I range the patch of timber several times for if he comes out to the side or below it and settle in on 275 yards as the number to dial my Leupold CDS scope to. And I wait. And then I wait some more.
About two hours later there is, at last, some movement. I see a rack moving about through some brush, and then a body. He’s standing up!
He takes his time stepping out into the clear and I follow him in the cross hairs. He emerges fully and I click the safety off. He stops, puts his head down to feed and moves his front leg ever so slightly forward. I squeeze the trigger slowly.
The trusty 270 Winchester goes off and hurls a 130 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip his way. No sooner had I felt the recoil than Chris’s confirmation of a “good hit! Good hit!”
The buck stumbled back and looked to go down but recovered enough to take a couple of steps forward before dropping to the ground. He dropped and immediately began to slide down the steep alpine slope. He clipped a small bush on his way down and began to tumble one end over the other and slid down and out of view. Time of death: September 1, 2:33pm.
We exchange high fives and Chris tells me he saw blood spray out of the buck’s mouth after the hit. Says he was ready to film it with his phone and asks why I didn’t give him a heads up. I don’t know … I suppose I was focused on making a good shot and not really thinking about getting it on video at the time. Now I wish I had. No hunt is exempt from mistakes. This one is no exception. I’ll have to add a mistakes section at the end …. Or perhaps I’ll call it “lessons learned” as that’s the more important part!
Shortly after we decide to part ways. Chris continues to search for a buck of his own, one with a decent frame that we couldn’t ID as a legal 4 point due to the wind picking up and shaking our spotters, and I drop down to search for my buck.
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Originally Posted by twoSevenO
