Wet, tough back pack hunt (pic heavy)

[Okanagan]

I went along with my son on a backpack high country hunt last week.  We slept at the trailhead Tuesday night, hiked up on Wed. so he could hunt the last three days of WA regular west side deer season, with Sat the last day.  I didn't hunt, just went along to pack meat and keep camp.  He has killed some massive bucks up there, in a place we've never seen another hunter.  It used to take me about 4 1/2 hours with full pack to hike from the vehicle up 7.5 miles gaining 5K vertical feet.  This time it took me 8.5 hours, out of shape and getting old.
 The first mile and a half is fairly flat, on an old road, shown below.  The turquoise patch is a lake below.


We hit snow soon, wet stuff heavy on bushes that are taking over the abandoned trail.  Kind of miserable to hike through.  I wore non-breathable rain pants with nothing but synthetic briefs under the pants.  On top I wore a synthetic T-shirt with Gore-tex mtn parka over that.  The Gore-tex jacket was soaked by noon, inside and out.



Our camp site below, with close to 9 inches of snow.  It had been raining for two hours as we set up our tarp at dusk.  Garbage bag over pack to keep it dry.




We'd seen a few deer tracks on the way up, well below our camp near timberline, one of them a fair buck.  We scraped away snow under our ground sheet and pads.  We were concerned about flooding if it kept raining and the snow melted, but could not find an ideal spot.  Edge of ground sheet/tarp area being kicked free of snow, in pic above.  Will continue in another post.  Toughest weather for back pack camping I've ever done.  It rained for 48 hours and melted the snow into rivers and lakes.

[Okanagan]

We started a fire on arrival Wednesday evening but were also putting up shelter etc. and it took constant tending to keep the fire going so we bagged it finally.  Wind was whipping rain around and huge gobs of snow had started falling from trees overhead, whacking us hard under the nylon tarp and splattering water and snow back under it.  Everything was damp to wet as we crawled into sleeping bags, all synthetic.  I had a breathable bivy sack over my bag, closed cell foam pads for both of us.  We used my Jet Boil stove to heat some drinks and cook while lying in our sleeping bags.  Slept acceptably comfortable.  Full moon each night, lighting through the heavy clouds.

By Thursday dawn most of the snow was melted, still raining in foggy conditions.  Water flooded everywhere, pooling on flat spots and running everywhere.  I never took my camera out of its waterproof shell.  My son hunted all day, didn't return till dark.  I tried three times to start a fire, using Troxane tablets, candles, lighters etc. and all my experience.  Finally I spent hours in prep on my last try late in the afternoon and got a roaring fire going by the time David arrived, with a pot of simmering hot water for drinks.  He'd seen zero deer, a fair number of day old tracks in the snow left under timber.  Nearly all snow gone in the open.  Rain and wind continued.  Felt like a sauna in our sleeping bags.   Slept pretty well.

Friday the rain was off and on, temps getting colder so that by dark it was freezing, wonderfully wonderfully freezing. David had seen no tracks and in late afternoon saw a doe looking at him in open timber and slide meadows, 60 yards above him.  He decided to use her as a decoy and called.  Two spike bucks came in within a few minutes, odd.  He passed them and saw no other deer.  As we dried boots and stuff by the fire that night, revelling in cold dry air without sloppy wet around us,  we tried to figure out where the deer and especially the bucks were.  There was not enough snow to move them into migration, and both of us have killed bucks on that mountain in much deeper snow at the same elevation and time of year.  

For some reason, this posting window only lets me see two short paragraphs so it is difficiult to make a longer post.  Will add another instalment below.

[Okanagan]

It snowed a scant inch Friday night, perfect new tracking snow, and kept up with light flurries off and on all day.  David did not find a single deer track by the time he swung by camp at noon.  On our way up we'd found a cougar track following a deer and wondered if a cat had spooked the deer in that area just for the days were present, a situation we encountered once before.

As light began to fade on the last day of deer season, I sat in camp, built up the fire and hoped for my son.  When it was getting dusk under the trees, I heard David's 7mm shoot from down the trail toward our way out.   Then another shot pretty soon, a two minute pause and a third shot.  That sounded final, and was.  David called on the walkie talkie to say that he had gone back and killed one of the spikes in the last five minutes of season.  He was convinced that those were the only deer within a mile and a half on that mountain.

I pulled on my boots I'd been drying, grabbed a camera and hustled out about 400 yards to where he had the buck down on the second switchback in the trail.  He was fiinishing gutting and I helped him hang it in a small clump of stunted alpine trees beside the switchback.  




Note the tail and rump markings.  Most deer up there look like pure blacktails but some shade toward mule deer, and they cross breed without question.  This has a slightly modified mule deer rump and tail, with more black like a blacktail.

At that point the trail traverses a steep meadow.  With the snow blowing sideways he said that it was steep enough that he mainly leaned into the hillside when he knelt for the 100 yard shot.  The small buck slid down to land right on the trail.  Small buck, on the trail... perfect for me, as I had a tough time packing up and down.

We ate all the food we could that night, packed up at daylight and took everything down the trail to the buck.  We boned him out, divvied the meat into two packs and boogied on down.  Well, I limped and crept more than boogied but it was a fun day in gorgeous warm sunshine.  The only bad spot was where snow had melted and covered a steep narrow series of rocky ledges with a layer of ice an inch thick.  Suicide to even attempt it so we worked our way around that section of trail.

