Emily and I had both drawn Wyoming Whitetail buck tags this year, but with lots of other hunts in the mix, Emily's was more of a priority than mine. I did want to see Emily harvest her first Whitetail before I was off on my next hunt to Arizona , but she had been pretty busy with work this fall, so we both felt our only chance would be an afternoon after work to just go. We hopped in the pick up a couple hours before dark and headed to her hunting unit. The spot is awesome, there are always deer there, but you need to stretch your shot out a little bit with the closest shots being around 300 yards.
We settled in the first evening and immediately started seeing good bucks chasing the does around in the greasewood brush. I was super proud when Emily yelled "big buck, big buck!" as she scanned through the binoculars. She directed me into where the buck was and she was right, it was a huge buck. We got her set up for a 360 yard shot. I still don’t know how she missed but it was a complete miss which isn’t like her so we wondered about the rifle's zero. Maybe? Not too long after and questioning what we should do, another giant buck that I had been watching stepped out. This one was a hair further, but she felt confident with her stability and squeezed the trigger. The buck ran away with it's does unscathed. That night, we walked off the mountain in the dark and had a really enjoyable evening together, but our hearts were heavy with the misses.
I set that rifle aside for further evaluation, and grabbed Molly, the .300 WM. She was ready to go back and try again, but it wouldn’t be for another week. Just before I was going to leave for Arizona we made one more evening whitetail hunt for Emily. She got on a solid block but 10 minutes of wandering and chasing does, without holding still, she never could get the shot. Light was flirting with darkness and it appeared her hunt was about done. I glass two young bucks, not very big, but bucks and asked her if she wanted one last opportunity. She threw the rifle down on the bipod and got set-up. It was around 500 yards and like she always does she drilled the broadside target perfectly and the buck only went a short ways before disappearing in the greasewood.
If Emily misses, it’s typically a rifle or wind issue, very rarely is it human error. Sometimes I sound like a broken record, but letting her track out her buck, finding it herself, and then her voluntarily breaking down half of the carcass all by yourself, made for such a great evening. I am continually amazed by this girl. She is my favorite hunting partner and truly a good huntress. Like she said when she knelt down next to her deer, "I shot this small buck, so I can only go up from here!"
I had one day for my whitetail buck hunt, I really wanted to just hunt as long as I could, passing some pretty decent bucks throughout the day. In the evening, I spotted a buck tending some does in a special place for me and it seemed like the perfect opportunity, so I made the stalk and was able to harvest that back at just under 300 yards. I had the deer quartered, on my back, and back to the truck right at dark. The grizzly bear tracks in the area sped up the process quite a bit.
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