I will tell you one thing that I had happen this year that I have never had happen before in all the years that I have hunted. My father and I were sitting at the base of a big canyon/bowl that we like to hunt due to all of the cover and deer highways that are in the buck brush that cannot be seen or even noticed unless you have gotten up there and hiked through this area before. Perfect habitat for a public land hunt and an area that draws deer to it, especially after they have been pushed a bit, due to all of the cover. We had glassed up a couple of bucks up the canyon and were discussing a plan on how to get myself up there into a good shooting position without alerting all of the other deer in the canyon and thus spooking the one that I wanted clean out of there before I even had a chance when I noticed these two guys coming up behind us. They came up behind us and must have noticed that we were glassing the area and actively hunting this canyon and stopped about 40-50 yards behind us. They seemed to be discussing between the two of them what they were going to do and I leaned over to my dad and said to him something to the point of, great, here we go again. These two are going to walk around us and go right up there and spook everything clean out of here and it will be at least another couple of days before something comes back into this canyon. Not long after I said that, one of the two approached us and as I noticed it he had a little look that I had recognized myself having before. He approached us and then told us who he was and he told us that he was up in this canyon the night before with his buddy. He proceeded to tell us that they were glassing up there the night before and had seen a buck that he wanted to take. He then headed up there where the buck was at and his buddy stayed behind to watch the everything go down. He got up to the spot where he had seen the buck and it had taken him longer than he thought it would(this canyon can be very steep and is a very nasty one to walk through in most spots), and all of the sudden he spotted the buck. He pulled up his gun and put the sights on the deer and pulled the trigger. He only remembered seeing the deer sort of spin and then it disappeared. His buddy said he saw it run over to an area of the hill and he then lost it. He looked for blood the rest of the night until he could not look any longer(well after dark) and then they decided that they had done all that they were able to do that night. Well he had come back in the morning and was there asking me and my dad if it was ok for him to go up the hill and look where he shot the deer and see if they could find any blood. I instantly told him that doing that was way more important than any deer on the hoof and that finding a wounded deer or a downed deer was more important than what I was doing so to go ahead and do what he needed to do. He then grabbed his buddy and headed up the hill. I told him I would keep my eyes peeled and let him know if I saw his deer come out or anywhere. (I also joked about yelling duck, or something like that, but had already told my dad that our hunt in the canyon was done until these gentlemen were done and off the hill. The last thing I would have wanted is to compromise finding their possibly wounded deer) His buddy did not have a rifle so I assumed that he was a spectator or had already filled his tag, but either way they both seemed like good guys. They must have spent a couple of hours up there looking for blood. I kept an eye on the deer that we were after, as well as on them and around them for any sign of their downed deer. They finally gave up on finding blood, but they had covered half of that one side of the hill and had even wandered over into the next draw over checking for any sign of blood or downed animal. They came down the mountain and left us to our hunt. Of course, the two bucks that I had decided that I would shoot and that were good enough for me to go up that frickin hill after had snuck around the hill from them and hightailed it out of the draw, along with a handful of other deer, but we did not mind one bit. I don't think that the two gentlemen had seen any of the deer. If they did, they did not react at all to them and were more worried about the deer that they thought they had wounded. Anyway, my point is, I had never seen that before in other hunters. I have hunted in every weapon hunt that we have(not every area, just with all the weapons and their applicable season) and have seen it many times with every weapon where people take a shot and don't follow up to see if they had hit it. Hell, one time I even saw a guy flip and arrow at a deer that was running full head of steam, and wounded it(at least that was obvious to me, from several hundred yards away through a spotter), go over to where the deer was running and look for his arrow in the area that it would have landed had he missed and not where the deer was running, and then get pissed off when he could not find his arrow, but never go and check to see the one other place it could have been-----in the damn deer! The other thing that was good about these guys is that I never did see them again in that area, or any other for that matter, the rest of the hunt. We stayed the entire hunt and these guys either had to leave and go back to work or something, but I like to think that the guy notched his tag and left simply because he was sure that he had hit the deer, though he could not find it or any sign that it had been hit. That was something that I had never seen before and I applaud their actions and dedication to come back and follow up with the shot, even when they could not find anything indicating that he had hit the deer the evening before, except the thought in his head that he saw it spin sort of like it was hit before it ran off. Though it kind of spoiled my plans for the mid morning and afternoon and maybe even the evening, depending on how long it took me to get into position and get a good shot on either of the bucks that we had spotted, I will gladly let someone do what he did, any day of the week. I would do it again as well if I had to do it over again. I also got the feeling that if I had told the guy that I did not want him going up there because I had spotted something and didn't want him spoiling my own hunt, he would have hung back as long as it took(though it looked as if it would have eaten him up to do that). That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call integrity. That may be something foreign to a lot of people, including some "hunters", but those that have it and respect it can surely spot it in another very easily, especially when it is so rare as it is today. Heck, last year on opening morning, my group(myself, two brothers, and Dad) got up and out of camp extra early to ensure that we had this spot before anyone else, and sure enough we did. We spread out and positioned ourselves where we thought we would have the best chances to see or sneak in on a deer that we spot, when about 9 am this father and his two young boys came up behind us and then walked right in the middle of us and proceeded to walk strait out in front of us up the canyon and go walking through the brush that we were glassing and then over one of the hills into the next canyon and then circled back around and sat about 75 yards from my brother. I half way expected that this year too, but was pleasantly surprised in what happened with these two gentlemen(we saw the same dad and two kids this year too, except they found a road on the other side of the draw and hiked over the top and down half way through the draw and over to where they sat last year....what a awesome example to set and thing to teach your young ones hu!). There are still some good people out there though guys, don't give up all hope on all of our fellow hunters just yet, though the good ones may be getting fewer and farther between! I guess that was a long enough post to hold me over for a while. Ill keep my mouth shut for another couple of months
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