT get the poles to cooperate this night. While I have set it up alone, many times, it's big enough to not be easy, and for some reason I just couldn't get the tent up. After about 20 minutes of this, Adam zipped up in his Jeep, so I rolled up my tent and we got him unloaded and set up his new tent. Set up his cabin tent for cooking, and by the time we had camp somewhat organized and crashed, it was 1:30AM.
Friday:
We set the alarm, but when it went off just slapped it into submission and went back to sleep. After sunrise we heard about 25 shots in the area, mostly behind camp, in the areas we planned to hunt. Well, so much for the element of surprise. After a while we got up and had breakfast, then decide to go ahead and deal with the truck.
Fortunately, I had brought a basic set of tools, so we pulled the alternator and battery out, then went to the lodge to use the phone. The battery was by Interstate, the alternator an Auto Zone lifetime warranty part, so we needed an Interstate dealer and an Auto Zone. Turned out that Flagstaff was the closest for both. We decided that we'd go ahead, make the run and be done with it.
The alternator tested fine. The battery didn't and was replaced, but there was no way to be sure if the problem was a bad battery, or if the battery was killed by another problem in the system. I bought a meter, a post/cable cleaning brush, and a few other tools, plus new belts, and off we went. All of this put us back in camp after dark, so we had no idea how much shooting had taken place in the afternoon.
So we missed opening day, but we felt confident that we'd see some bucks. HAH!!!
Saturday:
Got up at 4:00AM, had breakfast. Waited until it grayed up a bit, then slowly worked back along one ridge behind camp, until it ended. Lots of sign, no deer. Crossed through a bottom, up onto another ridge. This was some STEEP, nasty stuff! As we worked our way up onto this ridge, we found some beds and elk droppings. Found a couple places on this ridge and set up for a while. Then worked our way back to camp. Made lunch, then I decided to tackle the truck again. We got everything installed, started it up. Seemed to be charging OK, hard to tell for sure. One problem I'd found was heavily corroded battery cable ends. When Firestone installed the new battery, they had not cleaned them at all. Maybe, it was charging fine, but enough current couldn't get to the battery due to the corrosion. I scraped and brushed them pretty clean, but still have to have the truck checked out to be sure it's right. As a precaution, we pulled the cables off the battery and simply left the truck where it sat until time to come home.
For the afternoon, we took tree stands and went back out. Adam set up where he could watch the flats up top, I went down into a bottom. A bit after 5:00PM, I had 2 does appear down in the bottom, but no bucks.
Sunday:
Up and out again, Adam went back to the area he was watching. I went back to the point of a ridge where it looked like escape cover. Spent the morning watching and still-hunting extreemly slowly. Heard some coyotes running something nearby, but never saw anything. We heard coyotes howling every morning and evening, no matter where we were. This mountain is covered with packs of them, everywhere. Adam saw a doe and fawn, but no bucks showed up.
We're not even seeing many does. It's as if someone flipped a switch and just shut the deer down, I've never seen anything like it. One problem is road hunters.
RANT ON:
I knew that there would be some, but wasn't prepared for just how many there are. All day long, from sunrise to sunset, someone is riding the roads looking for a deer to shoot. Some will get out and off the road to shoot, which, while I regard as a distasteful way to hunt, is legal in AZ. Others are ready to shoot from the vehicle. We have a red Blazer, every morning at dawn, rides the road behind camp, the windows rolled down and 4 barrels sticking out. I talked to them one morning. They told me that "this is how it's done here", if you want to shoot a buck, you have to road hunt. Well, maybe, but I always thought that when you went hunting you got out of your truck and out in the woods. It's one thing to (legally) bump into a buck while driving, get out and off the road, make a stalk or something and shoot your deer, simply as an act of chance. The majority of these road-hunters apparently don't bother stand or still hunting in the woods. Their preferred tactic is to ride around ALL DAMNED DAY LONG hoping to get a shot this way. Pardon my soap box, but in my opinion, if that's the best you can do, you haven't learned how to hunt and certainly have no concern over the concept of "fair chase". Granted, it's a way to take a deer, but I don't think it's anything to be proud of, which these people seemed to be. Why do they bother wearing camo? So the picture looks good if they shoot something?
