Buck on the lookoutWell, I’m back.

It was an eventful couple of weeks at Coon Camp Springs… too eventful, in fact, for me to simply summarize the hunts in a single post.  Instead, I’ve decided to write up each hunt separately (although there’s a great connection between the first two).  Here’s the first part, then… hope you enjoy it!

The huge mule deer stood broadside… not 40 yards from where I crouched with my hunters, glassing the thick brush.   “I can’t see his head,” said Tom Henry, the senior of the father-and-son team.  “Is it a buck?”

His son, Nolan, whispered back.  “It’s huge, that has to be a buck’s body.”

“Does anybody see horns,” I asked? 

It seemed like we were standing there for several minutes before I was able to spot antler tines protruding well above the juniper branches that obscured the deer’s head.  Once I saw that, I was able to piece together the rest of the rack and head.  I had been looking too low… this sucker was big!  It was definitely what we were looking for. 

“It’s a really good buck,” I hissed. “Kill it!”

“Did he say it was a buck,” queried Tom?

“It’s a buck,” answered his son.  “He said, ‘kill it.’” 

“What,” said Tom?

“SHOOT IT!”

At the crack of Tom’s .270, the buck hopped and kicked out his back feet, then tore out through the brush.  His right leg was flopping.  To all appearances, it looked like a textbook shoulder/heart shot.  I breathed a sigh of relief, and started out to follow what I expected would be a really short blood trail to a really dead deer. 

The last time the elder Henry killed a buck with his son was almost 35 years ago, when Nolan was a youngster of around six.  They’d hunted together since then, but it seemed that Tom was destined to go home empty-handed every time he joined Nolan in the field.  This year he’d bought two of our PLM tags at Coon Camp Springs as a birthday gift for his son, both as an opportunity to spend that time together, but also as a chance to break that long, unsuccessful streak. 

This was the first full day of hunting with these guys, after spending the previous evening checking the zero on their rifles, touring the property, and scaring the coyote population with a few long shots.  Since we had a little daylight left, we even sat and glassed for a while before heading back to camp for a big dinner of wild boar sausage with apples and wild rice. 

At first light, we were back on that rock. Shortly after we settled in, I spotted some does off in the distance.  They were way off the property, but we watched them as they slowly worked their way toward our fenceline.  There were about eight or nine deer in the field, but no bucks that we could see (they were over 1000 yards away).  Suddenly, Nolan hissed, “deer!” 

I looked toward where he was pointing and saw the big bodies of two bucks on the ridge.  Through the Leicas, I was able to immediately make out a thick, wide, four-point rack on the lead animal.  The deer directly behind him was also a good buck, although his four-point antlers were a good bit thinner.  As the deer moved behind some brush, I spotted a third buck, not as impressive but decent.  The bucks obviously had an agenda to be someplace else, as they walked steadily across the hillside.  Nolan whispered back up to me, “I think I can take that front deer!”

I hit the rangefinder button and ranged the buck at 572 yards.  “Hold off,” I told him.  “He’s too far for a good shot.” 

Nolan chafed, but held his fire as the deer moved steadily along the sidehill trail.  “Come on,” I whispered.  “We might be able to close the gap if we go down this line of junipers.”

We slipped around, using the cover of the rock, and then the junipers to get closer to the ridge.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the bucks had reached the thick cover.  Since it was the first day, and the deer were unaware of us, I opted not to try to push into the thicket.  I’ve tried to stalk through that stuff before, and it’s almost impossible to be quiet.  If we pushed those deer out of the safety of their bedding area, I was pretty sure they’d just relocate across the fence onto our neighbor’s property.  If we left them alone, odds were good that they’d stay around and we’d get another shot at them later in the week.  Nolan and Tom agreed with my reasoning, so we decided to go back to camp, have a little lunch and then head over to another area that I knew usually held a buck or two. 

Nolan was eager, and we didn’t sit around the table for long before we loaded up and headed down the trail.  The mid-morning was warming up, and with the moon closing on full, I wasn’t really hopeful to see any deer on this little jaunt, but it was better than sitting around the cabin.  You can’t kill deer sitting by the fire.  Besides, a lot of great deer are taken when most hunters are napping the mid-day hours. 

As we moved down the logging road, I felt the wind shifting.  A look to the western sky showed clouds growing pretty fast, and the wind picked up rapidly.  My original plan had been to still-hunt about a mile and a half to the fenceline and then make a long loop back to the truck, but the rising wind and gathering clouds suggested a change in plans, especially since we hadn’t even packed lights or rain gear. 

