Every day on our hunt we got up in the dark. Lit the stove, and ate breakfast by the light of the 'Luci' lantern. On the first day we left camp to go hunting before the sun cleared the horizon.
And there were deer everywhere we looked - Does and fawns grazing on the green hillsides, bucks sparring, and herds on the move to where they wanted to bed down for the day. We made a plan to intercept one such herd and headed on up the mountain. While we climbed the sun came up and bathed everything in bright color.
Once the sun came up all the deer started to bed down for the day, and suddenly there were not deer everywhere you looked. It's a good thing we did get up early, or we would have missed the show. Still we did find the group of bucks we had seen earlier crossing over the shoulder of a mountain, and we made our stalk.
We picked out the biggest buck in the group and Gregg shot him perfectly behind the shoulder. An equally big buck hung around after the shot, and we were tempted to harvest him too. But our plan had been to keep it simple and pack loads to a minimum by harvesting one deer at a time. And we stuck to the plan.
After cutting up the deer we headed back to camp. That's when I truly appreciated our plan. Three people carrying one deer is a pleasant experience, and we made it back to camp by 11AM full of energy to go on another hunt. Patrick
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| Memento Mori - Gregg contemplates death |
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| Packing the meat back to camp |
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