Buck, or no Buck?

Ready to ride!

Our usual end of season trip in mid-October once again found us parked on Gene and Janet's RV pad at Deep Lake, in Stevens County.  Mikee and I drove over together, yet apart.  I drove the RV, and she drove the Durango, pulling the trailer with the quad and supplies.  She did a great job.  The trip was pretty much uneventful, except for a surprise call from my Doctor about two hours before we lost cellphone coverage...  Damnit...  Anyways, Mikee got to see Gene and Janet for the first time in several years.  They have been wintering in Utah, but were staying late this year rebuilding their home after last years fire.  Janae also got to meet them this year.

Good thing we brought food...

We had such good fishing last year that we had to hit the lake again.  And got skunked.  We fished several times over the 8 days all of us were there, and only had two fish on the line.  Both were lost before we could bring them in.  Too bad.

My plan for the year was too help Mikee get her deer, and then go looking for a mule deer for myself.  If I had no luck, there was always late Whitetail with the guys.  Mikee's challenge level was raised this year, as she is now 16 years old (almost 17 as of this posting!).  This means she can no longer shoot a doe, it has to be a buck.

The saddle.

It was pretty typical weather for the time of year.  Crisp and clear mornings, and mild afternoons.  Our first day hunting brought me one of the funniest close encounters I've had in my years of hunting.  About midday, we were riding the quad up the road behind Gene and Janet's, stopping and walking into meadows and cuts to glass.  We arrived at a saddle and pulled off onto the landing, stripping off our riding gear, and getting our hunting gear.  We began walking to the edge of the landing.  Just as we got to the edge, I caught movement to my right in my peripheral vision.  I turned my head and there was a whitetail buck, walking almost parallel to us.  The buck was no more than 50 feet from us, maybe 75 feet from where we parked the quad.  He had a nice set of antlers on him to boot.  I turned toward Mikee, who seemed as unaware as the buck, and hissed,  "Shoot it!"  I pointed with my barely raised left hand towards the buck.  Mikee looked at me, confusion on her face.  I again hissed, "Shoot it!"  With no response from Mikee.  At about this time I turned, to see the buck looking at me, with it's eyes popping out of it's head.  After a couple of seconds, the buck sprang into action, bounding away in front of me.  I had concluded that Mikee was not going to shoot this deer, as I rapidly brought my rifle to bear.  Alas, to no avail as the buck dropped over the far edge of the saddle before I could fire.  We ran over to edge, but the buck had vanished.  Mikee picked this time to tell me that she thought she needed new lenses in her glasses...   She told me that she couldn't see the buck from where she was about 20 feet from me.  So we walked up the side of the bench and found a place to glass from.  We spent about two hours sitting there and saw a doe and fawn crossing the saddle on the other side of the bench, in the same direction as the buck.  I thought we had found a good spot to sit as this appeared to be a well used funnel.  We sat here several more times and never saw another deer.  Weird...  You don't see a lot of bucks in early season...

Mikee's hunting did however end successfully a couple of days later.  We set up Sunday evening in Helen & Merry's barn watching the upper field.  It was slow, but just as it was getting dark, we caught movement to our right.  I checked it through my binos.  It was getting hard to see, but I could tell the deer had antlers.  I had Mikee get set up on a steady rest and encouraged her to shoot it.  The blast and flame from her rifle were not enough to keep me from seeing the deer drop like a sack of potatoes (at a paced 100 yards).  We stayed put, keeping an eye on the spot the deer had gone down.  We couldn't actually see the deer, as the grass was not grazed this year.  I checked my phone and found it was just a couple of minutes before the proscribed end of shooting time.  I looked through my scope toward the deer, and it was literally now too dark to really discern anything.  After a few minutes, we got down out of the Barn.  On a side note, Merry had built us a very nice ladder into the loft, after they tore down the rickety stairs this year.  Thanks Merry.  We began walking towards where we believed the deer was down, now using lights.  We spread out from one another as we weren't following a blood-trail, just going on direction and distance. Within a few minutes,  I found Mikee's buck.  A very respectable, if smaller eight-point.

Eight points, counting eye-guards!

Gotta be honest here.  To date, this is the largest buck our family has taken.  I'm very proud of her.

At the Lind Ranch

 One day, Mikee and I rode the quad up to the Lind Ranch.  This is an old, abandoned homestead on the top of a mountain.  On the way, we saw a group of hunters hauling out a very nice mule deer buck.  We also saw about eight mule deer does.  But nothing for me to shoot.  We rode a lot, and eventually found our way to the ranch.  Mikee had a blast shooting photos in the wonderfully warming sunshine.  Later, that night, Janae and Colton arrived at our hunting camp.  Mikee left the next morning to return to school.

Janae never got a shot on a deer.  We saw does and fawns, but no bucks until our last evening.  To be frank, it was probably for the best, as we were really out of freezer space after our earlier bottomfishing expedition.  It was really hard to see in the overgrown fields.  However, on our last day, I set up my two gamecams.  That evening, as we sat in the loft, a deer entered the field from left to right.  It moved rapidly across the field as I noticed it had antlers, a small spike.  Janae moved to a rest as the deer stopped along the right edge next to the fence.  Janae no longer moves very quickly, and before she could set up and fire (what seemed an eternity to me), the deer jumped the fence and disappeared.  Janae told me that she had in fact pressed the trigger, but had left the safety on.

Vince butchering Janae's deer a month later!

During "Man Camp" in November, Vince put this poor dumb spike out of it's misery.

How do I know it was the same deer you might ask?  Well the spot where the deer had stopped was right in front of my gamecam.  Very unique looking spikes.
 

"No, first I will stand here and mock her..."

One lucky deer.  At this moment, Jane was looking through her scope at it.  Curved spike antlers...

I got a couple of shots of it while Janae was working on shooting it.  Same deer.

We did have a great time this trip.  Janae and Colton got to ride the quad if nothing else.

The trip home was uneventful this year.  We are all looking forward to the next season of Longtine RV Adventures!