I decided to take my 10 year old son, Logan, with me this year. He proved his mettle a couple weeks ago on a backcountry fly fishing trip in Idaho where we logged 11+ miles per day fishing one of my absolute most favorite streams on this Earth. Following his soccer game on Tuesday night we loaded up the car, picked up my friend Cody who was waiting at his parent’s home after arriving earlier in the evening from Albuquerque, and headed up the canyon to the family cabin where Grandpa, Dad, my brother Darren and his two boys, and my uncle were already settled in for the evening.
Opening Day
Just like last year we wanted to use all other hunters to our advantage and knew that a large number of hunters would work from the top of one canyon so we woke early and hiked in the dark to a point about 2/3 of the way down from the top. As the sun rose it was pretty easy to spot small clusters of hunters working the ridges above us… and watch the deer stay two ridges ahead of them as they pushed down the canyon. We were in a good spot and Logan and I watched the deer gradually get closer and closer to our position. There were four very respectable bucks in the group and Logan and I did our best to get into their path. Cody couldn’t see the deer from his vantage point and unbeknownst to me he began dropping off his vantage point. The bucks nailed him and I watched as they circled between him and the other hunters above him, through some thick aspens and over into the next drainage… smart.
We milled around there until late morning and decided to head back to the cabin for a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich. On the hike back to the car we spotted a hunter walking back to his vehicle through a small clearing and then spotted a nice 4pt buck run probably 40 or 50 yards across the same clearing right behind the hunter. It was rather comical to see… the hunter was completely oblivious to the deer running in plain sight just a short distance behind him. Makes me wonder how often that happens to me!
After a nice late breakfast we jumped on the ATVs and then hiked into one of my favorite elk spots. We sat in the shade of a large pine tree for several hours and without seeing anything.
At about 5pm I stood to “take care of some business” and a doe burst from a clump of small aspens about a hundred yards away. She snorted, stomped, and carried on as she made her way up the hill in front of us. From the amount of ruckus she was making we figured she wasn’t alone and within a matter of seconds a small 2pt was spotted trying to sneak out the opposite side of the aspens. I nudged Logan and told him a little 2pt was standing there and asked him what we should do about it. His eyes got about the size of dinner plates and he just smiled… “shoot it.” I grabbed my muzzleloader and Cody gave me a range of 112 yards. I was facing directly into the setting sun and it was very difficult to even see the buck in my scope, but finally I was able to get a clear enough sight picture and pulled the trigger. The buck jumped and ran but Cody reassured me that I had hit him. Logan jumped up and we made our way over to where the small buck was standing. Logan led the tracking expedition, following the patches of blood for only about 20 yards and up over a slight rise the small buck laid expired on the trail. He was pretty excited and I took a picture or two of him with the little buck.
We got to work immediately on skinning and quartering and in 30 minutes we had all the meat in bags and in packs ready for extraction. Logan supervised the entire process making sure I took as much meat as possible and indicated the portions he would pack out. He said he was going to carry out the steaks so I loaded up his little pack with the backstraps, tenderloins, and I snuck in a couple extra pounds of other trim meat. Off we went on the 3/4 mile hike back to the ATVs.
I often feel guilty because I underestimate what my 10 year old is capable of… he didn’t stop once on the hike back to the ATVs and when he tossed his pack on the front rack of the ATV he just smiled and said that was easy & next time he wanted to carry more. He’s got big plans for the meat from this buck. He wants to make snack sticks and we want to try a pastrami recipe that we found in a Cabela’s magazine that came in the mail a couple weeks back. He also said he wanted the little buck Euro mounted for his bedroom (here it is so far... it still needs to be soaked in peroxide).
Thursday
With two more full days of hunting and Cody still with his tag, there was no time to sit back and relax for Logan and I… we would spend the next two days hunting for Cody and following him around. Throughout this whole exercise I wanted to teach my son Rule #1 of my unwritten “Hunting Buddy Code”… just because my tag was filled the hunt was not over.
We woke early and made the same hike that we did opening morning, however as we should have expected there just wasn’t the same amount of traffic as the previous morning and we saw only a handful of does. We made our way back to the cabin late in the morning for more sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches. Following that breakfast I absolutely crashed and ended up napping for a couple hours. It was a nice recharge needed by everyone… except Logan who spent the entire time running around the cabin area with his cousins shooting grasshoppers with BB guns. They burst into the cabin after several hours of that telling stories of the “Trophy Hoppers” they’d dispatched of.
After I shook the cobwebs loose from my afternoon nap we decided to hike into the same bowl where I shot my buck last year. We made the short drive and short hike and sat in the exact same spot as last year… as Cody sat down he even found the rubber eyecup from his binoculars that had fallen off last year. We sat until the sun went down and didn’t see a single critter, although we did hear a couple faint far off bugles.
Since we hadn’t seen anything in several hours we decided to hustle out of there so that we still had a little bit of light left to drive around for a bit. We saw a couple more does but no bucks.
Thursday night my cousin, Devin, and his nephew who had expressed interest in getting into hunting came up and joined us.
Friday
Cody, Logan, and I jumped on the ATVs and headed over to the most northern border of the property and hiked down along a couple small canyons. We saw a couple bull moose, a handful of does, but no bucks. So back we went to the cabin for breakfast. (When my kids are driving the ATVs I find it best to ride with my eyes closed, that way whatever we hit will be a surprise to me.)
Devin talked the group into a plan… he would go with a couple other guys and get dropped off on top if Cody and I would hike up to a small saddle and they would brush deer out to us. About halfway up to the saddle we noticed a group of guys already up there. They seemed to be working slightly to the north though so we continued up to the saddle. Just as we reached the saddle a shot rang out close by. Neither Cody nor I could see what they were shooting at, but soon the group that had been above us emerged below us and walked out into the sagebrush flat. We could hear them talking and sure enough, right there in the sagebrush flat they had shot a nice 4pt buck… I’m not sure how we missed it… I thought back to opening morning and watching that buck run right behind the hunter… we watched through binoculars as they admired the buck and took a few pictures.
Once we got settled into a good spot to watch the escape routes we had a doe and fawn run across the hillside in front of us. We used those two deer to get good yardages on that main trail and continued to sit back and wait. A couple minutes later a nice little 3pt burst out of the trees and across that same trail. Just like the doe & fawn, as he reached the ridge on the other side of the clearing he slowed, stopped, and looked back. At that point Cody took the shot, and through the binoculars it was pretty clear it was a miss.
We waited for Devin and rest of the group to make their way down to the saddle where we were sitting and Cody went over to closely inspect the area where the buck was standing. A few minutes after we watched Cody go over the ridge we heard him shoot again. So I took Devin and his nephew and we hiked over to try and find him. Cody ended up busting the little buck out of its bed and missing an even better chance.
Friday evening we headed back over the same area we hunted Wednesday and Thursday morning.
I will be doing the muzzleloader elk hunt in November in this area and I had heard some discouraging reports for the area from other hunters I had talked to so I wanted to spend some time glassing some of the elk hot spots from previous years. So Logan and I sat and glassed while Cody did some more hiking around. Sadly, I wasn’t able to glass any elk that evening but I’m not overly concerned because they will get pushed around plenty on the general rifle hunt and probably even some more on the rifle deer hunt.
Everyone else had chances to fill their tags throughout the first half of the hunt but only my grandpa was able to close the deal and tagged a nice little 2x3 late afternoon Friday.
Saturday morning I needed to be back home as early as possible so we cleaned up the cabin and headed for home. Logan says he had fun and can’t wait to go again. His younger siblings are looking forward to the doe/fawn pronghorn tags that I have for their turn to go hunting this year.
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