We'll yesterday was a learning day. Plan was to hike up and bag one but the girl(friend) wanted to help out for a bit and get a good hike in. Cool, she was prepared and had binos 8x. I normally bushwhack and set up but instead we hiked 1 mile further to an opening by the trail to look at the same ridges. We were spotting does right off the start of the hike. Made a nice area to chill out and even made a tarp canopy since we were looking west.
Most of afternoon we were hearing cats down in canyon. Distress calls. That was cool but never saw anything move.
330 pm, I finally saw a deer. Bedded right in the middle of a deer trail. Out in the open. Range with the finder and the closest I can pick up is 1150m. Figured the deer was around 1200m. Told girl no antlers but keep an eye and see if its going up or down. Deer moving at 4pm down. Kind of odd since normally they move up this time. Striking me odd also since the deer is solo. Now Im seeing this deer hobbling (my binos are 10x). So we started calling this deer "gimp". So were following this deer and now I see a group of deer coming up slow. All does I'm thinking. Gimp meets up with the group and sticks with them. Suddenly I'm seeing action of a deer chasing another one around. I tell the girl thats what a buck and a doe looks like in the wild. So she tells me to close it in.
Im hauling through the ridgeline thinking my plan of letting the deer come to me just went out the window. Im rushing not even sure if there was a shooter buck there. Found an opening at 430 pm and glassed them. Still there but they are looking my direction. Ranged them at 800m. Got rifle out and looking at every single one and no buck. See a big doe and guess who's following? Gimp and now I get a glimpse of antlers on him. (my scope is 4-28x) Loosing light, looked at my range card and dialed in come up on the scope but set up was too long. Doe and buck went on to the other side of ridge. Not that I would have taken the 800m shot (temptation was there), but it was sure exciting to set up for it.
Gimp lives on another day...will try again tomorrow.
The whole walk back I'm thinking of what I did wrong. The main thing was not bringing the spotting scope. If I had the scope I could have verified and had another hour of slowly stalking the deer. Now that I think about it, even with the scope at 28x in 1200m range it was very difficult to see antlers due to hazy conditions. Not sure if using a more powerful scope would have worked better or just magnify the haze even more.
Most of afternoon we were hearing cats down in canyon. Distress calls. That was cool but never saw anything move.
330 pm, I finally saw a deer. Bedded right in the middle of a deer trail. Out in the open. Range with the finder and the closest I can pick up is 1150m. Figured the deer was around 1200m. Told girl no antlers but keep an eye and see if its going up or down. Deer moving at 4pm down. Kind of odd since normally they move up this time. Striking me odd also since the deer is solo. Now Im seeing this deer hobbling (my binos are 10x). So we started calling this deer "gimp". So were following this deer and now I see a group of deer coming up slow. All does I'm thinking. Gimp meets up with the group and sticks with them. Suddenly I'm seeing action of a deer chasing another one around. I tell the girl thats what a buck and a doe looks like in the wild. So she tells me to close it in.
Im hauling through the ridgeline thinking my plan of letting the deer come to me just went out the window. Im rushing not even sure if there was a shooter buck there. Found an opening at 430 pm and glassed them. Still there but they are looking my direction. Ranged them at 800m. Got rifle out and looking at every single one and no buck. See a big doe and guess who's following? Gimp and now I get a glimpse of antlers on him. (my scope is 4-28x) Loosing light, looked at my range card and dialed in come up on the scope but set up was too long. Doe and buck went on to the other side of ridge. Not that I would have taken the 800m shot (temptation was there), but it was sure exciting to set up for it.
Gimp lives on another day...will try again tomorrow.
The whole walk back I'm thinking of what I did wrong. The main thing was not bringing the spotting scope. If I had the scope I could have verified and had another hour of slowly stalking the deer. Now that I think about it, even with the scope at 28x in 1200m range it was very difficult to see antlers due to hazy conditions. Not sure if using a more powerful scope would have worked better or just magnify the haze even more.
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