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Favorite hunts- doesn't have to be your biggest trophy, just your favorite experience
If anyone would like to share a story of their best/ favorite memory afield whether after deer or small game, something that occurred that particular time that made the hunt special or extraordinary. Maybe your first turkey you called in all by yourself, first hunt with kids etc. Thanks for sharing. Funny is good too...
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There's so many. Not that any were a big experience, but the little things on each one add up to a lifetime of great experience hunting.
I live in Texas and have not really hunted much out of state, so I've never had a shot at an elk or mulie. Just whitetails and hogs. But these two are my hunting life. They are what they are and I cherrish those opportunities.
One of my favorite hunts was the first time I went to Junction to hunt with our friends from the Rio Grande Valley on their lease. I was in a blind on the hill above the camp house, thinking back I think they called it blind no. 1. Our friend, i'll call him Paul, let me off at the blind at about 5: AM because I was one of the first to drop off. It was a blind that opened in the front and had a glass covered hole looking out the front and each side. The feeder was about 20-30 yards out in front of me and the blind and feeder were fenced in together.
After sitting there for about 30 minutes and as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I started seeing spots before my eyes. These began to take shape as the first dim rays of daylight began to simmer through the darkness. Then these shapes were recognizable as deer shapes. I sat their deathly quiet not wanting to spook them. It finally got light enough to see antlers and there were two bucks and a doe. When i knew it was legal shooting time i put the .270 through the sliding window and picked out the biggest buck. I aimed right at the neck just behind the head. When I shot him he hit the ground without even a flop. He was DRT.
This may not seem like such a great experience and nowadays I have had some much more exciting ones, but this was my first really decent buck, a very typical 8 point with a 16 inch spread and I killed him dead on arrival to the ground. It don't get any better n that. The lease owner-friend judged his age to be about 3 years. He did make one comment that if that deer would have lived one more year he would have been a true trophy on anybody's wall. The funny thing was that two years later my dad killed one just about like it in the same blind.
God Bless Texas and God Bless Whitetail Deer!!!
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
Anyways we got out to where we were going to be hunting and met up with Jerry. He gave us the scoop and off we went. Jerry wasn't hunting, just "guiding" on this trip. He posted me up on a fence corner and said just keep your eyes open and wait, the goats will come. And they did, range was way too far though. I low crawled in the sage to about 350-400 yards or so (started at about 900 yards) and made it to a good place to take a shot. Put one high in the shoulder and watched the goat do a backflip through my scope. The goat wasn't anything special really, it was just the experience of doing something new and different for the first time. I saw animals nearly all day long, and it was great being out on the open plains, in very comfy weather. A far cry from chasing elk in November in extremely bitter weather, and sometimes hunting for almost 2 weeks without ever so much as seeing an elk.
It was a great day, my first goat, and I spent it with two admirable hunters. Not to mention I was back home skinning out my goat by 3 in the afternoon! Been hooked on goat hunting ever since. We all come from different places and are all different people, but this place really can bring together some memorable times and new friends. And I think this years forum elk hunt has a good chance at being ranked right up there with my first goat hunt!
My SIL managed to get us an affordable one year lease on 1100 acres of prime Sabine River bottom 'wilderness,' within 35 miles of my home. There were only 4 of us adults and my two young grandsons hunting on it, and it could have easily swallowed up 10-15 serious hunters, because of the density of brush and barely accessible areas. We got it in the spring, and so had all summer to find all the game trails and set up up blinds. During the course of that we explored in my two-seater mule, usually cutting trails with machetes to get to the prime spots. We saw all manner of varmints, hogs, deer and cats while finding and preparing our hunting sites, and the boys got to do some shooting and see how men behave when they are out like that. They loved it, and displayed some toughness and thoughtfulness that I never suspected they were capable of, and I enjoyed all the preparatory excursions almost as much as the actual hunting.
All our preparation paid dividends for us on opening weekend. I and my SIL each shot our biggest deer ever on the second day, and the youngest grandson shot a spike buck and a doe the next day. The oldest grandson (9yo at the time) was skunked, until Thanksgiving weekend, but ended up shooting the ten point with 20" spread that all of us had captured on game cameras and had been talking about and hoping to bag. I shot another large cull buck, later in the season, too.
The best thing about it was that we all made one shot kills on every deer, except for the youngest grandson (age 7 at the time), who had to apply a finishing shot to his spike that he hit a little too far back, with a .223. The boys got to experience the whole deal, from scouting the area, making the shot, camping out in the cold, to taking care of the meat, and eating it. They were troopers through the whole thing and loved every minute of it, and so did I. We lost the lease, and didn't get to hunt together, last year. I shot a better buck at the place I hunted last season, but I couldn't take the boys, and it wasn't near as much fun.
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
Life member of the American Legion, the VFW, the NRA and the Masonic Lodge, retired LEO
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Looks like somebody dileated the spam, otherwise my comment makes sense!!
I'm really pleased to know that, Dan. I had no idea. It's always a blessing to help someone achieve a goal, and that stalk you made was something to see, or so I'm told.
Some of my favorite hunts are those in which I helped someone take their first game animal of some kind. In addition to Dan's hunt, I remember helping Mike (Linefinder) get his first goat as well as his first elk. I also had a hand in helping Mosseybuck get his first goat, as well as watch both him and Mike make incredible shots on two antelope last year. That was truly memorable.
For myself, it was probably last year's elk hunt when I bagged a very nice 6x6 bull. I still remember the shot, and probably always will.
