Deer hunting simply is not a science. There are no hard and fast rules about what you should do and when you should do it. It’s all just deer hunting.
As I mentioned in another post I took up deer hunting relatively early in age. My brother, who loves to hunt more than I do today, picked up his passion for hunting later in life. Certainly not LATE in life, just later than I had.
My brother Joe has always been a better and harder worker than me. He just works. He works all the time. If something needs doing then Joe is going to do it. I think I work quite a bit, but I enjoy my down time as well. Joe works.
And so this is how it was with deer hunting as well. Once the switch was flipped Joe was pretty much all in. I believe his first hunt was at Red Lake but it was at Santa Flavia together that I think I enjoyed our time afield most. I don’t know this for fact but I’d guess Joe and I have spent more time at Santa Flavia than any other area of Alaska we hunted together.
Santa Flavia Bay is located on the South Eastern side of Kodiak but well North and East of some of the other areas discussed earlier. So there were, and we’d expected there to be, less bears. The first morning walking out as we peeled left from the cabin door to climb a slight hill, pull through some alders for about a hundred yards before exposing the back country that was the land we’d be hunting, my dad turns back and to all our surprise a small boar was on the other side of the alders looking at us as if to say “what the hell are you guys doing here?”
We wondered the same.
We hunted a few days on Santa Flavia that first trip and if I’m being honest the hunting wasn’t great. There weren’t many deer around at all and most of them weren’t the mature type of bucks we preferred to take.
So it was three days in as we cleared those same alders close to the cabin and we started walking due East into the valley. Generally speaking we’d stay towards the middle of the valley where the slope was more gentle and we’d glass either side mountain to see if any deer were around. Joe and I, for whatever reason, had pulled off to the right a little as we walked up this line of alder bushes while my dad was off to our left maybe a couple hundred yards away.
Much to our surprise a buck bumps from the alder patch and scoots out the other side. Joe and I both know its no booner but he’ll eat! And he stops about 150 yards away. Joe sets his pack down and uses it as a rest leveling his Ruger model 77 in .338 Win Mag (way too much gun for deer but we were hunting Kodiak soooo …). A loud thump from the Ruger and the deer falls back down near the alders and out of sight. In my glasses it looked to be a perfect shot.
It’s a happy time. Joe and I high five each other as we glance back at Dad and he’s smiling ear to ear. Meat for camp and a hunt that we now knew we wouldn’t get skunked on.
Did I mention hunting isn’t a science?
Dad starts making his way over to us as Joe and I wait a few minutes before approaching Joe’s deer. That is until the buck jumps up and starts making his way right the hell out of dodge! Joe and I were scratching our heads a little but Dad was a little less patient.
We heard only one word from Dad repeated many, many times and louder with each effort. “Joe… Joe… Joe!!!! JOE!!!!!”
So Joe throws another round in the chamber but at this point the shot has gotten much harder. The buck has moved some ways out. Joe barks at me “how far?” but you have to realize this was back in the days before fancy range finders. I mean I had some idea of how far it was… but not really. And so with that air of confidence and authority that sometimes you hear out of a politician’s mouth when they don’t know what the hell they are talking about I say “280 yards, aim about 5 inches high” I figured going with 280 would have been better than a round 250 yards. Maybe my brother wouldn’t have known I was full of crap.
Another loud roar of the rifle and the buck goes down. We can see him this time, and we can clearly see he’s not going anywhere.
Joe and I start walking now to get to the deer (and maybe close the gap a little just in case Act III happens???) We get up to him and he’s clearly expired. Alas, now the work begins. That is until one of us, I assume Joe but don’t know for sure, glances about 100 yards down the hill. And there lies buck number one. I swear they were identical twins. Same rack, same size, same deer. Only they weren’t. And just like that Joe was tagged out in Alaska with one deer he wanted and one deer he likely would have liked a mulligan on.
It’s not a science though which is why hunting can be tough. Plenty of deer have been shot and got back up. And rarely when the hunting is tough do you all of the sudden see two damn near identical deer in the exact same area.
And any science goes out the door when your Dad is yelling at you to shoot and your little brother gives such precise, albeit crap, advice on how far the shot is.