Well, not completely failed. I had a great time with friends and family. But, let’s put it this way. I got greedy, passed up on two mega-bucks, thought I would see them again, and never did. And I never saw anything nearly as big or bigger, which is why I passed on those two bucks in the first place. The good thing is this: my girls and I won’t starve this winter. As you can see from the previous post, we just put up a lot of salmon and I have many fillets for the grill, too.
I thought all of you might enjoy this sequence that my dad, Fred Thomas, shot. I’d spotted this buck in the tall grass and decided to get a closer look at it. I didn’t expect this buck to grow larger during the stalk, but I had to take a look. I was hunting in Montana and the wind was howling about 40 miles an hour. It was five degrees outside. The deer, in general, did not want to move and they couldn’t hear me sneaking on them. I remember this as a pretty cool experience—I got within about 10 yards of this buck and a doe and was hoping a bigger buck was hiding in the grass, but no such luck. They fired out of there like rockets. Next year. Always next year. Enjoy.
Not the easiest buck to see, but I’d seen him bed down and had a bead on him.
Could have shot this buck in his bed, but I passed on him, thinking I’d see some bigger bucks that I spotted the previous day. You know the outcome: Didn’t get this guy and never saw the bruisers again.
How many times have you seen this view. The whitetail hunter’s dilemma.
Say goodbye to backstrap and burger.