Kill them when you find them

Ya you’ve mentioned it quite a bit and as well Jason Carter. Heard it multiple times and proved to help me that day! Also met you at the expo, I’m the guy that was lost on the way to the seminar on Friday… lol it was nice to meet you!
oh ya. Room 254 is not easy to find. good to meet you too
 
RE: kill them where you find them

Since I've starting focusing on this Alpine area now... when I was hiking in my first time in there at "go-time"... with another location in mind.. at some point I hear "POW!.... POW!, POW!"... and it's coming from way up high on this ridge my path is parallel to.

So then I'm like "Welp, shoot. Ya know whatcha gotta do. This is what you came here for. If they're shooting that means there was a buck there." and proceed to grind it out in a full frontal direct assault straight up that ridge completely covered in buckthorn.

It eventually resulted with me making a like, 60-70yd shot on a buck that was retreating away. Wasn't great angle, didn't recover him, because instead of trying for a "Texas Heart Shot" I tried my best to "angle-in" just past his hind quarters to his lung area.

but I'm thinking it must have been a non-fatal hit that probably just broke a crap ton of ribs or something. Because I saw him immediately SLAM down where he was standing. Then he kicked off that boulder he was upon and fell into a hedge below it! When I saw that, I was enthused, thinking he's down for sure!

But by the time I gathered my pack and climbed those 60-70yds at 30% slope. I get there no sign of him at all!

Then I hear something, look down more like where I WAS... and here's a buck escaping away, side-hilling.

I'd seen another shadow of a deer when I fired on this first one, so I didn't wanna potentially shoot and inure ANOTHER buck by mistake, and it didn't make sense to me in that moment that this buck I was seeing was the same one I'd hit. Seemed to be moving to "pain-free" so I figured it wasn't the same one. So not wanting to mess-up and injure another buck... I held off on shooting this one I'm now seeing below me.

So then I decide maybe that WAS him, so I should try to side-hill and follow.

I get down to where this one was below me... and I'm beyond exhausted, so I had to stop and eat something. and wouldn't you know it? The second I started getting some food into me? "KAKOOOOOM!!!" T-storm..quite-literally broke.. I sh!t you not.. what sounded like DIRECTLY.... above my location. F-M-L!

So anyhoo, OK, this is life now. So side-hill slowly like 300 yds (which costs A LOT of energy in this very steep location). Didn't see any blood or anything. Was almost out of water, so had to call it and start back down that horrible hill.

This year I'm going to be scouting different routes to get me up to that same location so I don't have to do that full frontal assault. I'm sure it'll take A LOT mor etime to get up there the round-a-bout way... so I'll have to budget time by leaving home even earlier. But it'll payoff when it comes to packing-out. Because packing-out straight down that hill would be quite the sketchy task.
 
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