Thanks for posting the pics for me Brian, and thanks for the responses, guys. Here's the story.
We were planning to hunt a walk-in area that morning- the fourth day of a five day hunt. We'd seen some forked horns and small bucks in the area, but not quite anything we were real excited about. The plan was to hike a couple miles in and get up on top of the mountain. Lucky for us, we never made it that far.
As we parked and grabbed our gear for the day, we started toward the first ridge. Before we took 10 steps, we saw movement on the hillside in front of us. A quick look through the binos showed that this was a buck my son and I wanted to take, and off we went. The buck knew we were there, and dropped down in the draw in front of us, heading to our left. We high-tailed it over a couple of knolls that protruded along the draw, trying to stay out of sight. After getting to the point of the draw where I thought he'd be, we crept up to the top of the knoll in front of us and peeked in- nothing. After scanning the thick sage in the draw for a few moments, I hear my son's excited voice, "there they go, dad," as he points to the top of the ridge. It was three does, but the buck wasn't with them.
As I quickly scanned the area for another deer, I caught movement to my left. This guy was sneaking right down the first shelf of the draw. I quickly chambered a shell into my Tikka 270WSM and took a seat. The buck was quartering away from us at what I guessed to be just shy of 200 yards and walking away. I settled the crosshairs behind his shoulder and tried to control my breathing. Just before he stepped down in the deepest part of the draw, I touched off. He jumped and kicked, and hunched over before he hightailed it out of there. At that point my son had already asked, "did you get him?"
I nodded that I think the shot was good, and we headed over to look for signs of a hit. As we looked around, we first found a large tuft of hair in the snow. I said to my son, "Well, we definitely hit something," I just wasn't confident how well I had hit him yet. We followed his tracks for about 15 more yards, and then found one lone speck of bright red. Then another. And another. By this time, my son had asked 11 more times if we got him. Then, in the snow we came across what appeared to be some lung. That's when I looked back at him, grinned and said, "We're in good shape." At that, his face lit up as we stayed on the trail for another 25 yards or so, and we jumped him up across the bottom of the draw. He was clearly fatally wounded, but I dropped to a knee and put another one in him to end it for him as quickly as possible.
For the first time, as we approached our downed quarry, it didn't shrink as we got closer. "He's big!" my son/guide said, and all I could do is smile. That's when the work began.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story.
WH
