Montana Whitetails--Family Fun

[LukeDuke]

I was going through and cleaning up some pictures on the camera and came across these. We were able to harvest a couple of nice central MT whitetails at my parents place this past Thanksgiving. Only a couple more months and we will be in the mountains chasing elk. Can’t wait!!View attachment 72442

 

[MooseCaboose]

Those are some great bucks. congrats. Tell the story if you have time. People here love reading stories.

 

[Lostinthewoods]

Awesome bucks!

 

[Big Fin]

Cool stuff. Hard to beat the fun that comes with sitting in a central Montana creek bottom in November.

 

[publichunter1]

Congrats! Looks like a lot of fun.

 

[LukeDuke]

My wife and I normally just purchase non-resident antlerless tags and then pack up the family and head out to Montana for Thanksgiving. We don’t have any elk on the home place, but there is a good herd of whitetails and probably 30-40 mule deer. A few years ago, I was bitten by the archery bug and since then, I started applying for the big game combo. There is nothing that gets me more excited than chasing elk with my bow in September. I have been learning the surrounding elk areas, and haven’t really thought that much about deer these past few seasons.

So last year was no different, except that my wife wanted to hunt deer with me. I told her I would hold off until we were all together. I drove out the weekend before Thanksgiving and she would be flying out with the kids about mid-week. The buck in the top picture tested my patience as I saw him numerous times a day while helping dad around the home place. He was rutting hard and didn’t really care about us.

My wife landed on Tuesday and by Tuesday evening, we were in the field. He was pushing a few smaller bucks around and when he settled in I took the shot. It was a pretty neat experience to share with my wife and 3 year old daughter, but not an overly strenuous hunt. In fact, after I shot him, I thought, dang, why didn’t I just shoot one of the old mule deer bucks with the jacked up racks (poor genetics around our place) and let this guy spread some of his good genes? My wife and daughter were really excited though, so that snapped me back to normalcy pretty quickly.

My father took his buck on the Saturday that I arrived. He usually hunts with mom and they typically try to fill their resident tags before the weather gets too nasty. My father had some cataract issues last year so he had missed a few deer earlier in the season and was pretty down about his shooting. He kept saying that he needs to get his eyes fixed, and of course being the compassionate sons he raised, we would tease him about his eyes being an excuse for just getting old and losing his shooting ability.

Circling back to that Saturday evening….dad and I were standing by his shop, scanning the hay bottom, while discussing work/life/etc. I told him there was a decent buck out there and with it getting towards the end of legal shooting light, he said he couldn’t see how good it was. We were raised to be meat hunters, but a good buck always got the blood pumping.

I convinced dad that we should at least take a walk and get a closer look and maybe take some video of the buck. There were probably 25-30 deer in the hay/creek bottom so it took me a couple of minutes to find him, and when I did, dad let it fly. After the shot, I slapped dad on the back and said you just shot a pretty good buck. His next words…”you better not be f’ing with me, because I couldn’t tell if it was a spike or a good one!” I was laughing so hard, because my dad, my brothers, and I all like to pull pranks on each other, but I would never pull that on him. Needless to say, he was really happy with the deer. He had eye surgery in May and has been laying the hammer down on the coyotes ever since. He will be ready for this season.

I didn’t draw the limited permit this year, so I turned in my big game combo and applied for elk/deer antlerless tags. No horns to chase this year. Here are a couple of screen shots from last years’ Sept and Nov trips. The quality is pretty poor on some of them, because they were live videos and I just did screen shots. We are so grateful that grandpa and grandma settled in Montana. Such a beautiful place. One week from today and we will be making the summer trip out…maybe do some scouting for a doe and a cow!!