RANT OFF
We decide to try another spot for the afternoon, so we ride down our road a few miles, and take another logging road out a ridge, where the cover is thicker and visibility for road hunters reduced. We find a closed logging road on this one, go out it until it ends on a point, then split up and climb some trees. We have lots of sign, heavy trails, decent visibilty. And no deer, not one. About an hour before dark, I notice something moving down in front of me, about 100 yards away, but I can't tell what it is. Looking through my binoculars, I see it to be a coyote. He's standing there, swinging his head from side to side, with a very stupid look on his face. I figure if he's that confused, I have a solution, but by the time I put my binocs down and my rifle up, he's gone. I don't see him again, but hear a pack start howling about 100 yards to my right. I try a predator call, but none come in. Darkness settles, with no deer seen and no shots fired.
Monday:
Adam decides to go back where he's seen the doe and fawn, hoping a buck will eventually show. I decide to watch a bottom closer to camp, from the ground, so he drops me off near my spot, and drives on back with his tree stand. He'll be about 1 1/2 miles back from me. By hunting the tops in this way, he's been "entertained" by watching all the road hunters come by, where I've been mostly in places where I can hear but not see them. I'm getting to the point where if I hear one more rattling ass diesel truck I might just come unstuck...
I watch an area for a while, where 3 drainages come together, but nothing moves. I decide to still-hunt for a while, and see what sign I can find. The bucks are around here somewhere, but we obviously haven't figured out how to locate them. I find tons of sign, tracks, heavy trails, etc. I follow the contour of a point, below a trail, and cross to the next point. As I slip around it, I find where someone dressed a deer 2 or more days ago. I figure I might see a deer, learn something about how they use the land, or possibly bump one to Adam, as I'm gradually closing the gap between us. I do learn a bit, but don't see any, and don't push any to Adam. Finally, I get to where he parked. A doe spooks up on the next ridge, about 100 yards from me. Had she been a buck, I have the opportunity for a good shot, but no matter how hard I stare, no antlers are on her head. Adam has seen his doe and fawn again, but still no bucks.
We break for lunch back in camp and try to figure out our best chances for the afternoon. We've been blessed/cursed with weather. Blessed for camping, as it's been great. Down to about freezing at night, up to 65 or 70, clear and sunny during the day. From 9:00AM to sundown flying insects are a pain in the ass, more so as we didn't expect them and had no good repellant. I have a small bottle of Repel. It keeps them form biting me, but they still swarm around me a lot. Adam decides to go back to the same stand, I decide to watch the area where I jumped the doe. Adam sees his doe and fawn again, with a bonus: a hen turkey comes out and parades around for a while. I, once again, see nothing. Right at sunset, I get up and go back up top to look at the flats I can't see from down the side of the ridge. Glassing across the logging road, I see a deer heading away from me. I don't get a very good look, but if it has antlers, they're super small, as nothing on its head stands out as it passes an opening, in siluette with the setting sun behind it. I never see it again.
Back to camp for dinner. This is getting frustrating, as nothing we've tried has worked. At all. Obviously, there are bucks in these woods, the question is "How do we find them?"
It's a question for which we don't seem to have an answer. We have 5 days left to hunt, as we'll have to break camp and go home on Sunday, deer or not. I want to leave early enough to get home before dark, as I'm not sure my truck will have lights for very long. Maybe it will, maybe not, but saturday night is our end for this hunt. So what do we do? One thought is that every day brings less pressure on the deer, as people pack up and go home, for whatever reason: they have a deer, can't stay, give up, etc. We were hoping to already be seeing the benefit of this, but not yet.
Tuesday:
Adam has decided to try his same spot again. I'm going back to the bottom, but with my tree stand, so I won't be tempted to wander around. I run Adam back and drop him off and go back to park behind camp. I find a truck sitting here, the red Blazer that Adam has been seeing. I stop, inform them that I have a guy set up at the end of the ridge and am about to set up in the bottom myself, ask where they're setting up? They inform me that they are set up, just waiting for enough light to ride the road. You might say the conversation went downhill from there, though it didn't get too hostile.
Once again, I see nothing bigger than a squirrel. For a change, Adams doe and fawn don't show. When we break for lunch, we decide to go to the check station and ask for any tips.
So far, pretty much all of the Game & Fish personnel I've talked to have been pretty helpful. Not this old fart. I think he's been sucking the lemons of life, he seemed to be simply marking time to retirement. We talked to him about road hunters, apparently there's not much interest in enforcement there.
