Pincher Creek High Efficiency Hunt 2013

Headed down to Pincher for me & Jesse's annual hunt on the November long weekend. We rolled in on Friday night and headed out at first light Saturday morning. We saw one white-tail about 5 minutes after leaving the house, but unfortunately it was on land we didn't have permission to hunt that weekend. Fortunately, we did see another good-sized doe about 30 seconds later! She was on the right side of the fence, but was on a hill top so it wasn't a good shot, and she took off before we could get any closer. We started to sneak up the hill after her, but unfortunately couldn't find her. Fortunately, we did see 2 more deer at the bottom of the hill on the other side! They hadn't spotted us yet, so we crawled over to a nearby downed tree branch for a nice shooting rest, with the pair about 100 yards out. I took the first one with a high-ish shot through the lungs and the bottom of the spine and she dropped on the spot. The second one didn't take off right away, so Jesse shot it too. Turned out they were a doe-fawn pair, and Jesse had taken the young buck. Pretty damn big for a fawn, though - we couldn't even tell he wasn't an adult until we got right up to him. 

Elapsed time: 15 minutes.

Back home, Andrea and Jorden were just getting up and heard the shots. "Already?" We got the deer home, and that's when the real fight began - the Pinto-Otis showdown over the carcasses. Better toughen up my gal for next year - she's got a 40 lb weight disadvantage to overcome.

On Sunday, after Linnea and Todd arrived, Todd joined us and the three of us went out all morning to the Castle Stock Grazing Reserve just south of J & A's to try for an elk. We had a great, extremely snowy day in the foothills and covered a lot of ground, saw a ton of elk tracks and beds, and even a few moose, but there were no elk to be found. For next year, we talked about setting up a wall tent way back in the reserve and taking a week off to go and find something. Anyone want to fly back to Alberta to join the fun?