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Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

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Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 10 14, 2022 •  [Post 1]

Well, here we go. Good luck to all heading out for the first day of modern Blacktail season. The weather, or lack of, is an issue so please, get your field processing and transfer to an icy destination done quickly. Anxious to hear/see how everybody does this year. Onward!
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Re: Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby 7mmfan » 11 01, 2022 •  [Post 2]

I guess I'm the only one to kill a Blacktail this year?!? Sorry this is a novel. Takes about 8 minutes to read.

I love to hunt Blacktail Deer. I love to hunt them for about 2 days a year. If you're hunting Blacktail when everything is lined up for good Blacktial activity, that's about all you can handle. Me anyway. Our season opens mid October, the 2nd Saturday to be exact. Somewhere between the 10 and 15. It runs through Halloween which catches just the beginning of the rut. Anything before the 26th is way too early for good Blacktail hunting. They are truly the ghosts of the Pacific Northwest. If you are in the woods in August you can spy great bucks standing on clear cut edges frequently, and your hopes shoot to sky high levels. Then they shed their velvet and melt back into the timber and you never see them again... until the last 5 days of the season.

In the last 5 days of October, a magical thing happens. The rut begins to fire, and we usually get an extended stretch of early fall storms that blast us with rain and wind. The rain and wind force the does out into the open. They tend to hang out in clear cuts where they can see better since their sense of hearing and smell are now impaired by the weather. Its common to see several does essentially living in clear cuts for multiple days in a row when the weather hits, then they too will retreat back to the timber when it clears. If everything lines up for you, sometimes you get a strong fall storm that lands in the last couple days of the season, and those bucks that have been living in the timber since August, reappear, as if out of thin air.

This last Sunday, the 30th of October, was just such a day. I had hunted a couple of evenings after work, taking my 5 year old son out to watch some clear cuts and do some exploring. The weather was way too nice to expect much. I covered a lot of ground, mainly looking for sign that deer were using the cuts at night. I was coming up empty handed. Most of the clear cuts I had scouted had recently been sprayed and were deserts. Next year, and for a few years beyond they will be good areas to hunt, but this year, the deer were not there. Looking at the weather forecast, I saw a strong storm making landfall Sunday morning. There would be wind to 30 mph, and heavy rain. It would be the last day I would be able to hunt, so I decided to pull the Ace out of my sleeve and head for my favorite spot.

At the top of a mountain, several miles behind a locked gate, is a clear cut that is now about 5 years old. It's in it's prime as far as deer habitat goes. It is the oldest cut on this mountain, so it has the best feed and growth in it. It is also laid out in a way that I've come to identify as a type of topography and vegetation type that Blacktail really gravitate towards, but is also highly huntable. I've killed deer here multiple times, and have taken friends there as well to kill bucks. It's been as automatic of a spot as one can hope for. I know the day will come when this spot is no longer huntable, and I'll be on the lookout for a similar cut elsewhere to setup shop on.

About 2 hours before light, my Dad and I locked the door of the truck, ducked under the gate, and headed up the hill in the rain and fog. Up we went, continuing up a steady incline for 3ish miles before we gained the ridgeline and were able to enjoy a flat road for the rest of the walk to our spot. We had been in the lee of the mountain until we got to the top. As we crested and turned west, we were greeted with a blast of wind and sheets of rain. It was exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds, but its the type of weather that makes a Blacktail hunters heart go thump. We stopped short of the cut by a couple of hundred yards and waited for light while we changed into dry clothes, dawned raingear, and sipped coffee that I'd hauled up the hill with us in a thermos. The anticipation was tangible. I just knew today was going to be a good day.

It was maybe still just a little too dark to shoot when we eased into the cut. I wanted to get over the edge of the landing and to a glassing spot before it was fully light. Dad continued down to the next landing, about 300 yards too the west. I eased down the slope, thankful for the rain and wind covering my sound. Clear cuts are dirty, noisy places. I reached a tree that had fallen and could not reasonably go further to the glassing spot that I like. I fidgeted around for a couple minutes, trying to find a way through that wasn't too noisy and that wouldn't expose me to the areas of the cut I hadn't glassed yet, but I couldn't find one. I accepted that this was my spot and quietly dropped my pack and settled in. I continually glassed the timber edge below me about 150 yards away. This is where I usually see bucks in this spot. There is an old spur road there with small Alders growing on it, and they use it as a rub line this time of year. There was nothing out yet, the only movement being rain and leaves eddying about in the wind. Everything felt right though.

