I got my first buck seven or eight years ago. JJ took me up to his family’s deer camp, where I was privileged to be one of the first non-family visitors in a generation. We hiked in, deep into the Dardanelles. It took all day to get in; I have no idea of the mileage, but it’s the kind of country where there just isn’t any hunting pressure on the deer. Few hunters get in that far, so they’re not particularly alarmed, although they are more shy of people than the herd that’s around us all the time.

JJ’s grandfather took me to his honey-spot up there, while JJ and his dad went out in their own direction. We were quietly walking around to a bowl when his grandfather spotted three bucks. I sat down and gave myself a good rifle rest, and then just waited. I could see that the largest of the three had walked behind a tree, and was waiting for him to walk out. Eventually he did, not noticing us at all, and I calmly shot him once and he went down. Later, JJ’s grampa said that he wondered if I was ever going to shoot, and pointed out that I clearly didn’t have buck fever.

Well, it’s been a long time since that little forked horn, and I’ve spent a lot of hours deer hunting in between, without seeing a legal buck at a legal shooting time. I’ve kind of moved my emphasis over to bear hunting, but I still deer hunt on the side, mostly after we get back in to camp. Early Saturday morning though, I woke up around five AM listening to the rain plink on my trailer roof, and knew I would be deer hunting that morning. I thought about where I was going, and I laid there awake for almost another hour before I got up and put the coffee on.

I would have liked to go with Jeff and Dennis, who had been up there for a few days. I so rarely get to hunt with them, it seemed a shame to pass it up. But they were driving a little two-seater Gator-type thing, and I had no inclination to ride in the back of that. Besides, when I pulled past their camp just before hunting time, there weren’t any signs of movement yet. I wasn’t going to waste the first storm of the season hanging around waiting for those guys to get up. Fran said, as I left, “Get a big one,” and I said that I’d call for help if I did.

I got past the little section of private land on my way to where I was going just as it became hunting time, a half-hour before dawn. I looked out the corner of my eye, my eyes that never see deer unless they’re standing right in front of me thumbing their noses, and there was an unmistakable sillhouette of a big buck, bedded down right in the open, broadside to me. I stopped the truck and got out with my rifle, and scoped him a little bit. Sure enough a big buck, even though with him facing me, I couldn’t count points well. Spike bucks’ antlers don’t come out past their ears though, not in this country. So I went to one knee for stability, and took a hundred-yard shot. I hit him, he went down, and I started walking over to him.

When I got about half-way there, two bucks stood up. One, a three-pointer, looked so much like the one I’d shot that I was doubting myself for a minute. Did I miss? No, I saw it hit, and there was no way he’d be getting up again. The two compadres looked at their buddy, clearly wondering what the hell was up with him, and walked calmly up the hill. I walked on, and came up on him, with his spine broken but still alive. I wished I’d brought a gun with me to finish him off, but finished he needed to be, and quickly, so I put him down with my knife, carefully, so I didn’t get stabbed with antlers in the process.

Then came the hard part. Down the hill was easy enough, but back up the other side was a bit of a challenge for a fat old asthmatic woman. I kept going back to the radio and calling out, and they kept not hearing me. So I just took it slowly; drag ten feet and breathe. Drag another ten feet, and try the radio again. Another ten feet and a pull on my inhaler. When it came to the steep part, I got him to within my rope’s distance from the truck, threw a loop over his horns and around a tree, and backed up until he popped up on the road. Of course, then he was at road height and the truck tailgate is four feet off the ground, and there was no way I could lift him by myself. So I thought about it, and used what tools were available to me; I dragged him up the embankment on the opposite side (which, come to think of it, is probably where I tweaked both my back and my knee) and backed the truck up that way. Then I could just roll him onto the tailgate, slide him up, and drive on.

I was almost back to camp when my radio and its wrong antenna worked enough to raise my crew. They were just rolling out bear hunting, and when I called asking for a saw and some muscle, they knew. I’d left camp a bare half-hour earlier. Most of us met on the road, and they took my photo. Don was particularly pleased; he knows how long it’s been, and he was proud of me.

 

 

 

 

 Hell, I was rather proud of me too. Wild Man came back to camp with me; couldn’t have asked for a better helper, as he was once a butcher and still has a heart of gold. He butchered out five kills that I saw that weekend; mine was the least of it, as I did the gutting and skinning myself. After we got it into the tree to hang, we caught back up with the houndsmen and went on to have a very good bear race, but that’s a story for the next entry.   

I’m thrilled. It was a clean kill, no bruising of the meat, and he smells so good that I can’t wait to get it back from the locker. He turned out to be the smaller of the two bucks in our camp this weekend, but he’s still quite a respectable size for California. I was considering having the head done, but you can’t mount every one you get, so I’m just going to save the antlers, and the meat, of course, and I’m having the hide tanned too. No waste!

And the best part is that my hunting’s not over. I left the trailer up there for the season, and I get to purely bear hunt until December. I won’t be able to break my habit of looking for deer, but I sure don’t have to haul another one uphill alone this year. I can’t wait to go back.