My weekend buck. 9 day season, starting on a Saturday, work cut it down to two days. Public land, DIY.
Had to leave my house at 5am Monday for a work trip. I hunt about 4 hours drive time from home. Drove up with a buddy Friday night after work, set up camp in the dark, had a quick dinner and went to bed.
Opening morning we saw 19 deer, but only smaller bucks. My buddy said he would be cool with any legal buck, just wanted meat. I told him I'd prefer any mature buck, regardless of antlers. We put on about 6 miles, spotting and then stalking small groups of deer in the sage. As we walked back towards the truck, we split up by about a hundred yards, and 5 minutes later, I hear him shoot his buck. It died about 100 yards from the truck. Go figure, right? He scored a little fork-horn, that we gutted and dragged to hang whole.
The next morning, we tried a couple of spots that each seemed to have grown a hunter infestation. After watching deer a long ways off, we went for a drive, visited the spot where my Dad's ashes are scattered, and had lunch. That afternoon, we started glassing again, and within minutes, had 3 different groups of deer spotted. They were all feeding into and out of a river bottom, and we saw one deer bedded by a tree that looked huge, but we couldn't see his head. We decided to go check him (or her) out before I hit the road for home.
We stalked up the river bed, and I pointed out to my buddy how perfect the conditions were. Soft ground, about a 10 mph wind in our faces, and rattling leaves for cover noise. Just then, 5 previously unseen deer materialized at 45 yards, and we were able to get to within 23 yards of them. We watched as they fed off, completely oblivious to our presence. We worked closer to the Mystery Deer and heard some leaves crunching beneath us. Four more previously unseen deer magically appeared climbing the far side of the river bottom. As the first one crested the top, the last one showed himself and my partner said "The last one is a buck. Shooter!" I dropped to a knee, and settled the crosshairs on him.
We ended up getting him cut up and the 2 miles out to the truck as dark fell, and I got home about midnight. Plenty tired the next day, but I wouldn't change a thing.
