Boys and girls I'm not gonna lie. This hunt pushed this old fat man just about over the edge physically. When I was obsessed with hunting I worked out all the time to stay in shape. Today a shape for me is round. It rained for around 4 hours before the temps dropped and turned everything to ice yesterday. Then the snow started. It snowed 4" to 6" depending on where you were walking. Sometimes much deeper in the drifts. However I knew the animals were hold up all day yesterday and would likely be out this morning. They were. My youngest daughter really wanted a mule deer. We hiked and hiked and saw a number of deer. In fact she passed up four whitetail bucks and 3 mule deer bucks. If were her I would have definitely shot one of the whitetails and maybe even a nice tall, but thin horned 3x3 mule deer. However she stuck to her guns. The hiking conditions were about as bad as I've ever hiked in. Very little horizontal hiking. Mostly very steep and vertical. The layer of ice under the snow made it extremely difficult to get around. We fell so many times we didn't even bother to count. Each step was stressful. By the time we had "up and downed", fell, and trudged through snow for 5 miles I was pretty gassed. Wouldn't you know it that is when we found her buck. She made a spectacular 225 yard shot as it was trying to walk and quarter away from us. In fact I've seen a lot of adult men miss easier shots. It's next step would have caused it to disappear into the thick brush. She really threaded the needle on that one. To give you an idea how tough the hiking was our adrenaline kicked in and we were excited forgetting how tired we were. We wanted to get to her buck as fast as possible. I mean who doesn't after you shoot a buck? With that rushing through us it still took us a full hour to reach the buck because it was so hard to traverse that side hill. I'm just going to take one second and state I FREAKING HATE ICE!!! That darn buck fell all the way to the bottom of the steep draw and died in a virtual brush covered burr infested hell hole. I will be picking burrs out of my pants and coat for the next 6 months. We had to bone the deer out. I gave her the head and back straps. I took the heavy load, plus both rifles, and a heavy duty pair of Bog Pod shooting sticks. Those shooting sticks served as an okay walking stick. Not great, but better than nothing on the way out. We were over two miles from the vehicle. We slipped, slid, I cussed a lot in my head (I try to never cuss around my kids. Good thing they aren't mind readers), got back up and trudged all the way back to the truck. I'm really getting too old for this, but to see my daughters face light up like you see in the picture was all worth it. My older daughter loves to hunt, but this younger one is my main fishing partner. We have decided in the future we will stick to fishing.
Okay so while not huge it is nice and hard earned in the most honest of ways.
Here she is about 100 yards into the hike back to the rig. It's amazing how far 2 miles is in snow and ice. I'm so proud of her. She stuck it out the whole way and never quit or whined much. Probably because she wouldn't of been able to hear over all my whining about falling down and how much I hate ice.About another 1/4 mile after taking this photo we were taking and breather. She turned to me and said: "How in the world did you do this for 40 years?!" I have to admit that did make the old man in me feel pretty good.
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Originally Posted by Big Skyz