However, some people brought deer in to be checked while we were there, so we talked to some of them. One guy told us where he was hunting, said they'd been seeing bucks every day, including some decent ones. Another guy said we should be looking for water tanks, and the Burnt Corral area was seeing good buck activity. So we went there, found a remote tank where Adam set up for the day. About 5 minutes after he climbed up a tree, some other guy came and set up on the ground, didn't appear to know he was around. I knew where a couple of other tanks were. One couldn't really be hunted well in the evening, due to the terrain and sun angle. The other had a hunter on it already. So I rode back to a third, it had a hunter, too. I started riding some of the back roads, desperately looking for a spot that I thought I could watch the last 2 hours of the day. Finally just stopped and hiked over to the back side of a ridge. Deer sign EVERYWHERE, tracks, trails, droppings, all fresh. Sat till dark, no deer. Saw what appeared to be an American Bald Eagle, fairly close, but couldn't be sure. Picked Adam up, just as we were loading his stand in the truck (in the dark) I heard a deer below the tank jump. A minute later we saw a doe and fawn cross the road in our headlights. Fun's fun, but we've pretty much reached the point where any legal buck is in trouble, should we see it. We started out fully intending to pass any smaller bucks, but willing to lower our standards if we hadn't seen anything bigger. Well, we've used half our hunt without seeing a single antlered buck and figured it was standard lowering time! Still, we've got our pride. We've been hunting hard, on the ground, in stands, and NOT riding around road-hunting. We might get skunked, but if so, we'd do it the right way.
Adam is thinking about going in the morning to glass the nasty country over towards the wilderness area, but that idea doesn't appeal to me. I'm thinking about the land on the south side of our road. There are very few logging roads over there, so most of it is safe from road hunters. The only way to hunt it is on foot, so I'm planning to hike a couple of miles east of camp, then go in and still hunt back towards camp in the morning.
Wednesday:
As we're getting ready to leave at dawn, Adam asks about the other road, the one the guy with the deer told us about. We've never looked that over, so I get out the topo maps and find it. It looks good, a long ridge running north and south, with lots of ridges splitting off on both side. Lots of flats, some nice saddles, so we change plans and ride over to check it out. There are still a few camps, but most have left. It looks really good. We ride as far north as possible, until it becomes a Jeep trail and dead-ends on a point. Thinking that there were better, more huntable areas back down the road, we start back, and after we get a ways south a deer crosses the road. Adam saw an antler, but I don't know it's buck. I jump out with my rifle, while Adam digs his out, and try to get a better look at it. I can see the body, but not the head, so I get off to one side and use a large pine for cover. I gain 50 yards or so on the deer when it gets nervous and runs off. As it passes through a small opening about 100 yards away, I see a left antler, tall and wide. It was a buck, maybe a good one. But it's gone now. Maybe. We take our rifles and slip off in the same direction, hoping to get another look at him, but come to the edge where the ridge drops sharply into a bottom. The vegetation is thick, visibility limited. I figure there's no way to get on that buck, it's too thick and he'll be watching his back trail. Looking around, I see that the area has lot's of sign, FRESH sign, as in that morning. And it's only 8:50AM now. Heavy trails cross, east and west, the way the buck went, and also run north and south, paralleling the bottom. A logging road goes east, where the buck went, so we ride back. We discover that there's a natural land bridge there, not a bottom, and the farther we go the thicker the cover. It seems to me that it's a natural crossing, a funnel. The deer could be feeding out in the flats, then bedding in the thick stuff during the heat of the day. Also, it's the easiest place for them to cross without going through the bottom.
A decision is made. We'll go back to camp, eat a huge early lunch, then come back and stay all day. On the way out we pass a camp, and see that it's Rick, the guy that told us about the area, and his friends, so we stop and visit a bit. The other 2 guys are still trying to fill a tag, but they're seeing bucks every day. Just being picky about what they shoot at. We go and eat, then come back. By 1:15PM, I'm about 15 feet in the air (and wishing I'd cut a few limbs and gotten higher) and settled in. Adam is somewhere across the road, maybe 200 yards away and also up a tree. Even with the elevation visibility is limited. This is the only climbable tree in my area, the others are all too big, too little, or have too many branches, and I don't want to saw that much. I think my tree is in a good spot, but wish I'd cut about 4 more branches and gotten higher, I could see better and be less likely to get picked off by a deer. A 100 yard shot would be very long here, and only in a couple of places. Mostly, a deer would be right on me before I could even see it.
