Deer Camp 2009

The younger C love shooting and hunting. He always wants to be able to participate in activities that he isn't old enough for. We figured out this year that as a 9 year old he could fill my tag under the Youth Mentoring program. So we have been working on shooting rifle bigger than a 22 LR. He used a .243 with a 3-9x Leupold scope. We did some shooting with it so he wouldn't be worried about the recoil and would be confident on hitting his target.

We hunted at our favorite place that is 2000 acres of private land in Eastern Oregon. We camped out this year. When we were driving home there was 2 inches of snow on the ground in some places. This is the coldest it has ever been in around 12 years of hunting here. Of course it is the year we camp out.

Our hunting buddies had spotted a group of about 10 deer when they can in before day light to our camp so we headed there first to see what we could find. We spotted this buck in the bunch. He and I crossed a fence and snuck to a rock pile for him to have a good shot. The buck was between 50 and 75 yards away. He started by sitting down and resting his elbows on his knees for a steady aim. He realized he was too wobbly so we set up the bipod and had him sitting on the ground. His first shot was a hit but a little low. As you can see in the photo it hit low but broke the sholder on the off side. The deer took off on a three legged run. He laid down a short distance away and C shot again but missed. I led him to a better vantage point for a finishing shot. In the mean time the buck had moved to a fence line. Our friend had been watching us and had his rifle ready. He had a shot and took it, as we didn't want the deer to cross onto the neighbor's property. Even though he had a little help Little C was ecstatic with his success.

He and I did all of the gutting and skinning work together. He gagged at one point due to the body cavity guts smell and almost lost breakfast. It was the cleanest gutting job I think I've ever had so that was good. I told him I gagged on my first one too. Little C likes to do the skinning so he did a good job on that.

It started raining and snowing and didn't quit until midnight on Saturday. We spent some afternoon time reading Tom Brown Jr. stories and taking naps. We had hoped to do some frog shooting after the hunting was over but the cold and rain drove them all into hiding. It was a good time. DMP

A Good Medicine Moment

The Native Americans spoke of Good Medicine or things that occurred that were very meaningful. In my life time I have had a few of those occur while spending time outdoors. In my life the most worthwhile thing I have is my family and children. Recently Little C and I were elk hunting near Wallowa, Oregon. We spent a long day hiking through all the areas that will have elk. It was a rough weekend to be hunting due to it being a full moon, a spike hunt and the second weekend of the hunt. Most of the hunters had gone home so no one was pushing the animals around. It was a sunshine day and we hiked our legs off. Even though we didn't connect with a critter we had a nice visit with our friends and got to spend time outdoors.

I haven't been up to Wallowa Lake in a few years and I wanted to show it to Little C. I hoped that there would be some of the big bucks hanging around the park like usual.

There weren't many deer that day but we found one guy that liked our apple slices. It was pretty neat to see the look of wonderment on my son's face with that big buck picking up the apple pieces off the ground right next to the car. He wouldn't take them from his hand but almost. So we got to see this buck standing within three feet of the car munching up the pieces of apple. There was a doe there too but he had chased her off a short ditance. C threw her some pieces too.

She actually would take the pieces out of his hand before the buck came over and chased her off. I would venture to say that Little C won't forget this moment the rest of his life.

We hope to go back in the middle of winter when the snow is deep and there are more bigger bucks hanging around. We can also go to a place where the Game Comission feeds the elk. There we can usually see some monster bulls hiding in the timber close to the feeding area. DMP