I was too pooped to take photos on the way down.  Here are a few of camp as we broke it, with the inch or so of fresh snow plus some patches left of old snow, and the bare spot where our ground sheet and tarp had been.





Extremely tough hunting and camping conditions.    For a hunter to go back and find the same buck again in such conditions I consider a trophy feat.   David likes big bucks but doesn't like to go home skunked.

Here's two gratis shots of his buck from our previous trip up there together.  They call these hybrid bucks Cascade or bench leg bucks.  Some have huge bodies, but they don't fit any record book category.  They are tainted with mule deer possibly so aren't allowed in the blacktail book, and none will ever come close to mule deer.  WA and OR have started a special record category for them.

[Frogman]

Wow!  And I thought we had it rough here in WV!!

Thanks for the story and photos.

Jim

[Yotehntr]

   Great write up, enjoyed the read!   

[FOsteology]

Sounds like something I'd like to do with my boys! Nice write up and photo's. Thanks for sharing!

[Tikaani]

Great stories and pictures Ok.  Enjoyed the read.  Thanks for sharing.

Hunt hard, Die tired
John

[FinsnFur]

wow!
I cant even begin to imagine what it took to jab all those keys and let us in on that.
We get some major winters up here in Wisconsin, but you make us look like wussy's

Kudo's on the harvest. You cant imagine the envy.

[Todd Rahm]

Thats my kinda hunt there. Nice job and thanks for sharing the pics. I really enjoy them.

[pitw]

That was a great sounding hunt and I'm glad you told/showed the story cause it's the only way I was going to get there .  Nice even buck too .

[HaMeR]

Cool writeup & Thanks for taking me along!!   

[coyote101]

Great writeup and pictures.  Thanks for taking us along and congratulations on a successful and memorable hunt. I have a four season tent, but still haven't had the gumption to try camping in the snow. I may give it a shot this year, if we get any. Thanks again.

Pat

[KySongDog]

Real nice story and thanks for the all of the pics!   

[vvarmitr]

Thanks so much for taking the camera along for me.
Why does it seem like a great hunt to endure such hardships?

[Okanagan]

Why does it seem like a great hunt to endure such hardships?

Ah, you have touched the philosphical roots of this post.  An adventrue is miserable at the time and told with great relish.  An asute English prof of mine called it, "The fellowship of shared adventure" in our study of the Oddessy.  Doing this with a son makes it great.

The spike is a puny deer, and breaks his string of six or 8 consecutive BIG bucks:  heavy 4x4's, 4x6's, 5x4 etc. plus the big bodied buck in the last two photos.   But under the conditions, it filled a tag few hunters would have filled IMO.  In a way, both David and I know it is stupid to work that hard for a spike, and stupid to carry one out so far when mere deer meat is closer to the road.  We will laugh over that at Thanksgiving and Christmas, agreeing that it is stupid but not wishing to change a thing.  Last year he killed a whopper far below the trail in that area when hunting solo in deeper snow and packed meat for two days to get it down to his vehicle.  Yet a line I remind him of once in awhile is what he told me in the dark several hours before dawn one monring as I took a trail down into a vast canyon:  "Don't shoot a small one down there," he said.  I.e.  If we have to pack one out of there, make it big enough antlers to be worth all the work.

Thank you to all for the kind words.  Jim, it is cathartic for me to write the story, poking at keys while savoring sore muscles still.

We carried out a little over 40 lbs. of boneless meat, after losing quite a bit of one hindquarter .  His second shot was needless but he didn't know that yet and hit the buck badly as it took off wounded through scattered brush.  In contrast, the large buck pictured at the end filled our packs with a total of 105 lbs of boneless meat, with much more of one hindquarter lost.  Big body.

Oddly enough, when people look at my son's deer racks, all of the hunters of such Cascade bucks always pick out that one as having the most chartacter and dramaitic rack, even though it is basically a 2x3 frame with several little stickers.

Gotta hit the road.  Wish I could hunt on this trip starting today. Will check in Sunday probably.

[JohnP]

Thank you for a great story and some terrific pictures. 

[Okanagan]

Thank you all for the good words. 

Today I was in a similar range of mountains to where we did the backpack hunt and FWIW took a few photos trying to capture the snowline.  It was raining down on the highway where I was but snowing about a third of the way up the mountain.  In the story that begins this thread, we started from  500 feet elevation above the bottom on one side of such a valley, went down, crossed the stream in the bottom and then climbed up over 5,000 vertical feet to the edge of timberline, where trees can't grow.  Deer love that transition zone (subalpine) from solid trees to strings and patches of timber interspersed with meadows and low brush.  If we climb higher, that transitions into open mossy grass, snow and rock, where no trees grow (alpine).  We had a flat bench for our camp, in the highest stand of big trees on the mountain. 

In the photo below, snow line is right below the top of the telephone pole.  It is raining below that line, snowing above it.  There is more mountain sticking up above timberline into the clouds so we can't see it in the photo.   In the story above we camped at a spot equivalent to the timber to the right of the highest summit showing in the photo, say 50 yards below and to the right of the peak.