Temperature when we arrived was -13 but the wind from recent days had completely died. A bit chilly but overall pretty nice conditions. At 4:00 pm we still had not seen anything and my son indicated he had just about had enough. I prevailed on him to only quit if it was truly unbearable - he relented and said he could make it a while longer.
At 4:45 pm a group of 5 does came down the trail headed towards some oats I had put out a few days earlier. We were set up about 100 yards from the oats on a run coming from a well used bedding area. Once they were in the shooting lane my son gave the "bah" sound to stop them. He than let go a firebolt tipped with a 150 grain bolt cutter from his Exocet. The Exocet was purchased used off of another member of this forum.
The doe did a less than impressive donkey kick and all 5 of them ran about 50 yards north of us and stopped in the hardwoods trying to figure out what was going on. They milled around for about 2 minutes and than 4 of them headed off north down into the thicker cedars by the river. The hit doe walked about 10 yards and disappeared into a ravine and we lost sight of her.
Based on her behaviour I thought something might be up so we waited until about 6:30 to start tracking. There was no hair, no arrow and no blood - not a good start. With 5 sets of tracks in the snow to choose from we started tracking what we thought was her trail. After 400 yards we turned around and returned to where we had last seen her and choose a different set of tracks. At this point it was about 7:45pm and the temperature had dropped to -18.
My son had a Xmas party to go to so I decided to take him back to the truck where his mother had arrived to take him to the party. I returned to the ravine and started tracking again. After about 150 yards I caught eyes in the flashlight - problem was even though she was lying down her head was up and moving - but she did not get up and run. I immediately turned the light off and backtracked.
At this point there were numerous coyotes howling in the vicinity and I knew if I left her overnight and returned the next morning she would be eaten. So I camped out just out of sight and started pacing to stay warm. Every 30 min I would sneak in and see if her head was still up. She got up and moved a couple times but never more than 10 yards. Finally at about 10:20 pm she got up one last time and immediately crashed and started convulsing. Convulsions stopped after about 10 seconds and she lay still. Turned out she was liver shot. I waited 5 minutes and with no sign of movement snuck up to her and poked her with a stick a few times - no response.
So after 9 hours (my son was only there for the first 6) in the bush and a 1/2 mile toboggan ride back to the truck my apprentice hunter had his first deer. Forgive the poor pic but it was dark and I was bloody cold at this point - unfortunately my son was not there for the photo - we'll take some more tomorrow before I bring her to the butcher.
So that's the end of my season as I am now officially tagged out unless I party hunt on someone elses tag.
Tally for 2013:
- 3 bucks taken by me
- 1 doe taken by my 13 year old apprentice