I've got almost 5 hours left, and think I likely won't see anything here until 4:00 or later, so I take out a book. For long stand sits, I'll read a paragraph or 2, look around, and read some more. I have some squirrels and chipmunks entertain me through the afternoon, but no deer yet. The shadows get longer, and I start thinking about when I should stop reading in order to give full attention to my surroundings. A bit after 4:00PM, I hear a shot, close by. I key my radio and ask Adam if he shot. He replies that yes, he's shot a 2 by 2 forkie.
Knowing that Adam wasn't taught how to dress a deer the one time he got one before, about 14 years ago, I tell him I'll come down and help him with his deer. I think it's more important to get that one taken care of promptly than to stay and hunt 2 more hours and deal with it then. I can always come back and try this spot again in the morning.
On approaching the buck, I find that he's shot a 1 1/2 year old forkie, similar in size to a 1 1/2 year old whitetail in TN. We tag and dress the deer, taking time to explain what-how-why, then load up and go check it in, after showing it to Rick and crew. This puts us back in camp after dark, but Adam treated for burgers at the lodge while we were up there, so we don't have to cook tonight. We hang the deer and get it in a game bag to keep the flies and bees off of it, and crash. In the morning Adam will drop me off. I'll hunt the same tree I was in, but I'll cut the extra limbs and climb higher this time. We're 50% for our camp, last year the hunt success was 50% for the unit, so now we're looking to beat the odds. I have 3 days left.
Thursday:
Alarm at 4:00AM, I light the heater and wait for the tent to warm. I decide not to bother with breakfast, I have water and Cliff bars in my pack. I can only hunt until 10:00 or 11:00 anyway, as it will warm up and we need to get Adams buck skinned and in his cooler on ice, so if I don't have one, I'm coming back to camp anyway. About 5:00AM we leave camp, which gets me dropped off about 5:30. I quietly set up my stand, climb up and cut those limbs. I finish setting up before light, and settle in to watch and listen. I'm about 20 feet up, a bit better visibility, but worried that any close-in deer might nail me. Just before 7:00 I hear a deer. It's walking on the other side of the road (the road here is a dirt 2-track, more logging road than anything), sounds like it's coming towards me. I get turned in the stand, just in case. After a bit, it crosses the road and I see it near me, but still can't tell if it's a buck. Only 15 yards away, but too many pine limbs in the way. Finally, I see its head: a doe. Only one, no others come along. She passes right behind me, giving no indication of awareness of my presence, and crosses back to the thick cover, as I expected. Now, I can only hope she's not the only one for the day.
Squirrels and chipmunks keep me engaged as they scamper about, feed, and bark at whatever. I hear a truck coming, finally see it, a Jeep Cherokee with 2 people. They don't look like they're road hunting, more like they're looking for a place to set up. It's 7:27AM, and they keep on north. From time to time I can hear them, as they ride the little side roads in the area. Finally, they come back, stop near me for a minute, then head back south, thankfully away from my area. It's about 7:45 or so.
A few minutes later, I hear a squirrel behind me. I turn my head and look over my right shoulder, to see a buck step out from behind a large pine! I don't even try to count points, it obviously a BIG buck. His neck looked like a tree trunk, with thick, massive shoulders. The rack was somewhat tall and wide, certainly plenty to be legal. The only problem was I couldn't shoot him! He was about to pass me, 90 degrees to my right, and I'm right handed. Even though I was 20 feet up, I was afraid that he'd see me if I tried to turn, or hear me with those giant ears. I could let him pass me, and hope I could move then, with nothing going wrong, but I didn't like that either, as something might happen to prevent the shot. So I did the only thing that made any sense to me: I slowly turned my rifle over, brought it to my left shoulder, eased the safety off, took careful aim and shot him at 20 yards. While I've practiced this shot over the years, this is the only time I've ever actually used it while hunting.
