Almost Twice, Once Will Suffice!(A 3rd Season CO Hunt)

[BENEDSUM]

I’ve hunted a lot of deer in Colorado in a lot of units. Knowing that I wasn’t going to draw a buck tag I wanted this year my sights were set on helping out friends and family with their tags. We went 1/1 during muzzy and 2/2 during 2nd rifle. As 3rd season kicked off my hopes of helping out the final 2 tag holders were high. The final two buck tags were a hunt code we’ll call less than desirable when it comes to a mature buck but definitely doable.

 

[BENEDSUM]

OPENING MORNING

A winter wonderland. As most of you who hunted 3rd season know, opening day gave us a reasonable amount of snow to make it feel like the “good ole days”(I’m 27 so I don’t know but apparently AL Gore screwed us)

Anyways we were unable to put boots on the ground until about 8:30-9:00am due to every pull off, parking lot, and dirt road being filled with trucks. Plans
A-Z were taken. Finally finding an empty spot we hopped out and started gaining elevation. On our way up to the selected glassing knob we heard several shots close by. I don’t know about you guys but when I hear shots close I like to pause and wait for a decent amount of time JUST in case. With 5 minutes passing and not seeing any movement we decided to continue, at this point we’re probably 3/4 of the way to the top.(Lots of huffs and puffs)

No sooner than taking that first step my buddy says “DEER!!!”

I pull up the binos and to my pleasant surprise I’m looking at a whitetail buck moving at a moderate pace. I kneel down and whistle, he stops, I plug my ears………. He starts moving again, I whistle a few more times in desperation. He stops. Cover my ears again, “shoot him”…….. Over the hill he goes. I turned to my buddy in shock knowing that the opportunity we just had was a rarity.

He couldn’t get comfortable on the deer without knowing a range, 128 yards was the range. Being a novice I understood his anxiety of a rushed situation. He brushed it off and we proceeded to make it to our knob and sit til dark. No more activity to report for opening day.

 

[jwatts]

Tagging along for the rest of the story

 

[BENEDSUM]

Day 2

We opted to go back to the same spot we were at the day prior, couldn’t get that whitetail out of our heads. Once at the top we were met with the view of orange as far as the eye could see. I try to be positive in situations like this because it can potentially be beneficial. We glassed for about 45 minutes and finally turned up a deer, a forky about 1000 yards out. He fed down behind a finger ridge and we lost sight of him, at that point my buddy made a move to get in position where we “thought” he would pop out. Little did we know another hunter was doing the same thing from an different ridge and ended up bumping the deer right towards us into 250 yards and again a quick whistle, the deer stopped, we weren’t ready, deer gone.

I should’ve prefaced this with it being my buddies first big game hunt. He did an incredible job and while a seasoned hunter probably could’ve capitalized on those two opportunities I’m proud of him for not rushing it and making a bad shot. He only had Sat/Sun to hunt and after that second missed opportunity he was ready to be done.

Glassed til about noon and he made the call to back out and head home. Although a tag wasn’t punched I’d call it a successful hunt because he is already asking me how to get more than one tag for next year!

 

[BENEDSUM]

Day 3

My cousin met me Monday morning at the same spot, 3rd times a charm right?

A lot less people out as expected and didn’t see anyone else parked on our way in. That glassing knob was starting to feel like home at this point. Right as we sat downwe spotted a group of deer about 200 yards on the wrong side of the fence. One buck with probably 10 ladies all to himself. We watched them for the better part of an hour feed and eventually start to bed one by one. The buck turned away from the group and started walking in our direction. “Surely he’s not going to hop the fence right?”

He sure did, but there’s a catch. Public land butted up against a rural sub division and he was directly in line with a house. We had no play without him picking us off the ridge and needing an anchor shot to ensure he wouldn’t run back on to private. The good news was he bedded down on public, we could wait him out. The bad news, we weren’t the only ones to see him(I think). Out of nowhere a guy comes out below us on the ridge and starts walking straight towards the fence/buck. I still don’t know whether or not that guy actually saw the buck or was just hiking with a gun but he ended up spooking the buck… cannot catch a break on this hunt man.

The day ended with some road hunting and spotting a ton of deer throughout the unit, a game plan was made for the final day.

 

[BENEDSUM]

Day 4
The final morning of hunting was a good one as this guy showed himself after about 30 minutes of watching a group of does. At this point he was about 750 yards away, we needed to close the distance.

The buck bedded down on the X and we made our way to the circle where we figured would be close enough for a shot. We didn’t see anything but antler tips for another hour.


As he stood up I got my phone set up on the spotter and clicked record, that video is 2 minutes in duration but in the moment I swear an hour passed.

This is what the end of that video looks like.

 

[BENEDSUM]

The rest is history

 

[jwatts]

Congrats

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats!