Bows, Bucks, and 'Bows!

 Just returned from my annual late season archery hunt for whitetail deer. This year was drastically different conditions than I'm used to for this hunt! It was very mild and wet making the hunting more challenging. I still managed to harvest another nice buck for the season with the bow! On a plus note, the river I hunt along is usually frozen and covered in snow, so this trip between hunting in the morning and evenings I managed to to slip a few casts in here and there! The river was just starting to ice up but I managed to find some rainbows swinging an "electrik" leech on a floating line, very cool :) 

November 25th Archery Blacktail deer :)

There is NOTHING better than still hunting your way along the side of a mountain, hoping for a chance to get within bow range of Blacktail buck! Yesterday I did exactly that! Was able to call this buck in using a Primos grunt tube, to 28 yards. After the shot he ran 30 yards and dropped out of sight? Weird, I thought to myself? I eased down to retrieve my arrow out of a cedar tree that it stuck in after passing clean through the buck. The blood trail was huge and there was no doubt in my mind that he laid right over that hill. HAHA, he was over the hill alright! And 35 feet down in the bottom of a waterfall! With a bit of caution I eased down to the bottom and cleaned and washed him up. 30 minutes later I had him up to where I could snap a few shots and process him. I was a loooong way from any roads so I had to process, and pack him out to my truck. I posted a few pics of what the country is like that these deer inhabit, thick, dense, wet bush that makes it very hard to find a buck, let alone slip an arrow through to its target so I consider myself very lucky to have taken this nice 3x3 Blacktail :) Definitely the hardest of the 3 species of deer that I hunt with a bow! Enjoy the pics.

What Blacktail country looks like!

How, and where I found him!

Nice 3X3

Hard to take a good photo by yourself??

1 butchered Blacktail buck

All packed up for the hike down

Back at it!!!

Well after receiving a few emails wondering if I was still alive? I realized that I've really dropped the ball on my blog! I guess between a miserable bow hunt for mountain goat, where everything that could go wrong, did! A non stop Pink salmon season on the fly, where 50 to 100 pinks a day left me exhausted and going through flies to the point where I had to tie more right on the river! Or the miserable, cold, wet start to Coho salmon season, it slipped through the cracks. I also have spent every extra minute between work and sleep working and playing with my new obsession, my WR250R! So rather than go into too much detail I'll just throw on some pics to tell some stories. I promise to stay on top if from now on though as the Coho and Chum on the fly begins to light up. Oh and there should be some duck hunts to post about pretty quick as well if all goes as planned ;) Take care, and check back soon!