D'oh moment of the season...

[Black Bird]

A hunter, somewhere in a logging block far off below me, shot a deer. The sound of the shot spooked a buck out of the thick woods right across my path. The buck paused and turned to look at me no more than about 30m away giving me a perfect broadside shot. I dropped to one knee, flicked my safety off, brought the scope up to my eye to see.... nothing. I had forgot to flip my pop-up lens cover.

Boing - one deer bounded away (I swear I could see him smiling...)

D'oh!

Oh well, I found another deer the same size the next day so my now my tags are filled and I am happy (and just a little wiser...)

Cheers,
BB

PS. I bumped into the hunter the next day and shared a laugh with him. He got his deer but I couldn't capitalize on the favour he did for me!

[Taurusguy]

DOH! .. lol thanks for the story! ... I had a similar DOH experience .. not this year though. Two years ago I went for whities and mulies in region 8-1 (do every year) and according to the regs your only allowed to have 1 of your 2 tags filled for mulies in that area .. Well .. there was this patch of trees not far from camp that had lots of sign around this free range cow trail. So me and my bro went in to go have one last look before we had to pack up camp .. and low and behold a HUGE fricken 4 point mulie was standing with 2 does not far into the trees just standing off the cow trail. Well .. i was not allowed to shoot this buck because i had already taken a mule deer from that region.. man was i choked .. it was so close i could have almost ran up to it and stabbed it. So i gumbled to my bro that we were looking for white tail ... and this deer was not legal game unfortunately... so we headed back to camp.

Well my dad didnt show up on time to help pack camp So i descided that we should go back to where the deer was and we followed its trail to get another look at it.. and we did. It was grazing in an open field not too far away form where i seen it originally. So i told my bro ... "throw some rocks over top of it and into the trees behind it". We were standing on a ridge with a steep slope and could throw rocks well past it. This spooked the deer into thinking there was something in the trees where it planned to escape from us .. and it just stood there .. frozen and looking worried about the noise from the rocks and us on the ridge. So I tell my bro ... "stay here .. and keep him busy, im going to go get dad and show him this deer" .. well i was gone for almost an hour before i returned with my old man and as we approached the ridge my bro was standing there .. and throwing rocks still ... my dad was like "what are you doing?" My bro was like .. "throwing rocks over top of this big buck to scare him into thinking something is in the bush over there so he wont run away and so you could get a chance to see him too!" My dad was FLOORED that the deer was there for over an hour! We didnt shoot at it .. but man .. we talk about it constantly how IF this .. and IF that .. and wishing we had not shot a smaller deer proir to seeing this guy .. and how we wished it was a whitiey ... and how no one would believe the rock throwing story lol.

Stupid Mulies .... DOH! Who would have thought that throwing rocks over top of deer would scare them into thinking they should stay put! ... I have still to land me a 4 point .. and everytime i go back to that spot .. i relive the moment lol ..hoping he is there again. This year I did find 2 4 point sheds tho laying in a deer bed on top of a ridge over looking some new growth trees ... so maybe hes bigger now!?? lol ..