Unit 39 Late Archery- November 12, 2011-by Nicholas Muche S Sgt USAF
3:30 am comes pretty early after you have been hunting hard most of the season and today was no different. Once awake, I stumbled down the stairs, tripped over the dog, stubbed my toe on the couch and looked outside. It was a complete whiteout and the wind was howling like no tomorrow! Immediately I received a text message from my hunting partner Terry and he too seemed a bit leery about heading out for the day. After a few messages it was clear we were going to tough it out.
The weather did not change much at all on the drive up to where we had planned to hunt for the day, in fact, the further up the hill we got, the worse the weather turned. I know we were both second guessing our decision to leave our comfortable beds and our lovely women to go chase deer in a blizzard! Driving less than 20 mph on a road that we can usually do 60 mph on was not a good sign of things to come either.
As we parked the truck after the long drive, the break of dawn was upon us. We made our way down the first draw after a few minutes of glassing. There were several deer in the area but nothing in a stalk able position. We hiked and glassed off and on for the entire morning.
We reached a nice bowl, filled with thick brush and aspen trees at about noon. I figured there would be some deer in this area and we were right.
Terry was fine with taking a doe and after we spotted one in a good position we moved in for the shot. It was a steep angle downhill, about 30 yards and the arrow hit a branch which sent it flying over her back.
After regrouping and gathering our thoughts we noticed a four doe ' s heading right towards us. Both of us hunkered down near some brush and became invisible. They trotted by us but there were too many trees in the way to take an ethical shot. As they went off in their own direction we spotted a nice buck chasing a doe on the side hill directly behind us about 100 yards. I said to Terry " as soon as they are out of site we have to sprint after them ".
The deer rounded the corner of the hill and both of us took off after them, there was a little snow on the ground so picking up their tracks was rather easy. We followed them for about 150 yards until we saw that there were many more deer in that same area. We both stood there wondering how we were going to get
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