Life on the Ridge: November 2009

"I was so happy!! I even cried a little."

"The deer was not that heavy I could drag it myself.

A coyote scared it out of the bush then boom, dad shot it, the deer that is!

So for supper tonight we are having fresh deer heart, mm mm!"

Above is our hunting trip we went out on today in Blair's own words! We have been hunting the area close to the house for the past couple of weeks, trying to shoot a "deer with horns", since I only had a "buck tag". Yesterday I picked Blair up after school and out we went, we followed some tracks in the fresh snow but we must of spooked the deer because he disappeared into the river valley just as it got dark.

This morning we were out again at first light, it was a great morning, no wind, -6 with 4 inches of fresh snow. As we pulled the truck up the road to our usual parking spot I seen a deer bedded right there, when she got up a buck got up too, right beside her, they hopped the fence and stopped 50 yards out in the field. I couldn't shoot since we were still on the Ridge and only 150 meters from the nearest house.

The deer ran down into the valley and we took up the chase only to spook them again and this time they ran back onto land we didn't have access to, so we decided to push bush to the creek and see if we could scare anything else up. As we got to our blind I had already counted 2 coyotes and had a third coming to my yipes & howls, I was thinking it was time to start hunting coyotes and forget the deer hunting.

As I was lining up a 200 yard shot on a coyote, over his head I noticed our buck from earlier heading back into the valley, I whistled for Blair and we started back the way we came, hoping to catch the buck on his was to the creek.

When we came to the end of the lake, we had a good view and decided to sit and wait, just as I stopped a deer broke through the trees 50 yards in front of us and stopped, it was looking over its shoulder back behind it. Blair and I crouched down and I brought my rifle up to have a look through my scope, I couldn't see antlers but just inside the treeline I could see a coyote watching the deer!

The deer continued to watch the coyote and I tried hard to see if there was any antlers on the deer, not seeing any I put the cross hairs on the 'yote and was just about to shoot him when the deer turned and took a few steps towards us, that's when I seen the horns!

BOOM! The shot echoed across the frozen morning and our buck was down.

I ran to the buck and could hear Blair behind me, bawling his eyes out and yelling at me, "Good job dad! Way to go! Awesome!" When we go to the buck he was down and wasn't getting back up, I looked at Blair and the tears were streaming down his face, "I don't know why I'm crying but I'm so excited!" he yelled out!

After tagging and gutting our little buck we dragged him the 1/4 mile up, out of the coulee to the truck and headed home with a hunting story to tell. This buck was a different one from the one we had spooked earlier in the morning and it looked like the coyote's had him on the run, so thanks to that coyote for bushing our buck out to us!

Now with our deer tag filled, on the last day of the season, we are heading out later to start putting a dent in the local coyote population!