It had been two years since I last got to hunt. So I was super excited when my dad told me he took a whole week off work to come to Sask and hunt with me!
He drove out Sunday night, I had the hunting licenses/tags and habitat certificates all ready to go for hunting whitetail deer. They were such a pain to get....I couldn't believe that Frontier, Climax and Shaunavon had none...I had to drive to Eastend to get them. Anyways...we went out hunting Monday morning purposely being picky..since we had the whole week. No need to rush, might as well try to get a big buck. We decided to drive West of Frontier and head South of Claydon. We saw about 60 whitetail does within the first hour and 2 small whitetail bucks. At one point we actually ended up down at the US border, but we mostly saw Mule deer down there. It was even fun just driving around watching for deer. We also saw a TON of antelope, which we nicknamed Melons. They are so funny looking.
Around 11 am, we turned down a gravel road only to see a No Hunting sign, so we turned around to head back but were met by a truck at the corner. The man in the truck owned the land and was more than willing to let us hunt on it. He just likes to know who is out on his land. He also told us that if we went straight we would see some old buildings and his son had shot a big whitetail buck lying between the buildings just last week. So we thanked him and headed back down his road. As we came over a little hill we could see the old buildings, and much to our surprise we saw a good sized rack of antlers sticking up between the buildings. We stopped the truck. What should we do......sneak up from there.....drive up the hill an sneak back....go slow and make the buck stand up so we can make sure he is a whitetail...hmm.... We finally decided to drive past and up the hill, stop at the top and sneak back. During our sneak back to the edge of the hill, we started out walking, then crouching, then crawling, then wiggling on our bellies pulling ourselves with our elbows! LOL! Amazingly the buck never saw us (and we never got dirt in our rifle barrels)...I guess we did a good job of sneaking......and we had a pretty good view of him, he was facing us, lying down. We still could not tell if he was a whitetail or a mulee, so dad told me he was going to get on his knees to make the buck stand up. We had been peering through our scopes for a while now, and my eyes were starting to go crosseyed! I had to look away and close my eyes for about 30 sec, but then I was ready. Dad kneeled, the buck just stared, then dad did a little dance on his knees, LOL, and finally the buck stood up. IT WAS A WHITETAIL! ha ha, so obviously I shot him :) It was great. I was so excited!
So after field dressing the deer, we loaded him into the truck and cruised around a bunch more to see if we could find one for dad. No luck, we didn't see anything but antelope. We got home for lunch about 3 pm. Then made a phone call out to a friends house with a shop where we could hang my deer to skin it. We made plans with them for supper and decided to head North of town and look for deer until then.
We drove on the back roads north of the valley and crossed the highway. We didn't go far until we saw an old abandoned farm yard with some old buildings and lots of bush. There was a small circle of bush with an old building, then a larger circle surrounding it. If I was a deer, I would live there. Sure enough as we drove past we saw a small whitetail buck. Dad took a shot at it, but it had moved just as he shot. We drove to the other side and scared it back into the bushes. Then I left dad there and drove back down the road twice. He then texted me to push bush for him...walk through and scare the deer out. So I parked the truck and started walking through. As soon as I got out I heard a really far off rifle shot....which got my heart racing. I kept walking and was about to cut through the bush into the larger circle when a whitetail...all I saw was the tail....jumped about 5 feet to my right! Scared me almost to death!!! So I stopped for a minute to listen for rifle shots....nothing. I continued through the bush....about half way into the middle of the outer circle I heard 3 rifle shots to my right, and dad came into view. He was motioning wildly that he had got something and for me to go get the truck. So I jogged back, got the truck and pulled up beside him. To my (and his) surprise he had shot a good sized 5x5 whitetail buck!! So I must have scared out a larger one than we had initially spotted!
By then the sun was starting to set, so we headed to our friends house, had supper and proceeded to hang the deer off of a tractor to skin and cut the meat off them. So we finished our week of hunting in the first day. But there was still lots of work left to do....
Tuesday was my birthday :) .....I spent the whole day washing and cutting up deer meat with my dad. But then in the evening a bunch of friends from Frontier and Shaunavon threw a surprise birthday party for me....AND it was actually a surprise. Good work guys, lol!
I had an awesome week, but now I am back to work for the weekend, O joy.
