Interesting hunt

[GotBowAz]

I thought I would share a little campfire story of a 9 day hunt I was recently on. It was very exciting for me to say the least. From August 22nd to 30th. I will break this up in sections so it won't be such a long read. I will try to keep it short but soooo many things happened in this short amount of time I only hope I can keep it cut down.

I am hunting OTC archery here in Arizona for High dessert Mulley?s and or Coues whitetails. The area I have been hunting for a few years I have seen decent bucks of both species just a few miles apart from one another. I have never arrowed either and thanks to the people here on MM I have learned a lot but still can't seem to seal the deal. 1st couple days I am in a make shift ground blind by a water hole. I have a Doe and twin fawns still with spots come in to water around 2pm every day. The twins swim in the water while mom drinks her fill, very cool to see and I am very happy to see twins. Following morning I have a 3 point buck come into water but he is straight away from me and keeps looking in my direction. I ranged him at 87 yards and hoped he would move my way after his drink. Then out of the corner of my eye a fork horn came from behind me to my left and went right to the water without missing a beat. He was straight away from me but only 40 yards out. At this point I am calm and just waiting and as I am waiting to see if either deer will give me a shot another HUGE 4X4 with at least 3 inch eye guards came in. He is at my pre-ranged 20 yard mark and moving. I draw, find a spot behind his shoulder and hold, he is now at my 30 yard mark so I grunt to stop him. He stops, I cant get over how BIG he is and I also cant keep the darn pin on the pocket. I have the shakes and I am falling apart. I have buck fever/target panic big time! I finally got the pin to hold and jerked the trigger. The arrow went directly under his chest. Needless to say off they went and yet another buck was on his way in that I didn't see until they took off. I sat there 2 more days, sweated like a pig from morning to night and saw the 4 deer one evening about a half mile away just before dark. I decided to give the area a break and went to the higher country for whiteys. To be continued?

 

[GotBowAz]

Part two.
I am now in the cooler pines in a tree stand over a spring. I have two different Does coming in for the next couple days around 12:30pm. They always come in on my right and from behind but so far no bucks. The next day around 12:30pm I heard a noise in the oak leaves and assumed here comes the Doe?s. I turn and look and Holy Cow it's a Mountain Lion!!! My first one in the wild ever! I was so excited He parks and sits not 10 feet from my tree and here I am with book in hand, sitting on my hind end, and bow hung on the tree to my left. Finally the cat starts moving straight away from me and up a steep hill. I put my book down on the seat grab my bow turn and you guessed it, I hit the book and it dropped on the stand. He turned and looked but then just continued on. I drew and held hoping he would turn and finally he did but by this time he is almost even with me in height up the hill. I am about 16 feet off the ground. I figure for 50 yards as I did not have time to range him. I released and the arrow went over his shoulders and stuck in the hill behind him. It was like hitting a house kitty with a rubber band, that cat leapt a good 20 feet down hill and hit the brakes. He turned, went back up to my arrow and sniffed it! Can you believe that?? As he was coming back up I quickly knocked another arrow but the only shot I had was a head shot so I let him walk. I do not know how to judge a cats size but I would say this Tom was huge. His paws were the size of my fist. I watched him yawn, what a huge mouth and then lick his front shoulder. It was truly amazing. I ranged the shot, it was 43 yards. Bummer? About ten minutes later I hear 2 or 3 deer snorting in the direction he went. I hope they got away. PS. I never expected to ever hear a cat much less see one that wasn?t treed by dogs. I was surprised how noisy this guy was. Stay tuned, there is still more.

 

[GotBowAz]

Part three
Next day same tree, same two Doe?s. Now it's about 4:30 in the afternoon I hear a horrible crashing sound and this is metal like and I think glass. I was thinking someone had rolled a Rhino or quad or something but the trees are thick and I thought it would be really odd for anything to roll down a hill that far. I came out about 6:30 and talked to a couple of buddy?s of mine on the cell phone and called my wife to check in on the home front. It was almost dark and I ride my quad back out. I turn a corner and this is a one lane road and I see a Tahoe down the side of the hill and wonder how it got down there, then I put it together, this is the noise I heard and it was over 2 miles away! The SUV is crushed and had rolled at least 3 times and the first roll I later figured out was from front to rear! I see an arm on the driver?s side open window and call out to him. He is about 150 yards down the hill from the road and he yells back that he needs help. The guy is hurt but I don't know how bad. I call my buddy who lives in the area to call rescue as my cell phone is about dead and he knows exactly where I am and he knows the Sherriff as well as the Forest Service people up there. I make my way down to the guy and he cannot get out of the SUV, the front fender is now overlapping the door. I see fresh blood around his mouth and got real scared he punctured a lung. It turned out it was broken glass in his lips Thank God!! He said his back was jacked up and he couldn't move too well. I went around to the other side of the SUV to be sure it would not roll over and continue down the hill which by the way got steeper and did not stop for another 200 yards at least. I was able to get the door to unlatch but only open a couple of inches. My adrenalin was pumped and I put both feet on the frame of the SUV and yanked the door open with both hands on the window frame. I called my buddy and told him what the situation was and not knowing if this guy has really bad back injuries he really needed professional help including an arrowvac, he was getting cold and I figured going into shock. I went back up to my bike after water for him but I didn't have anything to cover him with. About 1 and a half hours later help arrived but first it was a Sherriff and volunteer emergency response people. It was determined that an arrowvac could not fly due to weather so the guy had to be put on a back board and carried out. This guy is big, he had to weigh 250lbs or more and we just did not have enough people. Finally 2 hours into this an ambulance shows up but its still not enough people due to the steep terrain and vegetation which was a lot of cactus and brush. The ambulance barely made it up this single track road and the fire department shows up down bottom but cant get to us. I volunteer to ride my quad down to my truck and go pick these guys up. By this time it is around 9pm. When I reach the fire department their truck is over heated from climbing the mountain roads and another Sherriff pulls up. Plans are changed and a TST (Technical Support Team for Mountain recues) is on their way yet another hour out. At this point they have everyone they need and I go back to camp. I never found out how bad the guy was but his truck stayed up there for days before it was yanked out. I still wonder how he turned out. From what we could put together the guy blacked out and went over the ridge. Talking to one of the paramedic on scene he told me if the truck had not stopped rolling where it was it would not be a rescue they were doing, it would have been a recovery. I may be leaving out a bunch of details but this is getting pretty long. And there is still more!!

