Late Season Deer Hunting

From Landon:

This year I was fortunate enough to draw a late season deer hunting permit. Last weekend my dad and I headed over to the Entiat GMU (Up the Entiat River Road off of 97A in between Chelan and Wenatchee). Let me explain a little bit about the special tag: normally during the regular season you head to your special hunting area hoping to see deer- and you are really hoping to spot a legal buck ( in most of areas I have been hunting lately that means a deer with at least three points on one side). Anybody can buy a tag and come out for regular season and usually the deer are pretty scarce (and seem to outwit the masses of hunters). The special permit, on the other hand, is a drawing that selects a certain number of hunters (52 this year in the Entiat GMU) to hunt at a date later in the year (November 1-18). This time of the year also happens to be the mating season when the bucks are in the rut and looking for does. This makes them a little less wiley and easier to spot. So I guess what I'm trying to explain that this hunting trip was one where we saw plenty of deer. We were not shooting at the first legal deer we saw- we spent our time trying to figure out the best buck to shoot. This may seem easy but you have to realize that it is a gamble. When you find one you have to decide if it's the biggest buck you're going to see or if you might see one bigger the next day. But if you wait too long you risk going home empty-handed because you can't guarantee that you will see a buck the last day of your trip. Anyway, my Dad and I saw a lot of deer and got a couple of pictures of nice bucks.

The first one we spotted looked really nice. It was really tall and looked great however only 16 or 18 inches wide.

At dusk on Saturday we decided to take a nice 4 point. It wasn't the monster buck that you really hope for in the late hunt but it was a very respectable. It took only one shot from about 150 yards. It's funny how we were really excited but also disappointed because the hunt was then over.

So after a nice evening of skinning the deer we enjoyed some steaks. We headed out the next morning to do a little more looking and unfortunately we found a big one. It was a 3x3 but at least one side had a point busted off so it would have been at least a 3x4. Anyway we spotted at over 1000 yards so the picture you see is shot through a 60 power spotting scope. The first picture you see is of where we first spotted it. The deer was at the right arrow. We did make a stalk on it and ended up around the left arrow before we called it a day and headed home. We figure it was probably about 26 or 28 inches wide and a nice tall rack as you can see. We wasted most of the morning drooling over a deer we couldn't do anything about since we already had our tag filled back at camp. It was still fun to look though.