Daylight savings switcheroo meant an even earlier start to our day. We were set up adjacent to a cut soybean field which had a fair amount of elk droppings, looking over a well used creek crossing. Super chilly and a touch foggy. It even the birds were stirring until later. Maybe they too were feeling the effects of “fall forward”?
We decided to use the creek crossing ourselves and stayed on the elk trail as it weaves through dense cedar patches, heading towards the elk bedding area told to us by a enthusiastic soldier we met on the tank trail the other night. I did pop out my “seeing any elk??, call my number” sign to a couple of trail cameras as we passed by.
Leaving the thick cedars and more out in the “open” which is waist to chest high sericia, grass and weeds to find bed after bed. Fresh green vegetation pressed down to allow elk to chew their cud and rest. We found a place to observe any possible comings and goings and sat down. But because the foliage was so tall and dense, one or the other would need to carefully stand up and scan for approaching elk.
I told kansasson that we would be hunting more with our ears than our eyes here. And thirty minutes later he caught my attention with a low voices “pssst, hear that?” Slight murmurings of hooves and bodies pushing through the jungle. We tried to imagine what we making this noises, and slowly rose to see if we could get a visual.
I had the bipod at full height extension and the 308 at the ready. It was clear that the noise was moving right to left, and from where I was standing I had determined that their were skinny shooting lanes across the way where an elk might be moving.
And then we heard a deer blowing and saw the flagging hind end as the doe bounced away. She sorta looked like a porpoise swimming across the ocean with her head/ body coming up for air, and then disappearing into the thick stuff, only to be seen yards away as she again bounded over the surface of the greenish sea of vegetation.
Giving Aaron a fist bump for his acute hearing we realized that the day was warming up and it was time to shed a couple of layers (it got to 72° later that day) As we were finishing up with putting our orange back on, we again heard a critter moving through the sea in front of us. Trying to be ready for a shot if an elk came through the trees heading to her bedroom, I heard Aaron say “there it is”.
Coming down the trail was a little spike whitetail, following the elk trail, and heading right at us. This little guy looked like a dik-dik from my Kenyan childhood. (My first “big game” animal from when hunting was legal in Kenya) This deer was stick still and staring straight at me, perhaps both of us feeling a little chagrined. Me because I had imagined I was hearing an elk, he because he had blundered into a close contact with a human.
Looking at this young deer, my subconscious knew something was up with the spike, but it wasn’t until I saw kansassons photo that I realized what I was seeing. He had a white outline of his eyeballs, as if he was wearing glasses.
The stare down lasted for more than a minute, and then he turned tail and ran back down the trail, looking like another dolphin swimming away.
We decided to use the creek crossing ourselves and stayed on the elk trail as it weaves through dense cedar patches, heading towards the elk bedding area told to us by a enthusiastic soldier we met on the tank trail the other night. I did pop out my “seeing any elk??, call my number” sign to a couple of trail cameras as we passed by.
Leaving the thick cedars and more out in the “open” which is waist to chest high sericia, grass and weeds to find bed after bed. Fresh green vegetation pressed down to allow elk to chew their cud and rest. We found a place to observe any possible comings and goings and sat down. But because the foliage was so tall and dense, one or the other would need to carefully stand up and scan for approaching elk.
I told kansasson that we would be hunting more with our ears than our eyes here. And thirty minutes later he caught my attention with a low voices “pssst, hear that?” Slight murmurings of hooves and bodies pushing through the jungle. We tried to imagine what we making this noises, and slowly rose to see if we could get a visual.
I had the bipod at full height extension and the 308 at the ready. It was clear that the noise was moving right to left, and from where I was standing I had determined that their were skinny shooting lanes across the way where an elk might be moving.
And then we heard a deer blowing and saw the flagging hind end as the doe bounced away. She sorta looked like a porpoise swimming across the ocean with her head/ body coming up for air, and then disappearing into the thick stuff, only to be seen yards away as she again bounded over the surface of the greenish sea of vegetation.
Giving Aaron a fist bump for his acute hearing we realized that the day was warming up and it was time to shed a couple of layers (it got to 72° later that day) As we were finishing up with putting our orange back on, we again heard a critter moving through the sea in front of us. Trying to be ready for a shot if an elk came through the trees heading to her bedroom, I heard Aaron say “there it is”.
Coming down the trail was a little spike whitetail, following the elk trail, and heading right at us. This little guy looked like a dik-dik from my Kenyan childhood. (My first “big game” animal from when hunting was legal in Kenya) This deer was stick still and staring straight at me, perhaps both of us feeling a little chagrined. Me because I had imagined I was hearing an elk, he because he had blundered into a close contact with a human.
Looking at this young deer, my subconscious knew something was up with the spike, but it wasn’t until I saw kansassons photo that I realized what I was seeing. He had a white outline of his eyeballs, as if he was wearing glasses.
The stare down lasted for more than a minute, and then he turned tail and ran back down the trail, looking like another dolphin swimming away.
