2012 Oct Rifle Coues

[wildcat]

I drew an October whitetail tag with my dad this year and spent many nights dreaming of a big buck leading up to the hunt. I spent a lot of time in the area during the archery season and a quite a few days prior to the hunt in search of a nice deer. Well, I didn't get the one in my dreams but I'm very happy with my second Coues.

 

I had high hopes of shooting a 100"+ buck this year but after five days of hunting hard, my standards quickly lowered. On the fifth morning, my dad and I glassed up my buck from well over 1,000 yards and watched until he disappeared to the northside of the hill. We glassed some more and eventually decided to make our way over to try and relocate the buck and get a better look at him. As soon as we got into position to glass the northside of the hill where he disappeared, I saw movement and quickly realized it was him raking a tree. He was with a smaller fork and I watched them for a while from 700 yards deciding whether or not to make a move on the 3x3. I thought he would be bigger than my first coues so at that point he was good enough for me. I snuck down the hillside trying to get within range while my dad stayed back and watched. I got to 400 yards and waited until he presented a shot. As I was waiting I dialed in the yardage on my turret and set up my phone to record through my binoculars. He finally stepped out broadside, I shot, and missed. He took off but stayed in the area so I knew if I was patient I might get another shot. I watched the shot on my phone and noticed it was well to the right. My patience payed off and he presented another broadside shot. I fired again and it produced another miss to the right. I decided it wasn't me at this point so I looked at my shooter app and dialed my scope 2.5 MOA to the left. The buck stopped for another shot and this time I hit him. I was unable to get the last shot on video because at that point I was more focused on just getting the deer down. I quickly made my way over to where I had seen him go down. My shot was a little low unfortunately, so one more shot was necessary to finish him off, but he was finally done.

 

It was starting to get dark as I sat there admiring my deer while waiting for my dad. We took a few pictures and quartered him out as quickly as possible. It was a long and tough hike out in the dark but we finally made it back to the truck at about 9:30pm. I dropped the meat off with John at WGP II the next day and boiled the skull to make a European mount. I roughly scored him at about 83". Not the 100" I was looking for to begin with but he's a beautiful buck and I'm very happy. I couldn't have done it without my dad and I wouldn't want anyone else there with me. I also owe many thanks to my friend Alex for showing me some good areas and helping whenever he had the chance.

 

 

 

Here's a video I put together pretty quickly on my Iphone. The video clips were all taken with my Iphone through my binoculars.

 

 

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.c...bed/4joP26Es3VU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GRONG]

Sweet lookin buck man! Thanks for sharing

[az_shooter]

Congrats on a nice CWT! good write up

[lucky2hunt]

Great looking buck! Congrats!!!

[Simple Hunter]

83" buck is a Quality Buck. Sometimes we get too caught up with the 100" mark, but an 80" Coues buck is equivalent to a 155" Northern Whitetail per Pope and young.

[Mocha1545]

Nice Buck! Thanks for writing it up.

[trophyhnter]

Great buck!

[trophyhnter]

Cool video! Pretty good for a phone vid!

[Willyhunts2]

Nice buck Congrats.

[200"mulie]

Sweet good job ! Congrats

[justinspe25]

Nice buck, Congrats!!!