Deer Hunt - Caution, Mildly Graphic

Last Monday I went deer hunting with my old roomate and buddy Ky.  He is who I went on the elk hunt with last year and I will try and hunt with him every year for the rest of my life.  It is an awesome way to reconnect with the primitive side of man and I need this every so often.

The hunt was unique in that we were actually on the general rifle hunt 5 days before everybody else.  Ky has a very awesome brother named Chad who has been handicapped since birth.  He is now 35 years old but loves sports and loves to hunt.  He is given a special hunting tag that lets him go out a week early to hunt without the crowd.  So this was Chad's hunt.  Although he is not capable of actually shooting he decides if we shoot at the deer or not.  It was a special day in itself to spend time with Chad.  He is an inspiration to everyone that meets him.  You will never meet somebody with a more positive attitude or so appreciative of everything around him.

We went to the Raft River Mountains in the northwestern corner of Utah.  There were millions of deer.  We tried to count all the deer we saw and came up with a figure of around 60-65 by the end of the day.  We had this awesome vehicle to travel in made by Polaris.  I felt like I was hunting in a BMW.

It was a VERY cold morning.  The last time I remember my face being that cold was when I was a student at Utah State in Logan.  The scenery was spectacular.  It makes me wonder how many hidden treasure spots are in Utah, or everywhere for that matter, that we don't know about.

The golden leaves looked like a painting.  It was unreal.  I took lots of pictures of them but this was one of my favorites.  We arrived on location before sunrise and hunted until nightfall.  The short story of our deer goes like this.  We saw a nice 3-point buck early in the morning and Chad was sort of wanting us to shoot it, but we decided to try and find something a little bigger during the rest of the day but if we didn't we would go back to the same spot we saw the deer at night and take it if we had a clear shot.

We hunted all day and saw many deer but none as nice as the one we saw in the morning.  We ran into a local guy who was surprised that we even saw a nice 3-point buck on the mountain so that pretty well convinced us that he was a good deer to take.  At close to sunrise we went back to the spot and after searching around with binoculars for a little bit I actually spotted him right under our nose about 150 yards away standing dead still.  We asked Chad if he wanted us to shoot and and the smile and look on his face was pure excitement!  So Ky lined up the sights on his thirty ought six and shot it right behind the left shoulder exactly where he was aiming.  The deer ran about seventy yards and of course fell down a gnarly ravine where we found him under a pine tree.  After 12 hours of hunting the work was only beginning.

Ky and Chad

I don't know a lot about deer but he seemed like a nice size deer and I was happy that Chad got him.  Ky then taught me the inns and outs of cleaning out the deer.  It was an awesome experience and went smoothly.  We then drug the thing in the pitch black of night out of the ravine and into the ranger and drove home.  We hung him in his proper spot to air out back at Ky's parents home to be displayed for all to see.

This picture was taken at about 1:30 a.m.  I was home and in bed at 3:00 a.m.  Luckily I didn't fly the next day until about 1:00 p.m.  If there is every an apocalyptic meltdown on earth come and find me and I think I could at least get us by in the woods for awhile thanks to all the lessons I have learned on the hunt.