Due to a SNAFU with my brother and dad I wasn't able to put in for a leftover deer tag in the unit I normally hunt. I ended up getting a late October tag for a different unit down on the border that I've never been to.
I studied maps, talked to a friend that's hunted that unit a few times and drove down there a week before the hunt for a quick recon of a couple areas.
Origionally my dad was supposed come down with me but something came up at his work last minute so I had to go down solo.
I left my house at 4:30 Saturday morning and was parked at my first hunting spot by 8:30. I put my pack on, loaded my 257 Wby and hiked to the top of a nearby hill that overlooked dirt tank in a small basin. A young fork-horn came into the water at 9:30. The distance to the buck was 480 yards, I could have closed the distance to 400 and been more comfortable with the shot but I didn't want the hunt to end so soon.
I watched the buck drink and feed until two other hunters came in from the other side of the basin and spooked him. I continued to glass the basin till about 11:30 and called it quits. One buck spotted the first morning seemed like a good start to my little advendure.
My wife and dad didn't want me to camp in the boondocks by myself with all the illegal traffic so close to the border so I made reservations to camp at Patagoina Lake State Park for the first two nights and would pay by the day after that if needed. For the record I hate camping at busy campgrounds but if I ended up staying all week the idea of being able to jump in the lake to cool off or take a hot shower did hold some appeal.
I left the campground at 3pm for the afternoon hunt and headed to different area. After parking the truck on a grassy plateau I walked about a mile up a two-track to where plateau drops off into steep ridges and canyons. I spent a few hours glassing from several different vantage points and didn't see anything but a few hawks sailing on the breeze. I was a little frustrated as the sun began to set because the areas I was glassing looked buckey.
I headed back to the truck before it got dark so I could glass along a low brushy ridge that parallelled the road. To my suprise I spotted two dark shapes out in the waist high grass just below the brush line. Upon closer inspection with the binoculars they were two small coues deer bucks. I looked about 40 yards to the left and saw a much bigger buck and my heart really started to pound. The light was fading fast but I could tell his antlers were as wide as his ears and his body was much larger than the other two. Just the kind of buck I was looking for.
My mind was quickly made up, I was going to try and take him. I started to panic a little bit when I realized the grass was too high to shoot off my pack frame from a sitting or kneeling position and the buck was too far out to shoot off hand.
"Calm down and think" I told myself, "Duh... pull out your binocular tripod and shoot off that."
Through the mil-dot scope the buck looked to be about 300 yards. I waited for the buck to turn broadside, and my margin of wobble stayed within his heart/lung area and I pulled the trigger.
BOOM... Weatherby fireball... silence... THWACK!
The buck dissapeared into the grass. His two partners ran around a bit at the shot then cautiously walked over to their fallen comarade and stood over him in bewilderment like, "What the heck happened to Steve, he just fell over" It was nice of them to mark where he fell otherwise it may have taken me a while to find him in the grass.
I was overjoyed when I walked up and put my hands on him. He's not a monster but he's a nice mature deer and that's exactly what I was hoping to shoot on this hunt. The bullet hit a little far back in the liver/diaphram/lung area but high enough to take out the spine.
At this point it was a little after 6pm and I knew I would have my work cut out for me as I had to cut the deer up, load it in the pack, hike back to the truck and drive back to the campground before they locked the gate at 10pm. I rolled into camp at 9:30. Makers Mark and Coke, burgers and beans never tasted so good.
(I finally figured out how to post some pics and I did a little magic to remove the old hanging tounge from the first pic.)
I studied maps, talked to a friend that's hunted that unit a few times and drove down there a week before the hunt for a quick recon of a couple areas.
Origionally my dad was supposed come down with me but something came up at his work last minute so I had to go down solo.
I left my house at 4:30 Saturday morning and was parked at my first hunting spot by 8:30. I put my pack on, loaded my 257 Wby and hiked to the top of a nearby hill that overlooked dirt tank in a small basin. A young fork-horn came into the water at 9:30. The distance to the buck was 480 yards, I could have closed the distance to 400 and been more comfortable with the shot but I didn't want the hunt to end so soon.
I watched the buck drink and feed until two other hunters came in from the other side of the basin and spooked him. I continued to glass the basin till about 11:30 and called it quits. One buck spotted the first morning seemed like a good start to my little advendure.
My wife and dad didn't want me to camp in the boondocks by myself with all the illegal traffic so close to the border so I made reservations to camp at Patagoina Lake State Park for the first two nights and would pay by the day after that if needed. For the record I hate camping at busy campgrounds but if I ended up staying all week the idea of being able to jump in the lake to cool off or take a hot shower did hold some appeal.
I left the campground at 3pm for the afternoon hunt and headed to different area. After parking the truck on a grassy plateau I walked about a mile up a two-track to where plateau drops off into steep ridges and canyons. I spent a few hours glassing from several different vantage points and didn't see anything but a few hawks sailing on the breeze. I was a little frustrated as the sun began to set because the areas I was glassing looked buckey.
I headed back to the truck before it got dark so I could glass along a low brushy ridge that parallelled the road. To my suprise I spotted two dark shapes out in the waist high grass just below the brush line. Upon closer inspection with the binoculars they were two small coues deer bucks. I looked about 40 yards to the left and saw a much bigger buck and my heart really started to pound. The light was fading fast but I could tell his antlers were as wide as his ears and his body was much larger than the other two. Just the kind of buck I was looking for.
My mind was quickly made up, I was going to try and take him. I started to panic a little bit when I realized the grass was too high to shoot off my pack frame from a sitting or kneeling position and the buck was too far out to shoot off hand.
"Calm down and think" I told myself, "Duh... pull out your binocular tripod and shoot off that."
Through the mil-dot scope the buck looked to be about 300 yards. I waited for the buck to turn broadside, and my margin of wobble stayed within his heart/lung area and I pulled the trigger.
BOOM... Weatherby fireball... silence... THWACK!
The buck dissapeared into the grass. His two partners ran around a bit at the shot then cautiously walked over to their fallen comarade and stood over him in bewilderment like, "What the heck happened to Steve, he just fell over" It was nice of them to mark where he fell otherwise it may have taken me a while to find him in the grass.
I was overjoyed when I walked up and put my hands on him. He's not a monster but he's a nice mature deer and that's exactly what I was hoping to shoot on this hunt. The bullet hit a little far back in the liver/diaphram/lung area but high enough to take out the spine.
At this point it was a little after 6pm and I knew I would have my work cut out for me as I had to cut the deer up, load it in the pack, hike back to the truck and drive back to the campground before they locked the gate at 10pm. I rolled into camp at 9:30. Makers Mark and Coke, burgers and beans never tasted so good.
(I finally figured out how to post some pics and I did a little magic to remove the old hanging tounge from the first pic.)
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