First buck

[bojangles]

My kid got his first buck.  Story to follow.

[el diablo]

Very nice!  Congrats!

[azruger]

Neck ya... congrats on a great buck young man. Wish my first was that big..

[bojangles]

I was out mountain biking 6 or 8 weeks ago, and decided to walk a rocky, technical section.  A rock gave way under foot, and i crashed into a washed out section of the trail, landing my knee squarely on a sharp rock.  I knew it was going to be bad.  I called my doctor a couple days later, and he said, don't bother coming in, there's nothing i can do, you broke your knee cap, and it's just going to hurt for 3 weeks.  (he was leaving for his elk hunt...lol)  

 

But he was right, i limped for 3 straight weeks.  So, it was no scouting for me.  No worries, i thought, we will just sit water for my son's youth hunt.  

Hahaha.  Record breaking rains, you can't make this up.  Deer don't have to walk 10 yards to find water right now.  

 

As the hunt approached, i was able to finally get out and hike.  Opening morning i went to my favorite deer spot, planning on hunting muleys for the opener, and whitetails mid week if need be.  I glassed all morning, only able to turn up 3 does.  My son got discouraged, and cold.  We came back to camp, grilled brats, and slept for an hour, before heading out to a completely different spot.  There were fresh tire tracks going in on the road, and we glassed till dark, and saw nothing.

Looking at the forecast for saturday, i almost bailed on the hunt.  wunderground said it would start raining at 6 am, but the radar showed the storm still in the San Diego area.  I gambled the storm wouldn't reach us till mid day, and elected to spend the night in camp so we could hunt the morning.  

There was a knob about a mile away from where i was opening morning that i decided i wanted to glass from, but i didn't think i knew how to get there in the dark, so we drove off at the first glimpse of light.   When i got to the hill where i wanted to be, we hiked up, and i realized i was on the wrong hill.  But the sun was rising, and i didn't want to move, so i thought i'd just glass from the hill we were on.  It looked like a decent area, but not quite as high as i wanted to be.  About a half an hour in, my son said he saw a coyote, from the direction we heard them yipping.  I spun the glasses that way, and saw nothing, but my curiosity was drawn back to that spot a couple of minutes later.  I panned my bino's back over there, and saw the coyote, ears pinned back, loping along like he just gambled away his last dollar.  I looked higher up the hill to see what jumped him, and there were 3 nice velvet muleys, who apparently had just gotten the better of him.  I sent a quick text to my wife, saying, say some quick prayers, cause we are on a buck, and i don't think we  have a chance, but we gotta go. 

I didn't even have time to check them out, as they crested the hill immediately, obviously tired of the coyotes antics.  There was nothing we could do but go in blind, not knowing where they would be when we got to the hill top.  It was 574 yards to the place where we'd last seen them, but i was trying to keep things under 250 yards.  So we started walking over.  As we approached the hill, i slowed down, and would walk a few yards at a time, and take long breaks between sessions.  Just as we were coming to the top of the hill, i heard the thump, thump, thump of fleeing mule deer.  There was nothing we could do, but peek over the hilltop.  I got down on all fours, and looked over.  I saw 3 bucks staring at us  on the top of the next hill, probably 100 yards away.  I got behind a prickly pear and got the old tang saftey M77 ready to roar.  I told my son to shoot through a gap in the cactus so we could avoid exposure.  He got things lined up on one of the bucks, and let the braked '06 fly.  After the loud bang, the bucks were still there, trying to figure out what was behind the cactus.  I told my son his missed, (could have hit the cactus and thrown the bullet off right out of the barrel)  I had him crawl to the side of the cactus, and shoot around it. The Hornady American Whitetail found it's mark. On the second shot, one of the bucks went down, with a spine shot.  The buck dove down the hill into a bush and hid.  It actually took us a while to find him, even though he was only 50 yards or so from us at that point.  Once we located him, my son put one more into him that finished the job quickly.

Some other hunters helped us get the meat out of the wash, and we headed out just as it decided to pour.  

 

I tell you what, there's nothing more exciting that seeing your kids get a nice animal.  

[wildwoody]

Great buck, congratulations to you all.

[Flatlander]

Nice work! Congrats!

[mattys281]

Outstanding buck, congrats to him!

really sucks about your knee.  Hope you heal up quick.  

[Goldfinger78]

Nice Buck Congrats!!!

[Adicted]

solid first buck...congrats

[rossislider]

Dang nice first buck! 

[CatfishKev]

Great job! Thats a great buck. Seems some buck are still in velvet and some not?

[PseAZ]

Great buck congrats

[trphyhntr]

Awesome, get it mounted 

[Will K]

That's awesome.

[bojangles]

15 hours ago, CatfishKev said:

Great job! Thats a great buck. Seems some buck are still in velvet and some not?

I’ve noticed quite a few bucks from the youth hunt in velvet, particularly he muleys.