Here's the story. Kalen and I arrived
in Eastern Colorado convinced there would be deer hiding behind every tree. It was a late
rut hunt so the buck would be with the does. We were excited. Well that's when the
problems began. There are no trees on the Eastern Plains where we were. We were about 30
miles from the Kansas border. The only trees in the entire area are in the river bottoms.
You're thinking GREAT! Well the
deer were not in the river bottoms. We figured out after two days that the deer only came
to the river bottoms at night to rut and feed on the corn fields at the rivers edge. At or
before the crack of light the deer vanished out into the desert. After we figured this out
we spent most of the time walking for hours in the desert hunting deer like jack rabbits.
When you did see one of the cagey critters, they had already seen you and were running at
full speed with their beautiful white tails waving good-bye suckers.... The only buck (or
deer for that matters) we saw that stopped after he saw us first is the buck I shot.
We blundered into a group of deer and you guessed
it, tails were waving. When I got my first glimpse of my buck he was heading away at 200
yards. His antlers were four inches past each ear. He would be the equivalent of seeing a
30-32 inch mule deer. You know how they look going away from you. He was huge. I let one
bullet fly as he was running over the ridge knowing I would not see him again. I got
lucky. The buck and several does ran over a hill at about 475 yards and there was another
good buck in the draw that we could not see. . The buck and does did not come out the
other side of the draw so I immediately dropped down, got my bi-pods set up and prepared
for him to come running out. When he did come out, I knew something was wrong. When the
buck did come out (5minutes later) he was walking stiff legged and posturing with another
buck he had ran into. That was his down fall for when he turned sideways towards the other
buck, I squeezed the trigger. Kalen, while looking through the spotting scope, yelled you
hit six feet high!! I couldn't believe it. I knew I was excited but not like that. I told
him the shot felt good. All heck broke loose and the deer scattered. The second buck was
running off with the does but my buck was not with them. As we cautiously crept forward,
we saw him in the distance lying there. My bullet had gone threw the deer and the dust
kicked up six feet beyond the deer. He had only gone about 10 feet towards us and he was
dead. The deer is old and scared. He is a heavy, 24" wide and scores about 140
b&c.
Kalens buck is 20" and scores in the 150's. He
shot him right at first light before the buck headed for the desert. We saw many bucks
with broken tines or complete main beams missing. A buck with no broken tines was more
rare that a buck with broken tines. Six years of bonus points. Two great bucks.
Happy hunting,
Blake
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