So I went deer hunting this last weekend with my buddy Brian. It was definitely a hunting trip like no other I’ve had before, that’s for sure. Brian and I have been chomping at the bit to go hunting this season in Eastern Washington. We met last year while elk hunting up on Mt Spokane in the Inland Empire Paper company land. Since then we’ve become very good friends, much like brothers. So I digress. I had decided to do archery this year instead of the regular modern firearm. I had bought a bow last year (a Bear Done Deal) but hadn’t practiced enough with it prior to the season opener. This year I was determined to take it out. Deer willing, I will get my buck this season.
So this last weekend was the first weekend during the 2009 Eastern Washington deer season. We have been making contacts all year and had managed to get some options together on where to hunt, mostly private land since the public land is a lot harder to hunt. We had our fall back areas though. My other friend happened to have a place on Lake Eloika which is really enticing. LOTS of deer there. However, they are mostly all does. Out of the many times I have been up there, I’ve only seen one buck and he was a younger 6 point whitetail. Brian told me that the farm he hunted last year had a couple big bucks mulling about the property. So we decided that the farm was the way to go. This would prove to be an interesting choice.
Now realize, I’ve been hunting since I was twelve…and I’m now thirty one. So I’ve been hunting a while. However, all of my experience has been on public land of one sort or another. This farm hunting was a completely different experience. I’ll explain that in a minute.
I suppose I should mention at this point that we took Brian’s work buddy with us on Friday night after work and didn’t get anything but plastered that night. Was a fun night nonetheless…but it proved to be a bit of a downfall to the weekend I think. Saturday, we all woke up hung over. Me more than the other two. I had never actually tried Everclear till that night. If you are ever thinking about it, don’t bother…it’s like ingesting nail polish remover…no joke. And not only that, it only takes a shot and half for someone 200lbs to get pretty well plastered. Mean stuff. Leave it for making stuff like Kahlua.
So Saturday…what a day. We got up around 9am and ate and got ready to get out there again. Brian’s work buddy left to go home since he had an appointment he couldn’t miss. Brian and I went out to the farm and started our hunting for the day. We hadn’t had the opportunity to take out the owner’s ATV yet, so we were walking the 200 acres. It was labored work being hung over. It also wasn’t the smartest thing for us to do. I almost passed out on our way back in due to dehydration. I had had a full 32oz of water, but it wasn’t near enough like it normally would be. We managed to make it back toward a large eyebrow (that’s a non-plowed cut in the side of a hill that is too steep to plow and has grass, bushes and trees growing in it) that was on the property where we had seen a couple of very nice bucks the opening day earlier that week. Once we got there, we took a look and found nothing. No deer had decided to bed down in that eyebrow. Now, this is one lesson I learned while I was out there. Deer on farms where we were will be in and out of eyebrows all day long. Seems they’ll pick one they like and stick to it as much as they can, but that’s where you’ll find them during the daytime. So that makes it a little easier to find them. Good for the hunter!
Looking out over the large eyebrow to the back of the property we saw one more eyebrow and in a crease at the top of it was laying a deer. You could see it’s head like a branch sticking up. Whether it had antlers or not, we couldn’t tell yet. So we went to check it out. Circled wide to get down below the hills and out of view of the eyebrow. Once we got closer, we saw that there was indeed a buck there. So we hotfooted it over to the hill that led to the eyebrow. At this point, I was quite tired and pretty well dehydrated. We had walked about a half mile up and down hills through dirt and stubble and fresh plowed ground.
