Saga of my (failed) deer stand overlooking a deer bed

[Okanagan]

Last summer I mentioned finding a big and heavily used deer bed in a brushy clear cut overlooked by a ridge.  Update:  I cut a trail up the back side of the ridge to the spot by a big boulder where I could see the deer bed and have been up there four times without seeing a deer. 

View as my eyes clear the back side of the ridge, not close enough yet to look down on the bed area. 





In hot September I didn't expect a deer to be lying in the hot sun without shade so didn't hunt it.

My first trip up there, in mid. Oct. another older hunter came along the road where I had parked hoping to sneak into the timber and up to the ridge unseen.  He drove by just as I locked my vehicle and he stopped to talk.  Nice guy, experienced hunter who turned out to be recovering from abdominal surgery with incision unhealed.  ”What are you going to do if you get a deer?” I asked.  He said that he would drive out to cell phone range and see if he could get someone to come help.  “If you shoot a deer, come back here and honk your horn and I will come help you,” I said.

Just as my eyes cleared the ridge above, he was back honking his horn.   He'd gone around the end of the ridge and killed a heavy bodied fork horn 30 yards above the road.   He had just moved from a house into a condo so I offered to hang it in my garage and we cut it up together the next morning.  I declined taking any meat but he insisted on giving me half, which I would have done in his shoes, so I took it.  Tasty buck.  Fun experience.



My next trip up there I checked the bed before climbing up and it had fresh big deer tracks in it.  Maybe I pushed a deer out of the bed.  I squirted doe in heat urine on a stump nearby and backed out without walking closer than 20 feet from the bed.  Once up on my ridge overlook, the wind blew directly from me to the bed.  I stayed 1 ½ hour anyway.

Third trip up the fog rolled in as I climbed and I could never see more than 30 yards.  After nearly an hour of increasing fog that was obviously long term, I climbed half way down to my vehicle and did a calling stand to try to call a buck in the foggy timber.  Nothing.

Fourth trip was yesterday.  I checked the bed and squirted doe in heat urine near it before heading up to my overlook.  No recent tracks, bed of red rot wood all soppy wet this time of year and not being used.  I think it is a dry season or dry weather bed.  I stayed almost two hours without seeing a deer but as the day wore on (a holiday in Canada) more and more hunter vehicles cruised the road below, stopped and shot targets in the next clearing, etc. and I decided to bag it.  I was concerned that someone might see me hidden on the ridge and take me for a bear.  I could hang out an orange vest but didn't want anyone to know I was up there.

View from where I sit.  The deer bed is just to the right of center in the photo.   I dunno about this stand hunting.    I took my Kindle along and read most of the time this last trip.  Not sure if I will go back or not.  It is nearly an hour's drive to get there.  That's the rest of the story-- so far.

[Dave]

Thanks for the write-up.  I remember you mentioning that bed - and seems like they picked that bed because of the view. 

[Hawks Feather]

I would go up there for the view and not really worry about getting any deer.

Jerry

[HuntnCarve]

Clyde,

Looks like that buck knows what he is doing.  The thermals bring up any scent from down below as the day warms up.  And from above as the evening cools.  He's got good visibility all around.  But you have the high ground!  Don't get discouraged.  He'll let his guard down.

Years back when I was out turkey hunting I kept jumping a nice buck in a old shale quarry as I walked up the dozer path into the woods.  He had made a bed in a tiny 6 foot wide swath of weeds that separated two digging sites.  When buck season came, I told my old neighbor "Chips" where that buck would be.  I already had tagged out in the earlier Archery season so I was not hunting.  I went so far as to tell Chips to walk up through the woods across from his camp, and ease along the top of the quarry.  This would put him above the bucks bedding spot, and in perfect position for a shot.  Of course as Dave would tell you (he's hunted with Chips years back), Chips is stubborn, and figured he would hunt it his way.  To save himself some walking, he trudged right up the dozer path.  Soon as he rounded the bend, he was rewarded with the sight of a nice buck bolting out of the weed patch and out of sight over the edge of the quarry. He never even had a chance to unsling his rifle.  That buck had him pegged the moment he entered the quarry road and knew exactly what he was doing.  Never saw that buck again. LOL!  I know he could have killed that buck if he had only followed my directions.  Ol' Chips just turned 87 years old, and his hunting days are waning.  But he still remembers that buck and what might have been? 

It was nice of you to help that fellow hunter.  You made a new friend, and you got some venison too!  It all works out in the end.  Your day to pull the trigger on a buck will come.  Meantime, you've taken all of us to a place we'll never get to set foot upon with your photos.  Thank you!
Enjoy the days afield!  Be safe and good luck hunting!


HuntnCarve
Dave

[pitw]

Looks like a good spot to waste some more time.  I like wasting time in good spots.

[FinsnFur]

Wow, what a view. I cant imagine dragging a deer in country like that.

[Okanagan]

It's not bad dragging them downhill if it isn't too steep and it is fairly free of deadfall timber.  Too steep to me is when the hind end takes off sliding and swings around past the front.  You just have to turn it loose and get out of the way sometimes.  On really steep ground we may let it roll down, though the deer takes its own route then, usually into a tangle of brush or down timber. When I have a partner, one man pulls from the front with the other guy holding a rope tied to the deer's hind legs and kind of steers the rear end and keeps it from taking off past the front.   Snow or dry grass makes a slick surface for dragging.

A friend of mine got talked into riding on the back of a bighorn ram a friend of his had killed in Alberta, down a snow slope to the road.  They were dragging it down and the friend opined that it would be easier if one of them sat on it to steer and slid it down...  Turned into a wiiild ride!  True story. 

[FinsnFur]

  Now THAT woulda been a good video