Tag 3 of 3 filled

[AJBert]

I had a tag for 2nd rifle season deer tag for private land here in Colorado. The tag just happened to be where the ol' homestead is. Sat morning opened up with a fork horn and a 4 point that had crossed our land a few time with a doe. Unfortunately, the doe was not with them. That usually happens to me for some reason, a tag for something that doesn't show up but the other does.

Sunday morning nothing showed up for the first hour or so, time for breakfast. While eating my wife looked out the window and said there is a deer and it doesn't have antlers. I got up, grabbed the rifle to find there were four deer. Two does, a yearling and a fawn. I took the largest doe and she went down immediately. Normally, I would go down right away, drag the deer up to the hangin' tree, gut and skin. However, I still had half my breakfast to finish.

While I'm finishing my breakfast, she hollers again and tells me to get up NOW!!! So I mosey my way into the kitchen with the last of my breakfast and look out the window. I see a VERY nice buck that I've seen a couple of time over the last week or so. First thing I do when I see it, closest I've seen it, is that this buck is a definite wall hanger. I turn around and head towards my rifle, and my asks if I am going to shoot it. I tell her no, I am going to get a picture. My camera was right next to the rifle.

So I slip out through the back door onto the deck and take a couple of pictures. I didn't shoot because I do not have a buck tag, but my wife does...for 4th season. Here are the couple of pics I took of this bruiser. Notice the sagging belly, a true mark of a mature buck. I would put him between 5 1/2 years old to 7 1/2 years old. The good news he showed up this evening, so hopefully he will be around in about 3 weeks for the wife.

I know this is not hunting, but it is putting meat in the freezer. The state allows this and I am not hunting for antlers, I hunt for meat. I'm just hoping he will still be around for the wife, and if she gets him, he will probably end up on the wall.

As for tags 2 and 3, no. 3 is the wife wife's tag her at the house. No. 2 is a cow elk hunt that starts in about a week and a half on public land. I'll be hunting in a unit we know very well as we have been hunting it for over 20 years. Really look forward to this hunt every year. My wife got a nice cow last year, and I'm hoping to do the same this year.

Anyways, here are the pics of the buck. Oh, and I used my old 1951 Winchester Model 94 in .32 Winchester Special. I mentioned this rifle a few years ago, and it is very special to me. My mom bought it when she was the ripe old age of 17, with money she worked hard for, so she could hunt with her dad, and gave it to me for my 21st birthday. My wife, oldest grandson and myself all shot our first deer with it, along with my mom. It has a few scrapes and scratches from years of hunting, but I wouldn't trade or sale it for the world. I'll post up a pic or two of it if anyone is interested later.

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[Bawanna]

Damn, that is indeed a wall hanger for sure. Don't see nothing like that around my parts.

Cow elk hunt, guess I can't expect no antlers from you huh?

Dang that's a nice deer. my oh my!

[AJBert]

My wife is thinking about getting an OTC bull tag, but it will be in a different unit from where my cow tag is. Still trying to talk her into it, but she's not liking the idea of sleeping in a tent while I have the camper. Women...huh?

[Armybrat]

Pretty darn amazing!
Around here the Whitetail aren’t much bigger than a dog. The booming urbanization keeps them thinned out and they don’t survive long with the heavy traffic.
This is in the neighborhood next to ours...

[berettabone]

My old place, in the city...........................Deer? What deer????????????????????????

[berettabone]

That's a chunky one for sure. Extra tall rack. A coat hanger. I've had a momma and her two babies hanging around for about 3 months now. I just put up the trail cam a few days ago. I want to see if any bucks are hanging around and if the coyotes are hanging around too closely.

[AJBert]

This morning, the buck's twin brother showed up and the two of them decided to put on a bit of a show locking antlers. The wife tried to sneak out and get a picture, but one of them spooked and took off, to be followed by the other. I'm thinking this is a good thing for when her season kicks in.

[Ken L]

Awesome buck! I just got back from elk hunting north of Steamboat Springs. The elk won this year. I don't know if it is that the DOW pushed the season back a week, the fire or the snow that changed the migration pattern. All we saw were a couple of mulie does. A few in our camp did see some moose though, which is always cool and exciting.

[AJBert]

Just got back today from the elk hunt. I had a cow tag and saw more bulls this year than I have in the last ten years! My cousin had a buck tag and we saw more does than any year in the past. I don't know what to think about that, still scratching my head over it.

We hunted hard every day, usually elk in the morning and deer in the evening. Finally started seeing a few cows but out of range for my comfort zone. Didn't see any bucks until the last evening hunt, just a bit over four hundred yards away. Way over my cousin's comfort zone. This morning was our last hunt, as it was the last day and we planned on leaving after the hunt.

As I'm in the woods, not seeing anything, I thought about today being Friday the 13th. I was born on the 13th of May and turned 13 on a Friday. That changed my mood a bit as I've always felt it was lucky for me. No more than ten minutes later, I spot a lone cow by herself just in the tree line on a ridge. Luckily, well within my comfort zone. I shot, she fell and all was good in the world. Well, for me at that moment. Best part was she was a yearling. Big enough to get plenty of meat, smaller than a grown cow to make the drag easy-ish. At least it was all down hill...mostly, and less than a mile!

Needless to say, I was ecstatic and the wife was very happy when I came home. More for the elk I brought home with me, I think, but my dog was over the edge to see me at least.

