Another successful Blacktail season

Joined
Mar 15, 2014
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462
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OR
Finally got a chance to post up a pic of my 2016 OR Blacktail that I was fortunate to connect with!
 
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gonhunting247
Joined
Mar 15, 2014
Messages
462
Location
OR
Not much of a story for this one. Everything just worked out right. I'd located 3 bucks I wanted to keep tabs on. This buck was actually 2nd on my list. My daughter(Shelby) had just gave birth to my first grandson the week before and I thought this buck was in a location she might be able to tag him or another buck first thing. She wouldn't have much time to hunt and said she wanted to take the first legal buck we had a chance at. The #1 buck would be a lot harder to get to, so I thought we'd save him as a back up for me later in the season.
We headed to our spot at first light only to see some other folks close by. We waited to see which way they would go, then went the other way. We quietly still hunted through the old clear cut until we reached an old landing where we could see the hidden crease and back corner. We had been there about 10 minutes and I had just said that it's amazing how it could feel like you covered an area so well, then out of no where a deer could appear,; when I spotted an ear flicker from behind a vine maple. I got Shelby situated, as glassed with my leupold 10x42s and tried to identify whether it was a buck. About the time I was sure it was a legal buck (a spike) we spotted the top of the back of another deer. In a short time I Identified the distinctive 3pt. side of the big bodied buck I'd watched earlier in the year while bear hunting.
I tried to get Shelby positioned on the bigger buck, but she just wasn't tall enough to see over the brush. All she could see was the top of his head. With all the moving around the old buck had pegged us and I knew he would be gone in one jump. I told Shelby to try to get a shot, but she said for me to shoot before he got away and she was going to shoot the spike. The big buck had seen enough, so I whacked him in the high shoulder as he was turning to leave. Almost at the same moment Shelby hammered her buck in the chest. She told me later that it's a good thing I got my buck or she would have been mad at me for waiting so long, when she told me she couldn't see and for me to shoot :)! I've been around a fair amount of mature blacktails and will admit, we were dang lucky we didn't mess around and let this one slip through our fingers. As everyone that hunts these awesome bucks knows, they don't often slip up and make a mistake and rarely give you a second chance.
 
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