Day 4
We only had one tag left. The plan for the day was to climb back up on top to a glassing point we had found the previous day and spend the time looking over some country that we hadn't been able to see as well during the hunt. The weather did not cooperate. The fog/clouds were thick and for a majority of the day we couldn't see. We put up a tarp and just hung out after a while. The clouds did clear and allow us some time to hunt in the afternoon. We were moving along the top when I looked over at the neighboring mountain and made a comment that it would be tough to go over there, but they were probably some good bucks over there. Less than an hour later while glassing the dsnow picked out a group of bachelor bucks across on that mountain. Three of which looked to be shooters. We felt like we had seen a majority of the bucks that our mountain had to offer so We made a plan to head back down to camp, pack up our gear and meat and head back down into the valley between the two mountains. We would set up a new camp in the valley and hang the meat. The next day we would make a big hike up on top of the neighboring mountain to try to track down a good buck.
We took our time getting down and finally found a spot by a pond in the valley where we would camp for the night. The next morning we were up pretty early and began our ascent, the hike up was steep and thick. The weather wasn't really cooperating much again. It was very hit or miss. It was rainy than it would clear and allows us to see for just a few minutes than rainy again. This hunt really can be a battle of mental toughness. I would just sit there and doze in the rain, but finally, in the afternoon we started to get some patches where we could see and started to pick out some bucks. We'd been able to pull up the weather through the Zoleo and knew the forecast for the next day was very bleak. I had passed a lot of bucks looking for "the one" and it was time to make it happen. We got to a rock outcropping on the backside of the mountain where we could overlook a massive bowl in between two peaks. We glassed up two bucks along with a couple does down in the bottom. One of the bucks was really tall and I could tell he was a mature buck. As I was getting my gun set up for a longer shot the weather moved back in and we had to wait. After about 30 minutes, we got another window in the weather. We located the deer again but they had moved about 100 yards farther away. They were feeding in a small open clearing down in the bottom. We picked out the big buck and I got settled. I squeeze the trigger in the buck jumped and ran to the left. He was still on his feet so I made another shot and he went down. Tagged out!
Now the fun part, we had to figure out how to get to him. It was not easy. We worked our way down a steep shoot that cliffed out so we had to slide over and go down some more steep stuff through some raspberry bushes, but finally, we made our way to the bottom and over to my buck. He was exactly what we thought he was. Probably the tallest buck we'd seen so far with a big body. We got him broken down as weather moved back in again.
We looked at the map and thought we had figured out an easier way to get back to camp without going back over the top. So we began to follow our new route and quickly discovered that was not going to get us to camp. We got cliffed out on the side of the mountain and it got sketchy fast! Dsnow legitimately almost went of a cliff. So we backtracked and began to climb all the way up to the top and over back to the saddle that would take us down to camp. As we were almost to our saddle that would allow us to drop down to our camp, we bumped into a pretty nice buck bedded on the top. We had walked right by that spot, not three hours earlier and he was not there. It was pretty cool to see him laying in the fog up on top like that. Fortunately, we were able to find a bit of a better route down from the saddle to camp and we made it just before dark. We ate some food and settled in for a rainy night.
The next day was rainy. Really really rainy. We had sent our pilot a message telling him we were tagged out, but he notified us he would not be able to make it in that day because of the weather. He was hopeful he would be able to come in the next day. So we sat around camp and worked on cutting up meat. I'm pretty sure I eat both my tenderloins and half of the backstrap as we sat there all day under the tarp in the rain. It was wet but yhere were definitely worse places to be. The next morning was also rainy, but we packed up all our gear and headed to the lake. Our pilot was able to find a pocket in the weather and drop the Cessna right in on the lake a few hours later.
I'm pretty sure every single piece of gear we had was completely soaked, but it had been a good hunt. A real adventure. I plan on heading back up to chase these little deer again in the near future. I really appreciate dsnow coming along with me.
I'm looking forward to the next one!
