The search for that first buck

[fleabagmatt]

Well dang. I've tried writing up a bunch of fancy words about day 1 of my 2022 deer season several times, but I keep accidentally losing the writeup. So here is Day 1, short and sweet:

Stuck close to home on some Feel Free to Hunt land.



Spent the morning watching a grassy field along a river, but no deer made themselves known.



As the morning wore on I headed up the hill behind the fields, bumped into some other hunters and eventually spotted a group of does. No antlers to be seen, unfortunately.



Day 2 to come.

 

[Dwreckers]

This looks like Ellensburg area

 

[fleabagmatt]

Near-ish to Walla Walla.

 

[fleabagmatt]

Oh, I attached this photo and forgot to post it. I drove past some Feel Free to Hunt land that was mostly wheat fields and thick grass. The road through it had trucks parked every couple hundred yards, all within view of each other. It was a complete shitshow. I had to snap a photo of this as I drove past. Is that even legal? #keephammering

 

[fleabagmatt]

Day 2

A friend asked if I wanted some company, so we drove down to the SE corner of the state for the day. We hunted a gated road up a canyon with a creek running along the bottom. My buddy spotted a buck up a side ravine, so we each climbed up a side and tried to sneak up on it. We ended up bumping a whitetail, buddy had a bead on it but couldn't quite tell if it was a 3-pt or not, so it trotted up and over the crest of the hill to who knows where. I crossed over to the next ravine, sat and glassed for a bit. I spotted four mulie does way at the back of the canyon, which happened to be a couple hundred yards onto private land.

They are in there somewhere, between the layers of basalt feeding their way to the right.


The views were nice up top.



We spotted another group of does in the next canyon over. Here's a good sense of scale. My buddy is in there, hiking across the face of that ridge.


That was it for excitement. Didn't hear any shots, or hear of anyone having any luck out there. Mostly it was just a nearly 10 mile hike and a burger/beer on the way home as consolation for our sore feet.

Today would have been day 3, but I decided to take a "rest day" and go quail hunting with my pup. (Spoiler: I couldn't hit a quail if my life depended on it.)

 

[Tkmalphurs]

Good luck

 

[fleabagmatt]

Day 3

This was my last chance to hunt for the season. I picked out a spot that I thought had promise and hoped it wouldn't be packed with people. I arrived at sunup and started working my way slowly up to a point that I thought would make a good glassing spot. Turns out someone else had the same idea. There were no other vehicles around when I arrived, so either they came in from somewhere else, or they came in behind me along the top of the ridge as I was slowly working my way through the bottom. I reversed course and headed the opposite direction of the blaze orange hats poking out of the grass. On doing so I bumped into three does. I stood and watched them for a while and noticed the other hunters were glassing them as well. I was damn near in between them and the does, so they had to know I was there. (They had been glassing in the opposite direction when I headed this way.)

The other hunters were on the far left ridge glassing the valley out of sight further left. The does were further off to the right.

They decided to head down into the valley and then over in my direction, so I backtracked again to where they were originally sitting and then beyond to the next draw over that way, out of sight. I sat and glassed this sliver of cover between a couple of dirt fields for a while with no luck.




Eventually I made my way over the hill to the left of the above photo and bumped four more does. They had been bedded 50 yards away out of sight. Never did see any bucks, and so ends my '22 deer hunting season. My third year hunting deer and I have yet to take a shot, but I learn something new each time I go out. This spot has a ton of potential – there are signs of deer everywhere out here – so I will definitely try to come back next year, even though it's definitely not a secret location by any stretch.

 

[ashersdad]

Beautiful country. Looks like you had a good time regardless.