With the wind practically roaring, and a definite feeling of rain or snow in the air, I decided to cut the “walk” short and head into a spot I call “Holly Springs.”  I know that there are good bedding areas there, and I usually see a couple of good bucks here every season.  The tracks around the road testified to the fact that there was something pretty big running around.  Usually, though, the area is too thick to try to stalk through, even hunting solo.  With two hunters in tow, I’d never even try to walk through this spot under normal conditions.  But with the wind making so much noise and blowing the perfect direction, I felt confident that we could work the area… as long as we took it slow and easy. 

Before we entered the thick stuff, I told Tom and Nolan to chamber a round and be ready.  Nolan declined and nodded to Tom.  “I trust you,” he said.  “You go first.”

I put Tom slightly ahead of me, and we started into the junipers and mahogany.  I think Tom thought we were just gonna cruise through to the truck, and I had to slow him down a little.  “We’re going to be right on top of them,” I warned.  “We need to go real slow.”

We hadn’t gone fifty yards into the woods when we encountered the buck, Tom’s shot, and the subsequent tracking job.  As I mentioned, I was confident that we were trailing a dead deer.  The shot had been so close, and the deer’s reaction was textbook.  The deer slipped over a rock wall, and I was sure we’d find him down in the tangled brush. 

But we didn’t.  What we found was a slight blood trail… very slight.

Tom was shooting a .270 Winchester, loaded with 130gr Core-Lokt ammo.  With a chest shot (which is what I thought we were seeing) there should be blood splashed all over the landscape.  The fact that we were only seeing drips and splotches made me a little nervous.  But I’ve seen weak blood trails on well-hit deer before, so my confidence didn’t wane too much.  We followed, but the blood got more and more sparse. 

Finally, about 200 yards from the shot, as we stood over a tiny blood droplet, I glassed the nearby trees and spotted the white face of the buck looking back at us from under a juniper.  He was only about 65 yards away at that point.  At first I thought his head was up, but then saw that the thick antlers appeared to be tangled in the branches.  Nevertheless, I told the hunters to be ready, and move up slowly while I moved around to the side for a closer look.  It was looking good, and I was happy for it to end this way… less than fifty yards from the road. 

You probably already know what happened next.  The buck wasn’t dead.   Nolan started to take a shot from head on, but before he did I made the mistake of asking Tom if he was going to mount this deer.  If he was, a shot in the forehead with Nolan’s 7mm Magnum would have been hard for a taxidermist to repair.  This made Nolan hesitate, and the deer lurched to his feet.  Before Nolan could recover, the buck was off on a dead run.  Even with only three legs, these deer can move! 

The escape told me two things.  One, the deer was definitely not hit in the chest… or anywhere else vital, for that matter.  The second thing was that we were in for one heck of a trailing job.

The blood-trailing job we did on this buck was worthy of the books, but since I’m not writing a book, suffice it to say that it was a real nightmare.  It was also a true team-effort, since every time one of us would lose the trail, we’d mark the last spot and the others would spread out until someone else picked it up.  We trailed through bunchgrass meadows, juniper thickets, and over a wide, lava bed.  For the most part, blood sign was limited to spots the size of a pencil eraser. 

When we finally came up on the buck again, watching his backtrail from beneath a juniper, Nolan didn’t hesitate again.  Before I was even fully aware of what he was doing, the 7mm roared and the buck slumped from his hiding spot.  There was much rejoicing.

Tom Henry with his 26.5 inch muley buck

It turns out that Tom had somehow pulled his shot badly, and his bullet went through the “elbow” of the buck’s offside leg.  It was a crippling hit, but very likely would not have been fatal in itself.  Had we not found him though, the buck would most likely have died at the teeth and claws of coyotes within a few days.  I was thankful that we found him, and especially grateful that this father and son are true hunters with a strong sense of ethics.  They stuck with a blood trail that many people would have abandoned long before.    Kudos to the both of them!

Tom’s buck was a classic 4-by-4 with a 23 1/2″ spread.  Completely dressed and caped, the carcass weighed 148 lbs on the butcher’s hook, and I’m pretty sure it was close to 250 lbs live.  That’s one buck tag filled.  The weather moved in the following day, and deer movement seemed to shut down.  At the end of the day, Tom had to get back to the city for work, so he and Nolan packed up and headed out.  Nolan said he’d be back as soon as he could to see if we could fill his tag.

Stick around.  Nolan’s story is coming next and it really makes for one of the most rewarding hunts I’ve ever been involved with.

Related Posts