New Hope and a new Beginning

My best friend and I went on his first big game hunt. Last year he started to gain interest in what I was doing all winter and all my stories about hunting and killing. I helped him pick out a rifle and soon we were mounting a scope and reloading. This long wait kept a lot of his excitement bottled up.

I took him to NewlLake just north of Newl because there is a ton of walk in ground and reclamation land out there. I personally have never been out there but on the topo map it was clear that debatably two fantastic spots to go in this 13 square mile chunk. We parked at the boat ramp and walked down behind the dam and found a huge march and a low crick bottom.  Out at the 900 yard mark I spot three does working their way from a hay yard down one of the forks of the river coming out of the dam. Working the low spots and staying out of sight we worked our way into 200 yards and settled on a small rise. Nervous he starts breathing heavy. I explain to him how important breath control is when taking the shot, “take 3 full breathes each one slower and deeper and on the 4^th only exhale half. This makes it so that your heartbeat will not move your sights and yet you still have enough breath to not starve your eyes”. The first place to suffer when you hold your breath is your occipital lobe, this is the portion of your brain that interprets your vision.

He folds out his bipod and I hear him breathe, he wispers, “middle”, meaning he was going to take the middle one. He lets drive and this doe didn’t even fidget, he dropped her like a bad habit on a Sunday, so fast infact that he didn’t even see where she went. He ejects his shell and looks at me and says, “well, you’re turn”. So I settled down and pulled a little lead on the lead doe and smoke her right through the bread basket. Later I ranged it and found she was at 290, and running like that, ya I was happy with it.

This kid went nuts! He was pumped out of his mind! He jumps up and asks the same questions time and time again, this quiet kid turned into a bundle of energy; and talkative! We walk up and words cannot express the joy in this new hunters face, everything came together and a year of preparation came to a head in this moment. I couldn’t be more proud.

We went back to the top of the lake and fallowed the crick that feeds the lake uphill. This gave way to a deer haven! There were willows and cotton woods and tullys with green crick bottom, and the tracks were all over! Deer must trample this area frequently in the low light times and go out on the prarie during the day because the tracks from a few hours before covered every square mile of that place but not one deer was there when we arrived. We walked probably 12-13 miles by 1:00 and figured we had hunted all there was to hunt there so we went home and hung the does in my garage and he went to work. I went in the house and crashed.

 My boss woke me up with a call, he wanted to know if I could come shoot one of the deer that frequented his ranch house and eating his lawn. He assured me that I would be more than satisfied with him as a trophy and man was he right! This buck is a STUD! From a distance he looks like an elk, he ‘s twice as wide as his ears and almost a foot and a half tall and plenty’o mass to go around.

I’m hooked I only saw him once and he ‘s the deer I want to put my archery tag on this year. I sat on the edge of his house pasture on a rim rock and watched his does filter in across the ravine and feed in the lush river bottom, just as I was getting ready to leave I glassed once more and saw him at last light. This gargantuan of a mule deer waddle over the mountain and to the top of the ravine on the opacte side. It was too dark and I decided that I couldn’t shoot him now and in the hour it would take him to get to me it wouldn’t get any lighter so I backed out and found myself surrounded by his 30 does they were all around my truck and his house. As I drove off I know I scared them but I hope they didn’t change their patterns because this guy is worth chancing all year!

However this next weekend I will be traveling to Winner to hunt pheasant in the pheasant capital of the world, eastern South Dakota! This will be my first pheasant hunt since I moved here from Oregon and after 5 years it’s about time!

Good luck and good hunting.