Deer Hunt 2011

The deer hunt was full of fun! It was beautiful weather! We deserved beautiful weather after last year! We spent the first few days just camping and riding and celebrating Hyrum's 7th birthday. He loves that he usually gets a deer hunt birthday! It was my turn to draw a tag. Joe and I try to take turns so that there is someone back at camp to be with the kids and someone that gets to hunt full time. And since I'm usually pregnant every other year it works out for the most part! The hunt started on Saturday morning. I got up at 7am and hiked to the top of the mountain behind our camp and the sun started to rise at around 7:30. Saw a bunch of hunters and a small herd of elk but nothing there. The leaves hadn't fallen off the scrub oak bushes yet this year, so if the deer didn't get pushed out there was no way to see them. So I hiked down about half way and and hiked across through the brush for an hour. Nothing. So I headed back down the mountain to my 4-wheeler and decided to drive the trail around Lions Peak. Saw nothing. Drove over to the mountains on the other side of camp. Hiked all through those. Saw nothing. By then it was 2pm. Went back to camp to grab some more water and a snack and headed out again. Went to Buck Mountain where I shot my first deer 5 years ago. Hiked around there. Saw Nothing. It was getting cold and getting dark. I headed back to camp. Decided to switch to my warm coat and headed back down the hollow behind camp for one more look at the hillside before dark. I couldn't believe that I hadn't even seen any doe or fawn all day and was bummed out. But about 3/4ths the way down the hollow I spotted a deer in a small clearing about 170 yards up a steep hillside with its head down feeding. I turned the 4 wheeler off and put my scope on it hoping it would put its head up. It did and it had horns! My heart started racing! I jumped off the 4-wheeler to shoot it, but realized when I did I wasn't tall enough to see it anymore! So, I kinda broke the law and got back on the 4 wheeler and cocked the gun. The deer had put it's head down and turned his body to where there wasn't a good view of where his heart would be. So I aimed as close as I could get to the heart and fired! I saw the deer stumble into the bushes. I raced up the steep hillside remembering that if I went straight up that the deer was in the second clearing. But the problem was that the bushes were so thick that I had to literally blaze a trail. There were parts where I was crawling on my hands and knees to squeeze through tiny openings. My gun and clothes kept getting caught on branches and twigs, but I finally made it! The deer was gone, but I found one splash of blood to the left of where I had shot him. I went a few more steps and found the deer collapsed in a bush. It was a nice 2 point. This is when I was so excited that I yelled out loud "Wahoo! I knew I got ya!" (When you are all alone and excited you have no choice but to talk to the deer.) He still looked like he could be alive. So I shot him once more in the neck just in case. Then I had to deal with yanking him out of the bush. This was so hard! (once again I admit I talked to the deer, asking him several times to just come on out of the bush) I grabbed his horns and pulled with all my might. Each pull got me maybe an inch. The deers legs kept getting caught in the bush. But I kept pulling and finally the weight of the deer gained momentum and he slid out. The hill was so steep that after it was free from the bush that I had a hard time getting the body to stop rolling and sliding. But finally I found a spot where it kinda stayed. I got out my knife and surgical gloves and started gutting him. But I only got about 1/4th the way done when I ran completely out of day light. I had to get help. I had not choice but to shove the bloody knife in my pocket. Then I yanked the deer about 15 feet to a clearing that seemed to have a better path down the mountain. I took off my hunting vest and threw it up in a bush above the deer, grabbed my gun, coat and supplies and started hiking/stumbling/falling/rolling down the mountain in the dark to my 4-wheeler. I'm not gonna lie to ya, it's very hard to hike down a mountain in the dark! I was on my feet very little through this event. After about 15 minutes I had made it to the trail. I took off my surgical gloves and hung them in a tree on the side of the path to mark where I came out. I jumped on the  4-wheeler and raced back to camp. When I got there I asked who would like to go on a special, night time, search and rescue mission for my deer. Joe said, "I heard those shots and just knew it was you! You always shoot your deer right before dark!" So a bunch of us grabbed flashlights and Joe grabbed his revolver just in case a mountain lion wanted a to snack on my deer, and we headed back down the hollow. Using the markings I'd left, we all hiked back up to the deer, which was still hard even with flashlights to light the way. We decided that it'd be easier to haul the deer down first, then to gut it on the trail because it was so steep. I finished gutting it (with some help from my dad who taught me a much easier way to do it)  and we put it on the 4-wheeler and took it back to camp. Funny that it took a took 10 hours of hiking, covering 80 miles of trail on the 4-wheeler and a total of 12 hours for me to shoot the one and only deer that I saw all day and, of course, it was in the same place where I had started.

It was quite the adventure and adrenaline rush! It wasn't until the next morning that I started to notice all the cuts, scratches, scrapes and bruises that I collected from the experience. Not to mention the sore muscles! It was so much fun and I can't wait for the next deer hunt adventure!