So, tired and excited at the same time we hiked up to the crest of the hill. Here’s where lesson two came in, stubble, especially when talking wheat straw stubble, is LOUD. You can’t be very quiet in it if it hasn’t rained hard at least the night before if not that same day. It’s quieter to slide your feet between the rows of wheat, but you still break some of the straw and make lots of noise. That lesson firmly in mind, we started stalking up to the edge of the eyebrow which is about 100yds ahead of us. Once we got to about 30yds from the edge, we got down low. Brian got on his knees as he saw the ears of the buck down below. By this time, we had figured out there were two of them. Very nice size bucks. Both were at least 8 point whitetails, and one had beams out past his ears before bending forward in the traditional whitetail fashion. As Brian knelt, so did I. I couldn’t see either of them yet and had no idea where they were. Brian wasn’t being very specific either. So that we could both get a shot off at the same time, I motioned that I was coming to him and began slinking my way toward him. As soon as I raised up to move I caught sight of the deer just over the grass at the edge of the eyebrow…and he had caught sight of me. At that point I got down and waited. Two seconds later he got up and stared in our direction. Brian could only see his neck up. I waited a couple seconds for Brian to take a shot, but he didn’t stand up. It was a good 60+ yards from where he was. I decided at that point to stand up and take a shot, hoping the buck would sit there while I drew. No such luck. I was at half draw when the buck decided to turn and split. The second buck took a second but went after him. Brian and I both took hail marry shots and missed by a long way. I had the distance, but was way behind the buck. Off they went, over the first hill, then the second and gone…what seemed to be a mile off in the distance.
Well, that sucked. But we had proven we could get pretty close and we found another one of the bucks’ hideouts. One thing I’ve learned, bow hunting is a continual learning experience. Especially when you haven’t bow hunted a lot before. Had we had rifles, we would have had enormous bucks twice over already. That said, we walked all the way back to the house and went to where we were staying for lunch. I got a bunch of Gatorade and drank up and then passed out for the rest of the afternoon. Brian went back but without any luck. He managed to flush a few doe, but nothing else.
Sunday was a much better day. We got up fully rested. We slept in a little because it had rained, so the deer were going nowhere. This time, we took the ATV with the owner’s permission and saved ourselves the walk. Was a pleasant change. We got out to the large eyebrow and again saw nothing. But we were more concerned with the eyebrow in the back of the property. From the large eyebrow we glassed the far eyebrow and saw the two bucks we had spooked the day before on the crest of the hill we had climbed and they were slowly making their way to the eyebrow again. They trotted on down into the eyebrow and we moved, even faster than the first time.
This time, we decided to learn from our previous encounter and come up from fully behind the eyebrow and not just along the crest to the edge of it. We did a great job, stalked along the far side of the crest and up behind the eyebrow. We were 20yds or less from the edge of the eyebrow with Brian in the lead and we were about to sneak up to the edge and take a shot when Brian drew back and somehow knocked the string off the cam on his bow. He was using his friend’s Hoyt. It came off in such a way it snapped him in the family jewels with the cam. Thankfully, despite the noise, the bucks still had no idea we were there and didn’t move. I motioned Brian over to see if we could fix it but there was no way without a bow press. We were pissed at that point. A total crapper to have a bow malfunction just before we were going to take a deer. Not good. Since I had the only working bow, it was up to me to move in and take the shot. So I stalked to the edge as quiet as possible and started scanning the eyebrow bit by bit as I got closer. I was upset to find nothing. They were not in the spots they were the day before and I couldn’t see them anywhere else. So I started looking harder. Scanned to the right, then to the left. As soon as I turned my head to the left, they both jumped up in the same spot and took off running…only 15yds away! How could I miss them??? I took another hail marry when they took off and missed by a mere yard at 70yds out. Again, they went over the first hill, then the second and gone. At that point, we could have screamed. Nothing was going in our favor.
We headed back and got some food and then went home to Spokane. We talked about it and decided we would go back Monday (labor day) and go early enough to beat the deer to the eyebrow. Brian took up position in the eyebrow and I took up position across the way where the deer had taken off running. I hid near a bunch of thistle so I blended in. We waited 6 hours and nothing came through. We saw a few does go to their spot in a nearby eyebrow…but no bucks. We had pushed them around too much for the time being, so we went home and relaxed the rest of the night away.
Hopefully this next weekend will prove to be a little more fruitful. Keeping my fingers crossed!
Tags: Eastern Washington, Hunting, whitetail deer
