Modern Firearms Deer Success

Last week my dad and I were able to go out and fill his deer tag.  I was able to pull some connections and get access to the same prime piece of land that I archery hunted on this year.  This was really exciting because it is a great area and some friends who live near there reported that there were a lot of bucks running around and they had even seen a 4 x 4 which is huge for a blacktail deer and unheard or for the general area we were hunting.  My dad hunts for the meat and will normally shoot a doe as readily as a buck.  Because of this he normally ends up shooting a doe because it is the first decent deer he sees.  However with access to great property he decided to hold out for a buck at least for the first part of the day.  We pulling up to the spot we were going to hunt right as it was getting light.  Conditions were about perfect.  A crisp cool morning, a little bit of fog, dew on the ground to soften our steps and make us quieter, and a stillness in the air that made it so we would be able to hear deer moving around.  We got all of our gear together and headed out.  I decided to start hunting around a pond where I had good success hunting with my bow earlier this year.  We move slowly and quietly around the pond and unfortunately the results were quite underwhelming.  We heard one deer in the brush but could never see it.  During archery season I was seeing up to 20 deer just on a single walk around the pond.  We weren't discouraged though because we knew the deer were on this piece of property, we just had to figure out what kind of terrain they were hanging out in.  I decided that I would try moving along some of the salal thickets to see if the deer were feeding in there.  We immediately started hearing and seeing deer.  We slowly worked along and saw a few but they were all does and fawns.  I decided we would head back to some of the thickest and nastiest brush on the property we were hunting.  This area is as far from any roads or trails as you can get and the brush is very thick and at times twice as tall as you are.  It is a very hard area to hunt but no one every goes back there and there are some big deer.  That hard part is sneaking up on them and getting a clear shot with all the thick brush.  We slowly worker our way along and old logging road back towards that area.  Along the way my dad spotted a bedded deer.  It was about 10 yards away and was sound asleep it was curled up in a ball and had its head laid down on its legs.  Eventually it smelled or heard us and ran away but it was cool to see a deer that close with it having no idea we were there.  We kept walking and saw a few more deer but they were all does.  I told my dad that all it takes is one step coming around a corner and there might be a buck.  It almost always seems to happen that way.  I come upon a buck when I least expect it.  A few minutes later we were almost to the area we wanted to hunt and I commented that we were at the absolute farthest point from any road.  Right about that time I looked back and spotted a buck that we had walked right past.  His antlers weren't all that big but he had a good sized body for the area we were hunting.  The deer was facing towards us but didn't seem to have seen us.  He was scratching his back with his antlers.  I stopped my dad and tried to quietly point the deer out to him.  Unfortunately he had a tree in his way and didn't have a clear shot.  He slowly backed up until he was clear of the tree and leveled his gun on the deer.  By this time the deer had seen/heard/smelled us and was getting nervous.  Right as my dad squeezed the trigger the deer spun to run away.  The 1 oz. slug caught it mid-spin and threw it to the ground. The deer kicked its legs a few times and then died.  It was then that the irony hit us.  The second I said we are as far away from everything as possible we killed one.  It looked like we had a long drag ahead of us!  We gutted it to take as much weight off as possible and started our drag.  To get to the road we had to go uphill for approximately a half mile and then the rest would be downhill.  It became quite the workout getting that deer out!  I am in good shape but dragging that deer up a seemingly never ending hill that was a 45 degree slope or better at times over rough rocks was quite a gut check.  I have done some pretty intense physical activities in my life time but it had been quite a while since my lungs and legs muscles had been burning that bad!  As Thomas Paine once wrote, "The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly..."  This was definitely true and when we finally got the deer out of the woods the triumph definitely felt glorious!  We earned that deer and were happy to have gotten it.  It was my dad's first buck (other than a button buck last year) and pretty well a meat hunters dream.  A young deer with a big body so a lot of nice tender meat.  We have already put some on the grill and it was fantastic.  All in all a great hunt with great memories that will live on for a long time yet.