My First Buck
by Scott Walker
When I was a boy, I hunted with my father several times without really seeing anything nor having the opportunity to take a deer. However, time keeps moving forward and before you know it I got married and had kids – life just got in the way. My last hunt, before life, was back in 1985. Going forward, four years ago two of my buddies, Kim and Chuck, asked if I’d like to hunt with them. I said yes. I then proceeded to take a refresher Hunter Safety Course with my son, who was 15 at the time, and tool up with tools and “toys”. The first three years we all got skunked as there just didn’t seem to be that many bucks on the mountain. At one point I mentioned to Kim that I planned to take a 5×5 someday; he just laughed saying that he’d hunted this mountain for 20 years and had never seen a buck that big.
As we prepared to leave our home for the 2010 season, we were all anticipating the year’s hunt. We knew there had been a recent fire in the area and hoped it would push the deer in the right direction, our direction. On opening day we left early, heading for the peak and areas in-between where there are many meadows and draws and high traffic areas that deer normally travel. We followed this pattern for the first two days of the hunt. Well, guess what we saw? Other hunters taking bucks off the mountain. We saw some forkies and a 4×3 hanging at various campsites. But did we see anything? Nope, not us. I guess deer killing only happens to the other guy.
The first two days were very noisy with hunters traveling from area to area and taking buck after buck and a bear too, but all we saw were their honies (does) and a little bear scat. The third day of the hunt was a little different, as many of the weekend hunters went home, making the whole mountain very quiet. Not one gun shot was heard all day. I was feeling a little discouraged since this was the third year we’d been hunting in the same general area without seeing anything and I was tired of getting skunked year after year.
We decided to reconnoiter a new area, one we had only talked about several times during previous hunts. At first light on the fourth day we headed out of camp with the mission to walk quietly into an area we hoped had deer. Chuck and I started out down this path while Kim headed up another valley in hopes of moving any deer over to where we were waiting. I was hopeful, but really didn’t expect to see anything, much less take anything.
About a mile from our campsite Chuck decided to stop at an elongated meadow to watch for movement while Kim was scouting in an adjacent valley. I continued on for about another 300 hundred yards. When I got to a rather large meadow area I situated myself about 200 yards from the far side of the meadow and took a seat under a fir tree. Taking my binoculars, I glassed the other side of the meadow looking for movement. I decided to move to a better spot across a little stream then, after a couple of minutes, decided to move back to my first position as it afforded a better vantage point of most of the meadow area plus a significant portion of the tree line.
After just a few minutes of scanning the tree line, I saw a doe, then a buck, then another doe. I quickly dropped the glasses and picked up my 30-06, lined up on the target, the buck, of course, and squeezed the trigger. But before I tell you what happened next, I need to elaborate on what exactly was going through my mind just before I squeezed that trigger.
It was pure excitement – not just buck fever. I had never had the opportunity to see a live buck in open country before. We see deer in the zoo, books, and movies, but never “in person”. When he was in my scope and my finger was on the trigger, I was looking at one of the most beautiful and majestic creatures I’d ever seen. I, for only a second, wondered if I could actually hit and kill him.
Unfortunately, because of my excitement, my first round didn’t hit him so I chambered a second round and squeezed again. This time….hit…down. I stood up and looked through my scope to verify and saw him lying where he once stood. WOW! I couldn’t believe it. I actually killed me a buck. Next, I walked across the meadow, which by the way, was a nice easy uphill stroll across what SCUBA divers would call “eel grass” to where he lay. He was nicely “resting” beneath the beautiful conifers of the Sierra Nevada range. As I stood there I heard my buddy Chuck yell, “What did you get?” I looked at him and yelled, “It’s a 4X4.” I heard him yell back, “Good job, Scotty!” I moved the buck’s head and noticed another point so I stood up and yelled, “5X5!”
When Chuck finally arrived at my location we both celebrated the kill. We were hootin’ and hollerin’ because of the size of the buck and that this was my first kill. After a short while, we moved the deer to a good location to field dress him and then we moved him to our quads and traveled back to camp. What a day and what a way to end the hunt.
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