[Ken L]

Changing your thinking worked! Congrats on the elk!

[AJBert]

The twin to the buck pictured above showed up this morning. So now we have two very nice bucks showing up, one in the morning and the other in the evening. They are both great bucks, but the one in the picture is better antlers wise. It will be up to the wife to decide with she chooses to take. We are about putting meat in the freezer rather than antlers on the wall. The morning buck does have a couple of kickers on the left side and a little better mass.

I can't wait for Wed to get here when her season begins. I'll be "separating" the elk to put in a couple of big coolers today. Weather is warming up and we don't plan on cutting up the elk until Wed or Fri. If she gets the buck on Wed, it will be more than likely going straight into a cooler as the high temp is supposed to be in the mid-upper 50's.

[AJBert]

So, kind of a good luck/bad luck story on my filling her buck tag. She didn't get one of the two big boys we had been seeing before her season started. Seems the rut kicked in and they were nowhere to be found. We did see one of them the morning before her hunt and felt great about it. The other one came out the evening I was skinning my elk, but we haven't seen him since.

Her hunt started this past Wed and the only thing we saw we does and fawns. Pretty much went that way for the first three days but did see a little spike yesterday. This morning, does, fawns and the spike. They left after about 30 minutes, then one of the does came back, then the spike. I was in the living room watching TV when I saw a doe scoot past the window at a pretty good pace and then stop and look behind her. Sure enough, a buck followed in short order. The wife was in her hunting stand (back deck) and noticed the activity. The buck was a good one, a four point and big bodied. My wife wasn't sure if she wanted to take him or not, and I told her to go ahead and take him. Her hunt ends tomorrow and he wasn't much smaller, body wise, than the two big guys. She shot, he took off about thirty yards and stopped, wobbled and fell. Sorry, no pics this time as she didn't want to have her picture taken for some reason (I think she is very shy to have her picture on the innerweb, or she has a warrant out on her for some reason or other?) His rack looked small on him, but a nice four point meat buck in anybody's book.

So, I hauled the buck up to the hangin' tree, hauled it up, gutted and skinned in fairly short order. Nice way to start off a beautiful Saturday morning in the Colorado mountains. Then I went inside to start cutting up the elk with my cousin who showed up to help me. Finished the elk and now I am worn out completely. Still need to package the elk up tomorrow, haul the skin and innards of the deer out to the NF land and have yet to unload the camper from the elk hunt. I'm ready for a nice, relaxing vacation so I can recover from this hunting season.

All in all, it has been a great hunting season for us. 3 out of 3 tags filled, both freezers will be topped off once all of the butchering is done, and the dog is extremely happy as he got to sample some of the scraps that he will be eating for the next year. We probably have enough scrap meat to where he could eat it in the morning and evening for the next six months, and we have even cut up the buck.

Oh, she used the Marlin .30-30 for the buck. I think I forgot to mention I used my Win Mod 70 in .270 Win on the elk.

[berettabone]

It's always nice to have a full freezer, especially in these times. I don't blame the missus for not doing the picture thing...............don't think I would either.:o Just me................I can remember my ole man loving his .270 and .243. Two of his favorite rifles. Both were checkered up real nice. I've had so many deer by me this year, that a buck even went up to my tree cam and put his nose on it. Smeared the lens. It's nice that your better half hunts with you. I know that there are many female hunters, especially by me, but I don't think it's a common thing. Sounds like a hardwood cooked elk steak might be in your future.

[Bawanna]

The Model 70 (pre 64 of course) has always been my favorite rifle. I had a 243, also had a 375 H&H for a short while. I gave the 243 to a cousin as I bought it from my Uncle probably 50 years ago. It was my aunts. I also bought his Model 88 in 308. Gave that to my cousins too as one day in conversation the mentioned them. I asked if they wanted to see them. They were very young, just old enough to remember them. Felt they were more entitled to them than I.

[AJBert]

When I was a wee bit of a lad way back when, there were two camps when it came to hunting rifles, the .270 and the .30-06. My grandpa was in the .270 camp, thus my parents and aunt and uncle were in that camp. Out of 8 grandchildren, four of us hunt and we all use a .270.

I did have a .30-06 but gave it to my daughter and son-in-law, as it just didn't seem right to me to have one for some reason. I did give a pre-64 Mod 70 to my nephew who uses today when hunting. My dad gave it to me a number of years ago, so it was on of those firearms that have to be passed on down the line. Still trying to figure out who will get the Mod 94 in .32 Win Special. I love that rifle more than any other firearm I had before the avalanche.

[Bawanna]

My family was always 06 folks. I started out with a Winchester 94 thutty thutty, then inherited my grandfathers 1917 Enfield. Him and my dad both got one surplus probably close to free. Used the Enfield probably 95% of the time since. I had a 338 Ruger I used for just a bit before I switched to Archery for Elk. Had a Big Bore 94 375 I used when I was beating the brush for Elk. But most of the time it was the trusty ole Enfield. I now have my Grandfathers and my Dad's.
Grandfather sporterized his, flattened the floor plate cut the barrel a bit and redid the stock. My dad just cut the stock but fortunately didn't mess with the metal at all. I tried to get it back into an original stock prior to his passing for a photo but didn't quite make it. It's now all back to original. A bit of a rough stock, always on the prowl for a nicer one but it will do just fine as is.