Out of my peripheral vision to my right, I caught a flicker of movement. I turned my head and looked for some time, but saw nothing. It was now fully light, perhaps 15 minutes after legal shooting light. I looked back down to the timber edge and was just pulling my binos up again when I caught another flicker to my right. I looked with the naked eye and again saw nothing, but pulled up my binos this time to investigate. There was a deer rump and black tail sticking out from behind a fir sapling. My heart began to thump. It was a big square hind quarter, indicative of a mature buck. I watched through my 12x binos that I'd mistakenly brought, and could only see movement behind the fir tree. Finally, he stepped clear of the tree and I saw the white face and roman nose of a mature buck. He had antlers with mass, but not stature, which is common for Blacaktails, especially in this area. There was no doubt he was a mature deer. The 12x binos made it seem like he was right in my lap. I could clearly see all the subtle markings on his face that make Blacktail what I consider to be the most beautiful deer in North America. He was alone, alert, but feeding his was way slowly from right to left toward the timber line. He was 100 yards away at most, probably closer. At that moment I was thankful that I had not tried to force my way beyond that tree, as I certainly would have exposed myself to him. Patience paid off in this situation.

I waited for him to put his head down to feed again and then slowly sat down and pulled my 7mm magnum up onto the shooting sticks I had set up. I didn't have the greatest setup, with a steep incline in front of me, I felt like I was above the rifle to far by a couple of inches. Slowly, I wiggled my butt back and forth in the soft earth and was able to settle down into a better shooting position, but he had fed behind another young fir tree at this point. I had time to put my ear plugs in, check the dial on my scope to make sure it was set to zero, and dial up the magnification some. As he stepped out into the open again, I could hear my heart thumping in my ears, and the ringing that comes from adrenaline beginning to pump through my body. He was quartering slightly toward me now, so I placed the crosshairs as close to his shoulder crease as I could. The crosshairs wavered slightly left to right, as they do on shooting sticks, and I began to squeeze the trigger as I exhaled.

At the trigger break, the muzzle flash was bright, and the hot gases hitting cold wet air created a cloud that briefly screened me. I knew the shot was good, but quickly pulled my ear plugs out to listen for a running animal. I was greeted only by silence in the cut below me, and the echo of my shot returning from some distant tree line. I could not hear anything, but could not see the deer either. I looked through my scope at the spot I was certain the deer had been standing but could see nothing. Finally I pulled my binos out and diligently scanned the area he had been. Then I saw it, the outline of his back and an antler barely sticking up behind a log. He was down right where he'd stood. I pulled out my radio and hailed my Dad, but there was no need, he was already on the way, I could see him coming down the road. We worked our way down to the buck, which had died in a position that made it look like he was bedded. Upon further inspection, my shot was a touch forward and high, entering high shoulder and exiting just behind the shoulder on the other side. The trauma to the spine was significant, my guess is an instant death, which is exactly what he deserved.

Dad and I stood in the rain and wind and laughed and relived the brief hunt. Then he continued on over the edge to hunt for the next hour or so while I broke the deer down and got the meat up to the road. He saw nothing else, and then at about 11:00 am, the mountain fogged in, and with no visibility, we loaded our packs and began the trudge back down to the truck. Back in the truck I had luckily had the forethought to bring a dry change of clothes and another thermos of coffee. What a luxury it was to sit in dry clothes in the truck with the heat on and a cup of hot coffee for the ride home.

At home, I weighed each bone-in quarter, and the bags of meat we had hauled out. Leg bones included, we carried out 108# of quarters, definitely one of the larger bodied blacktails I've killed. As we speak, those quarters are resting in the garage fridge, being turned twice a day and they are aging great. I look forward to that first chunk of backstrap going on the grill this next weekend.
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I hunt therefore I am. I fish therefore I lie.
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7mmfan
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Re: Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby Swede » 11 07, 2022 •  [Post 3]

7MM Is this the story you were sniveling about? It is very good, and the buck is a dandy too. Congratulations. :D

This story and your elk story are worth 1,000 points. Unfortunately, your goofy comment on WW's funny fart stories more than wiped out all of your points and you are at a deficit now. You need get busy and write some more just to break even. In all fairness, you write very interesting stories, and the pictures are great.
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Re: Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby 7mmfan » 11 08, 2022 •  [Post 4]

Swede wrote:7MM Is this the story you were sniveling about? It is very good, and the buck is a dandy too. Congratulations. :D

This story and your elk story are worth 1,000 points. Unfortunately, your goofy comment on WW's funny fart stories more than wiped out all of your points and you are at a deficit now. You need get busy and write some more just to break even. In all fairness, you write very interesting stories, and the pictures are great.


All these rules and demerits. I thought I was free of demerits when I moved out of my folks' house. I've got some more stuff to post I suppose, if I get the shovel out and start scraping the bottom some.
I hunt therefore I am. I fish therefore I lie.
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Re: Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 11 08, 2022 •  [Post 5]

Great buck and excellent write up 7MM! You captured a lot of what those crazy black tail hunters think is premium hunting weather; rainy, windy, and cold ;) . I'm gonna get out a couple of times in the late rifle season (17-20 NOV) and see what can be done. I have the multi-season deer tag this year so there's no excuse for me not tagging a deer. I agree with you, they are handsome deer.
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Re: Blacktail 2022 Stories and Pics.

Postby Lefty » 11 12, 2022 •  [Post 6]

Great story 7MM
Your background looks so familiar, much like where I shot my only blacktail east of Yacolt Wa.
I only killed one,, he was so rutty stinky. I quit hunting the wet side, Ended up chasing a "bench buck" for 3 years
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