At the shot, he hunkered down briefly, then slowly walked about 30 yards. While he did this, I swapped the rifle back, worked the bolt and got set up for a second shot, if needed. I got him in the scope and watched as he walked into a small thicket of pine saplings. When he finally stopped, I had an opening for a clear shot, but as I knew the first shot to be good, I didn't want to shoot again. Still, I didn't want him getting down into that bottom, either, so I settled on him and thought "If you take one more step, you're getting another", and watched. After a few seconds he got wobbly, then just fell over, dead. I checked my watch, it was 7:53AM.After unloading my rifle, I lowered everything down, then climbed down, reloaded, and went to be sure he was dead. I couldn't see him clearly, as the small pines blocked my view until I was right on him. When I did see him, I had trouble believing my eyes. I had just bagged the best buck of my life! In body size he looked huge, I figured he had to go 150 pounds, dressed. The rack was a 5 by 4, plus he has decent brow tines, one is about 2 inches, the other about 3, and a small kicker point on the burr of one antler. Outside spread a bit over 21 inches.
After tagging, the Last Bite, and a little Jaegermeister, it was time to get to work, so I packed up my stand and got him dressed. The shot centered the bulge of the ribs, taking both lungs. The load was a 180 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip, in a 30-06 at max charge (approx 2700 - 2800 fps, by the manual). The bullet performed perfectly, totally destroying both lungs and exiting the far ribs. The exit hole was about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.
After washing up with water from my Camelback, I grabbed my rifle and hiked up to Rick's camp. He was up, with his son, so we visited a bit and took his truck to pick up my deer. We grabbed it by the legs, but couldn't get it high enough to get in the truck, so we set it down, then grabbed it by the shoulders and rump. This allowed us to get it high enough, then we picked up my gear and went back to camp. After a while his friends came back in, and finally Adam pulled up, considerably later than he'd planned. It turned out he'd ran over something and slashed a tire, and it took a while to get to his jack to change it.
After visiting a bit, we managed to fold the buck up enough to fit in his Jeep (a Wrangler), then we dropped my gear off in camp and went to check him in. On the state scales he weighed 185 pounds, field dressed. This would make his live weight somewhere around 230 or so. I weigh 205.
Back in camp, we took pictures, then got busy. Skinned Adams buck and then bagged it, them mine. Got most of mine into coolers before dark, except the hind legs. One item of note on my buck: He'd been shot once before. Not this year, it was completely healed, but at some time in the past a bullet had entered one side, between 2 ribs and just below the spine, yet far enough back to have missed the shoulder blades. This is high enough up to miss the lungs as well. On exiting, the bullet had broken one rib. If whoever made that shot had placed it better, this buck would not have grown to be the bun-kicker I encountered last thursday.
Friday:
Blissfully slept in (6:00AM). We finished with mine, then got Adams forkie into his cooler. After that we tanked up on a huge breakfast, figuring it to hold us until we got home, and broke camp. Got the trucks loaded, and it's magic time. Hook up my battery cables and see if it starts. It does, so I'm off to the lodge to buy ice for my bucks head and cape, riding in a tub in the passenger seat. After Adam finishes loading his truck, he catches up to me and off we go. Left the lodge at 1:37PM, MAYBE enough time to get home before dark.
Of course, you just knew THAT wasn't gonna happen, right?
More construction in Navajo land, didn't cost us too much time. Then we hit Flagstaff, and I swear, we have less traffic in Phoenix during rush hour. And that was just getting to the turn-off to I-40, so we didn't go through town. Then, just as soon as we turned onto I-17 south, it turned into a parking lot. Took us about 30 minutes to go a mile, finally got through that, but too much time had been lost. I was once again in a race against the sun, with no possibility of winning. Only this time, I was on a busy Interstate Highway, with 2 coolers full of deer meat, a tub with a head iced down, and dropping into a desert at lower elevation and higher temps. All I could do was keep my lights off as long as possible and hope the truck would make it the rest of the way. We made it past Camp Verde with nothing more than running lights, but as we climbed the mountain pass coming out I decided it was dark enough and hit my headlights. Then all I could do was keep running south as fast as possible.
As luck would have it, we made it. I still don't know, as I write this, if the problem has been truly fixed or not. I'll have to get the truck into a shop and have it checked out to be sure. But I really don't care too much, as any problem can be solved, and the head is safely at the taxidermist, the meat at home. So a breakdown now is merely an inconvenience.
Someone recently told me that they'd like to just follow me around for week, because "things happen to you, and it's interesting."
Ya think?
