Nick Schnabel
FNG
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2020
- Messages
- 3
Quade and I were hunting near Gallatin Gateway, Montana and were holed up by a creek glassing whatever got caught finishing dinner by the sunrise. It was the first day of the Montana Youth Deer Hunt. Many does presented themselves, until I noticed a few bucks up the mountain moving through the buck bush and into an aspen line. Quade was antsy and I told him let's let them settle and bed. We can try to track them into the aspens with the fresh snow in a half hour or so. Two buck reemerged and traversed across the bare hillside they had already come across. We decided to let them disappear behind the hill's curve and then to uphill track them into another aspen grove. We had to get moving fairly quickly up the hill. There is a draw that runs down into the cut barley and up into the aspens. When we got to the top, I gave a cursory glance down toward the field while catching my breath and surprisingly they had not gone up to bed, but down toward the barley, late dinner I suppose. We belly-crawled around the top of the bald hill and I set up the tripod for a downhill poke. One buck began to trot and the other looked back. Quade's Savage Axis in .243 found its mark on a couple hundred yard downhill strike. Bittersweet, his season is over and the anticipation of next year was already starting to build.....after the tears. Everything has changed, he is a hunter.