Tag Archives: Deer

Montana Whitetail Hunting

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After last season being a bust in the big-game department I decided that I would try and get out of state for a hunt at least once a year to better insure a freezer full of meat. I knew if we rationed I would get to October so we cut back on venison consumption and ate more fish and birds.   I started looking for a trip and contacted Backcountry Montana Adventures who were listed as a RMEF supporter and began discussing options.    Originally this trip was going to be Catherine and I doing a bit of whitetail doe hunting and looking in the mountains outside of Dillon for a mule deer buck.   After planning the rest of our year Catherine decided against leaving Lira for a week so I switched the trip to be a whitetail only hunt and invited Christian along since he now had an empty freezer and had never been on a big game hunt before.

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A lack of spots – Texas Axis deer hunt

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After a failure to see elk in Oregon back in August, a blown mule deer buck in September and then a follow up elk trip moved by the outfitter then taken out by winter storms I was onto Plan C in order to avoid a meat crisis in a few months.   I started looking into Axis deer hunts in Hawaii or Texas and ended up finding a special being run from Southern Buck Outfitters for Axis does and figured.  It was a free-range hunt instead of a high-fence hunt which I liked and also semi-guided which meant we’d be hunting more or less on our own but dropped off by the outfitter.   I put the trip together with my nephew Dalton and hunting partner Lisa in a matter of days and then quickly I found myself on an Alaska flight to San Antonio.  

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2018 – Looking back

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2018 was a good year but a tough year in several respects and I’m actually kind of glad this one is over with.   Thanks to Lira I hiked close to 2000 miles this year and we managed to get out and do quite a bit of fishing and hunting, logging 108 days total in the water, hills or fields.   I also somehow managed to build a boat for the sole purpose of taking her fishing with me since she coludn’t quite work out in a float tube.   Catherine and I had a lot of fun spending many days exploring the Middle Fork Valley this year and also camping and hiking on the Oregon coast.

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Stalking oneself

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During this year’s early muzzleloader mule deer hunt I learned a lot about stalking deer and managed to get within 30-40 yards of a bedded down buck after a very long stalk.   I had spotted this deer from over a mile away at just the time it was getting ready to bed down.  I’d already blown two stalks where I only had gotten to about 100 yards from the animal and this time I was very careful and managed to get much closer.  I just forgot one final part in the process of stalking a deer and took one step too many busting the deer but still it was an experience I probably won’t forget and I learned many lessons from it.  I’m now getting ready for late season and was thinking back on the early season hunt and the things I need to remember later this month to be successful.

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Muzzleloader mule deer hunt

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This year my plan was to have an easy hunt to fill the freezer with a cow elk early and then have a challenge hunt to really push it trying to get a 3pt or better mule deer buck with my muzzleloader.   Well, the elk hunt didn’t quite pan out so that put a bit of pressure on the mulie muzzleloader hunt.   I knew if I’d done this hunt during rifle season I’d probably be able to take a deer but really I wanted the challenge of a true stalk and having to get in close, especially since I’ve been so lucky the last several years.   Given the difficulty of a buck with a muzzleloader I decided to do the hunt at Red’s in Ellensburg and got access to their 16,000 acre Mt. Baldy Preserve and was the only hunter during muzzleloader season there.

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Tips for the adult-onset hunter

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I was given a shotgun the day I was born, that is how much my dad was into hunting back in 1960.   I grew up having him teach me to shoot and ultimately tagged along on many a hunting trip going after squirrels, rabbits and pheasant.   By the time I was 14 or 15 I was going out with friends fishing or hunting, sometimes both in a day.  My parents would drop us off in the woods with loaded shotguns and come back to pick us up hours later, it is amazing no one ever got hurt.  I did my last hunt as a teen home from college break, some college friends wanted to go bird hunting so I went along and bagged a pheasant which was possibly the first thing I ever shot on my own.

I stopped hunting shortly after that trip and didn’t do it for decades.  I kept fishing most of my adult life but it was almost all catch and release trout fishing.  I even gave up fishing for part of the time but ended up back into it since I just loved it so much.  When I got sick and needed to eat meat I got back into hunting which was a bit of a challenge as an adult even having grown up doing it.  Now there are aspiring adult-onset hunters or fishers out there and they face a big challenge getting into the sport.  Having done it I hope I can offer a bit of advice.

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2017 – A lot of firsts!

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My seasons of 2017 – spring lake rainbows, spring turkey season, tenkara trout,  summer fly fishing, summer steelhead fishing, pheasant hunting, elk hunting, late deer season,  chukar hunting

I can hardly believe that 2017 is drawing to a close already, where did it go?   As I sit back and look over the year I realize that I have had one heck of a year with a lot of firsts.  For the first year in a while health was just not an issue, as you can tell from my lack of health related blog posts, so it freed me up to get back into fly fishing, to really get into hunting and to finally reach my goal of stocking my freezer by myself.   On top of spending almost one-third of my days in the field I was able to get out for daily hikes (and later runs) with Lira and still find time to work all year long.

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Black powder deer

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After filling my elk tag I kind of figured I was done with big game hunting for the year and that my Washington deer tag would go unfilled. I had hunted a few days during early muzzleloader season without so much as seeing a deer and figured that would be it.  When we thought we may have had a mix-up on the elk samples for CWD then I realized that late muzzleloader season was my last chance to put some meat in the freezer should I have to throw out my elk so I started looking again.  I put out cameras locally again but the farm was flooded so I started looking east of the mountains back to special unit 3372 by Sunnyside and unit 130 over by Cheney.  I opted for Cheney since I had seen no deer at all in 3372 so I made a plan and set up a trip in early December for a few days to hit unit 130.  I had scoped out the small amount of BLM land there and gotten a bit of intel and also found Miller Ranch which offered access to its private land mostly via guided hunts.  I talked to Scott Miller and he was very busy with bird hunters and another doe hunter but gave me an offer of a small trespass fee to hunt on my own and I took him up on it.  (I know this wasn’t a Public Land hunt which I fully support but I’m taking baby steps, on my own in private this year, on my own in public next and I’d so far struck out on public looking in early season.)  Of course a few days before the trip we finally got resolution on the elk, mine was safe, and I really didn’t need to do the hunt but decided to go anyway since it would be my first totally solo multi-day hunt and I had scouted out some nice looking canyons where I hoped the deer were hanging out.

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Looking forward to next season

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Hunting season pretty much ended at the end of last month when turkey season closed here in Washington.  Of course, tag hunting season was still ongoing and I just finally received  word of all those efforts and am getting ready for next season.   Last year was really my first true hunting season.  The year before when I decided take up hunting again it was limited to a few pheasant hunting trips but in 2016-17 it got much more serious.   I ended up the season with 30 days of hunting in total,  23 days of pheasant hunting, 5 days of deer hunting and 2 days of turkey hunting.  Overall, I was pretty successful, I must have taken about three dozen birds, one Mule Deer buck and two Merriam’s turkeys.   I managed to gather enough food that we have been eating wild game a few days a week since last fall. Add in fish that I catch and we are just under half our food supply now from hunting and fishing.

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