Good topic.
Gun control laws make about as much sense as taking ex-lax to cure a cough.
Paul's (Mosseybuck) quarter-mile "back-flip....DRT" .30-06 shot on his antegoat last year was really special. Won't be forgetting that one anytime soon.
When I was a kid in northeast Louisiana, I was really, really enamored with duck hunting. Thing is, 98% of the duck population was wood ducks, and I was armed with a .410 pump. Pass-shooting high flying woodies with a load of #4 from a .410 is sort of an art-form, and I turned out to be pretty good at it. On the rare occasions that an adult armed with a 12 gauge accompanied me, I'd usually smoke them by a ratio of 3:1. Looking back, I think it had more to do with reflexes than anything else. You just can't beat those 12 year old reflexes.
Anyway, I was creeping along an old abandoned logging road one morning before daylight after squirrels. This was a new area for me (the whole place is a huge subdivision now, and been that way for years), and I had no idea there was any water around. But there was. Within ten minutes of daybreak, I had three dead woodies laying in the road.
Fast forward, and imagine my excitement when I got home and showed them to my Dad. I talked him into going back out with me the next evening. We got there in time to look for the water source, which in my excitement, I'd not
bothered looking for the previous day. We found it. It was a ten foot wide creek at the bottom of a 30 foot deep red clay gully.
No woodies. Didn't see one. Didn't hear one. But, from about an hour before sunset until sunset there was a steady stream of migrating greenheads cruising overhead at probably 500 feet altitude. Too far to shoot at, but close enough to watch really closely. I'd never before seen this, and in spite of a lot more years of duck hunting, I've not seen anything like it since. I wish I knew how many thousands of mallards we saw that evening, but any conjecture on my part would be simply a guess. I really have no idea.
Neither my Dad nor I fired a shot that evening. But unlike most duck hunting I'd done, the weather was clear, the air was warmish, and the sun and clouds glowed a soft orange. What a day. If there was such a thing as a bucket list in reverse, I'd do that one over. Maybe twice.
Mike
N454casull
That one is one of my favorites too, the whisper was more like, shoot the one in the back, Shoot The One In The Back, SHOOT THE ONE IN THE BACK!!! Very nice buck, (for me) an almost perfectly balanced 8 pointer, his rack was almost a mirror image. Another favorite story, back in Kansas for a quick visit and deer hunting, had done some bow hunting the week before with no luck, Jeff, his boss and I were out on opening day looking around and working all the usual places, Jeff was telling his boss about the two slick heads that we had seen the week before while bow hunting, and there they were again up against some found bales. I told Jeff that they were there again and for him to take a shot. His comment was that they were too close for a scoped rifle, no challenge. I was carrying his .44 blackhawk since my scope got messed up in transit. I had only fired that gun about a few times the week before, but why not. One dead button buck. He only ran about one hundred yards, with me doubting that I had hit him all the way. No horns but bragging rights forever!
Years ago Outdoor Life did a poll on, "Why I hunt". They had options like, "Kill something", or "Harvest meat", and etc. But the option I chose and what turned out to be the overwhelming majority was, "Spending time in the outdoors with family and friends".
And based on the responses you guys posted I think you'd concur.
I will share one special hunt with you though. A long term friend was diagnosed with the big C. I'd known him for years. He was my go to guy on everything from what limited hunt permits to put in for from CO to AR. And also when the White bass were running and the turkeys were gobbling.
He had the mules we used my truck to pull out West to hunt plus the outfitter style tent and stove etc. So many great hunts we had.
Anyway, so now he knows he ain't gonna make it. And so did we. Since I survived a malignant brain tumor he leaned on me a lot during this process.
I guess 'cause we were both of the club that a doctor said we weren't gonna make it. I did; he didn't.
In any event this was a bear/whitetail, early season bowhunt. The Fall foliage was beautiful as was the weather. Lots of sign. Conditions were perfect.
I could've hunted and spent time with him around the campfire. But the poor guy had to get up in the middle of every meal to go puke due to the chemo.
So, I went back and proof read all this and I guess it's kind of a Debbie Downer kind of thing and I don't wanna spoil the feel good things all you guys were sharing.
Bottom line, we spent our daylight time riding around in the Ryno and reliving old times.
And I feel very fortunate to have had that time with him, his last hunt. He passed a few weeks later hooked up to beeping machines. And I miss him every day.
Or at least whenever I think about hunting, shooting, gun trading, fishing, camping, riding, or the outdoors in general.
Which is everyday.
Dad still hunts a little, but his legs are not what they used to be, so the hunts are shorter.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Getting a camping permit for the deer season and carrying in an 8X10 canvas wall tent for 3 miles.
I made a wood stove from an old steel drum, carried in a cot to sleep on and used tar paper for the floor.
I went in about a week before the season to cut enough firewood with my little chain saw, not wanting to make a lot of noise before the season opened.
The solitude and the challenge of hunting whitetails by myself (sneaking and peeking) are memories that I'll carry forever.
I was not successful every year, but I did take some nice bucks.
I woke up lots of mornings to find my boots frozen to the floor in zero degrees temps, having to warm up water to wash my face on the wood stove.
Now, I'm an old guy. Can't do that stuff anymore.
I'm reduced to paid for hunts.
But I've done things that you young guys dream of.
Keep on going, pit yourselves against the elements, extend yourself, you'll remember it in your old age.
Jim
Perhaps SS3 will join in and fill in the details.