This is the second year that Mentor Jen Bretney and I have taken a U S Military Veteran on a deer hunt.  These hunts are designed for Veterans who have never hunted, or been successful, hunting deer.  The first year we did it, we had a wonderful Marine Corps veteran who had been a Combat Engineer and served overseas.  Rebecca was delightful to be around,  was patient and wanted to learn all she could about hunting big game and deer especially.  We hunted hard for two days and on the second day in the early afternoon, she made a wonderful shot on a nice forked horn buck!

This year we hosted another female Veteran, Tana who was in the medical corps for the U S Navy.  Tana is currently going thru some medical issues and really needed the time outdoors learning something new.  She is a wonderful lady who really enjoys the outdoors and is a very capable Off-Roader in her spare time that loves working on her jeeps and rock crawling!

The weather was nice in the mornings, but A Zone in California is notoriously hot during deer season.  While the temperatures were slightly below the normal, it still warmed up pretty good in the afternoons. 

It was encouraging to see deer at every turn we made it seemed.  The first step out of the truck on Saturday morning I put up my binoculars to scan while the ladies got their gear together, and spotted a nice forked horn on a mountain at about 400 yards!  We attempted to make a stalk on him, but he was headed up hill and even without seeing us, he managed to gain more ground than we could and eventually slipped over the ridge from view.

We continued up the ridge we were on, which wraps around another smaller ridge.  Near the top we spotted a nice group of hogs and debated whether she should try for one, but decided it would eat up too much of the day dealing with a hog that could be spent searching for a good buck.  We watched the hogs feed along until they eventually crossed the opposing ridge infront of us.  We did manage to see a couple of does on that two mile jaunt, but no more legal bucks for us on that walk.

I decided to jump over to another canyon I have seen many deer in the past, and this canyon did not disappoint!  We lost track of how many does we saw, but we also saw several bucks.  Mostly the bucks were not hanging around to find out if our Lady Navy Vet could shoot or not however.  Most of the bucks were small yearling or two year old forked horns. We continued on up and over the ridge at the top of the canyon and decided to head back to the ranch house for some lunch as it was now almost 1:00 and getting hot.  On the drive down the other side we bumped into some of the deer club members so we stopped to visit a bit.  They said they hadn’t seen too many deer so far.  Im not sure where they had been looking, because we were seeing plenty of deer!  After our brief conversation, we continued on down the hill while they went up.  Not 75 yards past them, we spotted another mature and large forked horn buck crossing the road right in front of us!  He definitely did not stick around, he wheeled and went straight down the valley to the safety of his brushy hillside.  We briefly went after him, but is was steep hillside and we were hot and hungry at this point.

We made our way back to the ranch house, seeing turkeys and squirrels and quail all along the way, I think there were a couple more does as well.  After lunch, we all took a little nap and decided to head out around 4:30 and continue the hunt.

I decided since we had seen so many deer in that one large canyon, we might as well go back and see what was moving in the evening there.  It was a similar experience to the morning, except…  When we got near the top of the long winding canyon, several hundred feet above the lake level where we started at, we spotted a group of deer in the brush, and one was a large mature forked horn with one of the widest spreads I have seen on a forky.  The hillside was steep and brushy, and he was with two does and a smaller spike/fork.  Jen and Tana got out of the truck, loaded up and found a position with a shooting lane.  The deer were nervous, but not running off, they were milling about roughly 75 yards from the road in the brush.  Finally the big  fork stepped into a clearing.  Tana had been holding the rifle for a few minutes now, and the fatigue was setting in.  She took a shot, but missed.  The heat, the medical issues, and the weight of the rifle made an accurate shot difficult, plus the buck was uphill on a pretty steep slope, all combined, it was an earned miss.  Jen and I went up on the hill to make sure it was a clean miss, and we found no evidence of blood, and in fact bumped the small group of deer from the brush, into denser brush.  The good news is that the brush and steep terrain, mean those deer are likely not going to leave that hillside anytime soon, although they might be a little more weary than before.  By the time we got done searching the light was beginning to fade, so we decided to call it and head back to the house for some dinner.

