Well, as they say all good things must come to an end, it was great to be
back home in blacktail country, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in the
woods in search of a big blacktail buck, however that big buck never showed
himself, nor did much of anything else, the hunting was downright poor, in the
mornings we had a hell of a time just trying to spot a doe, let alone a buck, the
evenings brought out a few deer, but mostly only does and a few small forks, I
also spent quite a bit of time in the afternoons still hunting the timber
trying to jump a bedded buck in the dried out rocky creeks, I jumped up a few
deer, I know all of them were does except for one that I think was a buck, but I
couldn't tell for sure, I only got a quick glimpse of it, but it was big and
blue, just too many branches in the way to see antlers, I went after it,but to
no avail. Finally, on my last evening hunt last Wednesday it turned cool and
the deer started to move a little, at 5:45 I spotted a doe up the hill about 400
yards away, then just a few minutes after that two does came out of the draw
ahead of me so I decided to head up the draw about halfway to where I could
glass the surrounding area better from, so I crossed the draw and came up the
other side out into a small prairie, I just stood there and glassed for about 20
minutes and while I was glassing I heard something coming from the draw
across the other side of the small prairie, so I stopped glassing and looked in the
direction I heard the sound come from and heard it again, just seconds after
I heard the sound again, out steps this deer walking on a deer trail up this
steep embankment, right away from about 85 yards away, I see antlers and a big
dark body so I shouldered my gun, looked through my scope, saw that he had at
least a third point on his left antler, so then I settled the crosshairs on
his shoulder and squeezed, at the shot, he went down and rolled ass over tea
kettle down the slope about 25 yards and back into the draw he came out of. I
stayed right where I shot from and listened for him to get back up again, but
didn't hear a thing when he stopped rolling to the bottom, so I started heading
his way, when I got to him, his antlers were stuck in the ground and his chin
was pointing at the sky, so I pulled them out of the ground and he ended up
being a small 4x3 so I was pleasantly surprised because I thought he was only a
3x2, he was all body, he dressed out at 134, he just didn't have alot of horn.
