Local Flavour

As the lone SS&S member still living in Edmonton, I feel a certain responsibility to keep the dream alive in the blog’s ancestral motherland. Unless the dream is a buck, of course.

Dustin turned me on to a ½ section about an hour outside of town, right along the river, with the tip that the deer tended to stay on the river-side of the property, moving through the many draws in and out of the valley. On opening weekend, I brought Josh and Jess out for a day in the field, hoping to connect on a deer and, in the process, continue the tradition of bringing more department people into the hunting fold. Unfortunately for them, I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing. Despite getting a deer in each of the last 3 years, my entire strategy consisted of driving to Pincher and walking around with Jesse until we saw something to shoot, often flushing several deer in the process. Ah, high ungulate density. As ecologically sketchy as it is freezer-fillingly satisfying.

In any event, I had the first part of our process nailed down – 3 separate deer groups, all flushed. Rats. The last of which was about an hour before sunset, when we set up facing downslope near a draw that had some sign nearby, expecting to catch a deer coming up out of the valley to feed in the fields behind us. Comfortably leaning back on trees, we had a good 180 degree view, with decent sight lines through relatively open conifers. After a few minutes of sitting, I detected footsteps, in a distinctive deer-y cadence. “Excellent – it’s all falling into place” is what I would have said, except the deer were right. Fucking. Behind us. By the time I heard the doe-fawn pair, they were maybe 15 yards away, directly upslope from us, but there was no way to turn around without getting busted. On top of that, out of the corner of my eye, I could see they were facing us head-on, not giving much chance for a good shot, especially given that any opportunity would have to be extremely quick. So I just sat there like an idiot, hoping they’d somehow walk right between the 3 of us without detecting us, which of course worked out about as well as you’d expect. Oh well - at least now I knew which damn way to face. Better luck next time.

Next time being yesterday, when I headed back to the same spot with a different crew (Todd & his buddy Miles), both of whom also had tags. We spent time in the same general area where we’d seen critters the previous weekend, but despite a layer of fresh snow, we saw almost exclusively coyote tracks.

Aside – if you ever want to shoot a coyote, apparently fawn distress calls are your friend. About 2 minutes after blowing the call, a coyote burst out of the trees 20 yards away and stopped along the trail I was looking down. We had a nice staring contest. I waved. He ran off and barked. Good times were had by all.

At the same time as my coyote encounter, Todd happened across some fresh buck tracks nearby, plus a scrape and a rub. Nice. Unfortunately, they led into the thick stuff, so following stealthily was not in the cards. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around aimlessly in search of (as it turned out) very few tracks, but upon our return to the area of the coyote encounter and nearby buck tracks we found 3 sets of tracks on top of our boot prints – it looked like the buck was chasing 2 separate does. We set up in the area for the last hour of light, each a few hundred metres apart, each facing a likely place to intercept the buck or one of the does moving downslope. This also happened to be within spitting distance of our almost-opportunity the previous week.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. The sound was coming from my 4 o’clock. I slowly turned my head and spotted a snout, then a couple of legs, then a full body and set of antlers emerge from the trees. By the time he was completely in view, he was no more than 25 yards away, fully broadside. Undetected, I turned to level my rifle, and even in the half-second between the click of the safety and the shot, he was still unaware that anything was amiss. One through the heart, and he rather determinedly trotted forward, clearly worse for wear. He stopped another 30 yards on, and I could just barely make out his rump between the trees in the rapidly dwindling light. I watched him for several minutes, neither of us moving an inch, until he slowly collapsed on his side.

The elation at my first buck quickly faded with the realization of how big he was, and how far (and uphill) the road was. We dragged in shifts, two of us on the deer, with the odd man out holding the rifles. After several hundred metres of slow and exhausting progress, Todd ran back to the truck to fetch his secret, high-tech friction-reducing device: a crazy carpet. Glorious. I was never a fan as a kid – always being partial to flying saucers – but damn if I don’t appreciate them now. Finish the drag, get him into the back of the car, zip back home to hang him in my garage, and sit back for a quick bowl of Hank Shaw’s chili I’d made the day before with the last of my 2013 deer. Just in time.