My daughter, my friend, Bob, and I drew Montana general season buck deer tags. We decided to go late in the season the week before Thanksgiving in hopes of hitting the rut. Brooke made arrangements with her high school teachers to get homework assignments that would be due during the week she would be out of school on the hunt. The plan was to try and use my cell phone as a hot spot for her to get her assignments turned in versus having to drive the hour from our camp to town to get Wifi.
Bob left early on Friday morning, and Brooke and I left after she finished her last class for that day. This meant a long and late drive to get at least as far as Great Falls, Montana where Bob would be waiting for us. The weather was terrible, and we drove in rain from the time we left Vancouver, Washington until we got to Great Falls. We rolled into a Walmart parking lot at about 2:00 a.m., and in true redneck fashion, we slept in the parking lot in my converted cargo trailer. After a few hours of sleep, we got up and hit the road again for the final five-hour drive to our destination point.
After arriving and setting up camp, we still had a couple hours of daylight to drive some roads on BLM land and glass. I was a little disappointed in the lack of deer I saw versus prior years in the same area. Brooke had killed an antelope and a bull elk but never a mule deer. I had taken her on a couple deer hunts before, and while we had a great time, we came back with tags in our pockets. I was on a mission and under pressure to try and get her a nice buck on this trip.
The next morning, we got up early and took the four-wheeler to a couple walk-in areas. As with the evening before, we were disappointed in that we only saw a handful of deer and no bucks.
On Monday morning, we drove the truck and trailered the quad to a different section of BLM land. That section had a short ORV road that dead ended near some large bluffs and what looked like open prairie land but was loaded with little coulees and dry creek bottoms. Things started off slow with us only seeing one deer, a small forked horn buck who bounded away from us as we putted the quad towards the end to the ORV trail. Once we got to that end point, we split up. I had Brooke walk a few hundred yards towards the south where she could look at some ravines and glass into a couple open areas. I went the other way and climbed up on a little mound to get a vantage of the coulees below as well as some distant bluffs. Within a couple minutes of sitting down, I glassed the base of a bluff that was maybe a mile away and saw a large group of deer feeding away from me towards the bluff. It was too far for me to see horns even with my 15x56 binoculars. I ran back towards where I left the quad to get my spotting scope and flag down Brooke to come to where I was. By the time we got back to my glassing point and set the spotting scope up, the deer had walked out of view. Where I had seen them last looked like they would be boxed in by the bluffs and the wind was in our favor. I told Brooke we should be able to hike the mile or so using the dry creek bottoms for cover and pin the deer against the base of the bluff. The wild card in this was a lot of walking and zigzagging around to stay in cover all in hopes that they would still be there and that there might be a mature buck with the group.
As we got closer to where I had first seen the group of deer, we slowed the pace and I told Brooke to stay close. We crept another 50 or so yards ahead, and I kept looking at the base of the bluff ahead of us expecting to see the deer feeding out of one of the little coulees. I turned around to see where Brooke was and was troubled to see she was lagging maybe 30 yards behind me. I gave a frustrated wave for her to catch up to me. She gave me an equally frustrated wave and pointed toward the top of the bluff. The group of deer I thought would be pinned in against the face of the bluff had instead picked their way up a ravine. As I looked where she was pointing, I saw the last doe crest the ridge and walk out of view. I had been overly focused on seeing them where I expected them to be instead of keeping an eye on all the surroundings. Fortunately, Brooke hadn’t been tunnel visioned like me or we never would have seen where they went.
Quickly regrouping, we scurried around the base of the bluff to get to the backside of it. Once there, we started glassing the backside slopes and cliffs in hopes of locating the deer again. As I peeked around an outcropping and glassed up, I a saw nice, mature buck maybe 400 yards away. I told Brooke to get ready as I wanted a better look and I thought she might want to take this buck. I set up her shooting sticks and used them to rest my binoculars on. A nice, mature 4-point was standing broadside near the top of the ridge with a Volkswagen-sized rock behind him. I ranged the buck at 346 yards and then got Brooke set up on the gun. Amazingly, the buck kept standing there staring down below him at, I assume, the does he was with. Brooke’s first shot was a miss, just over his back. The buck moved a few steps but wasn’t sure what was going on. This gave Brooke time to get settled for a second shot. She pulled the trigger, and the buck jumped and kicked and then ran around the big boulder out of sight. A few seconds later, he reappeared on the other side of the boulder several yards left of where he was on Brooke’s first shot. He stood there broadside again, but this time, he was all hunched up, back arched, obviously sick. Brooke triggered another shot, but this kicked dirt up just below his ribcage and he bolted. I knew he was sick and wouldn’t go far but also wanted to try and cut some distance and get eyes back on him. We picked our way around a few more outcroppings and small fingers coming off the bluff. As we peeked around a corner, I saw a doe coming off the cliffs and settling into a nervous walk on a shelf 100 yards up from the base of the bluff and maybe 200 yards away from where we stood. I set the shooting sticks up again and told Brooke to get ready as I was certain the buck would be following the group of does. I ranged and the distance was now 189 yards. No sooner had I told Brooke the range than the buck walked into the middle of the group of does. To her credit and with no coaching, she waited for the does to clear and then squeezed the trigger. The buck lunged forward, and with both front shoulders broken, he snowplowed himself into the dirt on the bench and then rolled out of sight. I gave Brooke a high five and told her, “Great buck, great job!” We now needed to climb up there and make sure he was dead. He wasn’t. Her shot had broken both shoulders down low but just missed the heart. The buck couldn’t walk, but his head was up. Her antelope and elk had both been one-shot kills. Seeing the buck there alert like this was stressful for Brooke, but she handled having to make that final shot really well.
Now there were serious high fives and hugs. It was a nice, wide 4x4 with eyeguards. It was a good buck by anyone’s standards, and for a first buck, it was a great one. Amazingly, we had cell reception, so we sent pictures to my wife and two younger daughters. Instead of diving right into the gutting and boning out of the buck, we sat down and had our sandwiches and water and just took in the moment, savoring Brooke’s accomplishment and paying respect to the buck.
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