Jen had brought some ground elk from a bull she had harvested the previous year in Idaho and it made some wonderful burritos!  With our bellies full and our muscles tired, we all headed off to our bedrooms for the night with plans for an early start in the morning.  Aside from Jen having a bat flying around in her room, and I having a small furry visitor at the open door to the room I was sleeping in, we all got some rest.  I still am not certain what the little shadowy figure was, but I think it was a baby raccoon that startled me, he scurried off before I could get my flashlight out!

We headed out in the grey light of early morning and I thought, why not, lets give that canyon another try.  We saw more deer, mostly does and a few small spikes as we made our way up.  When we reached the turn at the beginning of the big brushy hillside were we had seen the big fork, we really started looking hard into the brush, and there he was again.  Jen and Tana slipped out of the truck, and I continued on up the hill, hoping he would think we had all just gone on by.  I stopped at the top of the ridge, and from the shade of a tree, I sat and glassed, waiting to hear a shot.  I spotted several does and another spike buck that I had not seen before, near where I thought Jen and Tana would be looking.  At the top of the canyon, we have spotty cell service, and Jen texted me that they were playing cat and mouse with the buck in the brush.  Then I heard the shot, but I was close enough that I should have heard the impact, there was no impact.  Jen texted that she had missed by an inch shooting over the bucks back.  The buck however simply moved uphill into the brush again.  A new plan was hatching.  I came back down and while Tana and I waited near a clearing in the hillside, Jen went around the backside of the hill, hoping to push the deer back over the ridge to us.

We waited about 20 minutes to hear from Jen or see some deer.  Jen texted me again, that she was pinned down in the grass and surrounded by deer.  They were so close at one point she could have reached out and touched one of the does.  The deer seemed to ignore her and moved to the edge of the brush just over the ridge in front of her and bedded down.  I asked Tana if she was up to climbing that steep hill and she said yes.  I told her that since the deer were bedded down, it wasn’t a race and she could take the time she needed.  We went wide of the ridge and began our ascent.  It took 20-30 minutes to get up to where we could see Jen, she texted me that the deer were 20 yards in front of her.  We skirted wide and we farther up hill from Jen, hoping to avoid our movements being detected.  We got to a spot, where there was trees and brush between us and the deer, we were within 70 yards and uphill from the deer bedded down.  Jen motioned for Tana to start moving in.  Tana scooted on her butt as slowly as she could moving downhill towards the deer.  I could see part of an antler and the occasional ear flick from behind a large pine tree, that was the buck.  At this point, Jen is downhill about 20 yards from me and closer to the ridge and Tana is about 10 yards down and over towards the deer.  Before Tana could get the rifle in position for a shot, the deer got up and drifted into the brush they were next to.  I couldn’t see her face, but I could see the disappointment in her body.  We all sat still for about 10 minutes waiting to see if they would reappear and offer a shot.  Something caught my eye at the bottom of the hill where we had come from, I put up my binoculars and there at 150 yards, on the edge of the road, stood three does, a spike/fork and the big fork.  They were not visible to Jen and Tana because of the bend in the ridge.  The big buck casually liked the branch of an oak tree before turning and heading down the valley below with the rest of the group following him.  I have to say, that was one of the greatest stalks I have been a part of without harvesting an animal.  It is tough enough for one person to get within 70 yards of one bedded buck, let alone 3 people within 70 yards of 5 bedded deer! 

We all got together and headed down the hill, but the deer were long gone at this point.  It was early afternoon, and Tana had a 4 hour drive ahead of her to get home, so we called an end to this hunt.

While Tana did not get to harvest a deer, I think she had a great time and learned a great deal not only about deer hunting, but about herself and her physical limitations during her recovery.  All in all is was a great weekend with great people doing what we love.  That is a successful hunt in my books even though no meat was added to a freezer, that would have been a bonus tho!