After Andrew had killed his buck he helped a good friend out on his in the same unit. Congrats to Levi on a nice buck. Below is the story.
"On the second day of our Oct. coues hunt we once again found ourselves sitting on top of a juniper ridge before daylight, and we once again had a buck in the 25’s before the sun was up. At over half a mile I could tell the deer was a buck, but the shade of the juniper he was laying under prevented me from getting a good look at his head gear.
With the sun beginning to creep over the ridge he was on I hoped he wouldn’t walk over the ridge to bed on the North facing slope. Fortunately as the sun past his bed, the buck merely stood, took a few more bites of manzanita and lay back down to chew his cud. After watching the buck for 45 minutes we were certain he was going to stay put, and Levi was anxious to put some lead in the air. We quickly dropped down the ridge we were on and started up the cut on the opposite slope. We knew if we stuck to this cut we would top out at under 250 yards, point blank range for coues deer hunting.
As we neared the top I dropped my pack and belly crawled to the top of the ridge to make sure the buck was in the same spot. When I peaked over I din’t even need binoculars to see him still bedded just 231 yards away. I motioned back for Levi to bring the gear and get set up. It took a few minutes to find a spot that worked, but soon we were set up and Levi was cranking up the scope to 20x. I whispered to Levi that I was ready when he was, but because of the wind I wasn’t sure he heard me. I turned to whisper louder just as the .300 Win Mag went off. I turned back just in time to see the buck stand and move 10 yards to the left. I wasn’t sure if the shot was a hit but as I watched the buck I was amazed to see him start feeding on a manzanita in the open. For the next 10 minutes I tried to tell Levi how to get the buck back in the scope. Finally, I crawled behind the rifle got the buck in the scope and then carefully switched places with Levi. During this exchange a big gust of wind came along and blew over my tripod with my 15’s mounted to it. I grabbed the bino’s and quickly checked the focus to no avail. The alignment was shot. So I pulled up my 10’s and gave Levi the green light. There was no doubt about this shot as the buck immediately back-flipped down hill,breaking his G-2 in the process.
This buck ended up being much better than we had initially anticipated, although the deer won’t score high, he was the oldest buck I have ever seen on the ground. With just two points on each side he was most likely on the downhill side of his life. I believe the year before he was a wide 3 point I got several trail camera pictures of. A great trophy for Levi, and the best part was I didn’t have to carry one ounce of meat out, Levi proved his masculinity and carried the entire boned out buck the 2 miles back to camp."
Enjoy the pics.
