Short Hunt Buck!

Short Hunt Buck!

Opening morning found me in California hunting for something a little different, a championship of the SNORE 2011 OFF Road Series. We finished the 250 mile race in 4th place. I couldn’t get the truck loaded up quick enough to get back home and get in the hills for the last few days of the hunt.

One day of work Monday and a half day Tuesday and CowBoy and I were heading to the hills. We got to camp and all agreed we were going to purse a 100 inch plus buck because I have a few 90 inch plus bucks on the wall. We met up with Kevin (my brother/ AZhunter) and we got to our spot with about 30 minutes of light left. After about 5 Minutes of glassing Kevin located a big buck and before I knew it we were jumping over rocks and heading down a steep hill trying to get to the buck in time. After a quick run we got to the area where the buck was and he just dropped down the backside of the very thick ridge just as we were setting up to take the shot at a good 100” class buck as darkness set in we had to call it a night.

Tuesday Night we were surprise to see our good ole friend Flat billin/Cowboy “Big D”.

Wednesday Morning found us all at the same ridge looking for the same buck and he didn’t make his appointment. We spent the rest of the morning checking other country and we seen some nice deer but no shooter bucks. Wednesday Evening a Hurricane decided to roll in and dang near blew us right the off the mountain. Big d held us all down. Thanks goodness for Big D.

After the big storm Wednesday evening we had a good feeling that that Thursday morning was going to be promising.

Thursday morning the stars started aligning quickly and we were having a flash back of a previous hunt from the prior year. After a hour long drive down a pumpkin smashing, head bashing, transmission thrashing road I was wishing I would of brought the off road truck. Lol. After we got to our spot we had an hour long hike up one of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. We finally got to our glassing point and the work was just beginning to start. We weren’t having much luck glassing anything up and had only seen one yote. As we were starting to move to a new spot on the hill we heard the words we wanted to here, Big D said, “Hey Ron I think I have a deer”. He was trying to explain to me where these deer were and they had to be 2 plus miles and he glassed them up with his 10x42 Nikon Monarchs. I called Kevin over to take a closer look and Kevin said, Big D if that’s a deer that has to be the best ninja glass I’d ever seen. After a few seconds Kevin had them in his glass and said Ronnie bring the Kowas. A quick look through the Kowas not only confirmed they were a deer but 3 Big Bucks. We instantly knew there were two shooters for sure.

Kevin and I were off to the races back down and up another nasty hill. Ronnie and Big D stayed on the glass to keep the bucks in site. We finally got to the shooting point we picked out previously after about a 2 hour hike. We set up to glass to relocate them. The terrain was very hard to relocate the area where we had last seen them. Being later in the morning we knew they would be bedding down soon so we were hoping to find them before hand. After 45 minutes of glassing we finally picked up the smaller buck as he feed into a small opening. Shortly behind him was one of the big bucks. I quickly setup for the shot as Kevin ranged them at 249 yards.
I put the 7 Mag on the mark and let it do the work. The rest was history. I was glad to finally put down my 102 2/8 Coues Buck.
I couldn’t have done it without the A-Team. AZhunter (Kevin Michael), Big D, and Cowboy Outfitters (Ronnie Michael). Thanks for helping me have a dream come true.