 

[GotBowAz]

Part 4
I went back to my original ground blind hoping the Muleys would come back in for a drink. I am sitting on the ground and around 10am I hear a noise in the leaves coming into my make shift blind. I look and to my left there is this OMG HUGE rattle snake coming right at me!! He is less than 2 feet from my left arm and I am about to crap my pants!! With my right hand without taking my eyes off the snake I reach around for anything I can find. My hand contacted a rock about the size of a softball. I am left handed so I just prayed I could hit this thing in one shot. Bam!! I threw the rock and shot out of there as fast as I could!! I didn't know if I hit him well or not and wasn?t about to stick around to find out. Unfortunately my bow and back pack are still in there with him. Dang it! I can see the snake all rolled up thrashing around and after a while he quit moving but is right next to my back pack. I find a long stick and poke at the snake but he isn't moving so well. I fish out my back pack but my bow is still hanging in the blind. I finally fish out the snake, he is around 5 feet long and is a Western Diamondback. I lay him out in the dirt for the turkey buzzards and no I didn't cut off his tail. I just wanted to heck out of there. I went back to my whitey tree stand, stay tuned there is still more.

 

[mlycrzy]

Holy crap! Talk about an event filled hunt.



"You only live once,but if you work it right, once is enough" -Joe E. Lewis

 

[GotBowAz]

Im not done yet. I have one more event and then I will end it.

 

[GotBowAz]

Part five and last part,
I hunted the tree stand all day and like clockwork here comes the two Doe?s. They drank and went where ever it is they go and about an hour later I see some guy/kid walking down towards the spring. He had white baggy shorts, blue tank top, carrying a Gatorade drink and with a white grocery bag rolled up in his hand and he is just a skipping through the woods! Im like what in the heck. I watched him for several hundred yards with my Bino?s. My hunting partner has tree stands in that direction and I am thinking this guy is going to try to mess with them so I get down but when I got to the tree stands he wasn?t there and all was fine. I went back to my stand and an hour later here comes this kid at a fast pace headed back up the way he came but his grocery bag is now unrolled. I thought it was weird but that was the end of it, after all it was Labor day weekend so who knows what to expect. I leave after dark, see where the TST team had removed the vegetation to haul the poor guy out, get to my truck, load up my bike and head back for camp. I am now done and will be going home in the morning and I was happy for all the game I had seen and grateful to help a guy out that might otherwise had things turn out much worse for him if I had not come a long. So as I am driving back to camp I see a Doe out in the field off to the side of this very lonely road. I glass her for a bit and she takes off. I start to leave and all of a sudden I see red and blue flashing lights behind me. Dang it I am getting pulled over. I really don't want a driving award and I know he is going say something about me stopping in the middle of the road. Yep that what he nabs me for but after some small talk about hunting he gives me a warning and then asks me if I have seen any illegal activities. I said no at first and then remembered the strange kid traipsing through the woods. Not an illegal thing I explain to the cop but here is this kid and I proceed to tell him about it. The cop all of a sudden perked up and asked me exactly where. At first I am thinking he wants to know where my hot Doe spot is then I realize he is serious. The cop asks me if I could Identify the kid and I said yes, then I asked the cop if I had anything to worry about. He told me no but didn't say anything more and let me go. Two days later after work my wife is on the phone with a Sherriff and she (the Sherriff) starts asking me the same questions. I ask her what's going on, come to find out there is a Marijuana garden down there and they have been trying to catch these guys for over a month. Nice? real nice! From what I understand they were using the ranchers black plastic hose and putting dripper systems on it. I haven't heard any more but I sure hope they nabbed them and get them out of my area! Geesh, I have dope people, cops and a moutian lion running around down there. No wonder I didnt see any bucks! Oh and the Sherriff I had just talked to knew nothing about the guy that rolled the truck. It was a very interesting chain of events and had I not lived through it I don't know if I could believe it myself. I generally don't have anything exciting happen except when getting into animals.

The End

 

[tuttut2001]

Great story! I kept checking back to MM waiting for the next installment. I am guessing that this was Arizona? Thanks for keeping my Friday going and exciting as I waiting impatiently to get out of here and out hunting all next week.

Take Care.

Tut

 

[GotBowAz]

Yes this is in Arizona and the dessert hunting was pretty hot but if I stayed in the blind from morning until dark it wasnt so bad as long as I was shaded.

Seeing the Cat was probably the highlight of my entire hunt. I buy a tag every year but for the last 20 years or so I have never seen a Mountian lion until now. I was simply awed by him and he would have been one heck of an archery trophy to me too.

Good luck on your hunt Tut. Post a story when you get back.

 

[sampson]

LAST EDITED ON Sep-19-08 AT 04:19PM (MST)[p]mmmmmm, better not.