BlackFail - Lessons Learned From Spectacular Failed Blacktail Hunts in These Dang Mountains

[LosPadre]

BlackFail

Lessons Learned From Spectacular Failed Blacktail Hunts in These Dang Mountains

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I have always been the black sheep of my whitetail hunting Wisconsin family. But I did not bring real shame to them until I came out west and started hunting blacktails in the mountains. Growing up if I shot a 4 pointer (2x2), my brother shot a 6. If I shot a 6 my dad shot a 10. If I got a nice anything it did not measure up to my uncle’s regular wallhangers. As far as shooting I can shoot five-shot quarters (cover the five bullet holes in a target with a quarter) at a hundred yards. But my family can shoot dimes. I’m a reject. They all reload like a religion; a thousand rounds of each caliber in each flavor is standard. I have the equipment but suck at it (forget to put the gun powder in before seating the bullet, pour gun powder into casings that already had their powder poured in to them etc.) so I buy factory. Get the picture? My family does.

Like most in Wisconsin I can hunt whitetails in the whitetail’s environment. Cheeseheads are excellent whitetail hunters, killing 200,000 of them a year. So when I found myself living in California I figured hunting the diminutive blacktails in Zone A would be relatively the same as bagging whitetails back home only less rewarding. I just wouldn’t send any pictures of the little fellas to my family back home to save me some embarrassment. I mean what self-respecting big whitetail would choose to starve himself to death on a coastal hillside when he could get unlimited bellyfuls of corn or oats 100 yards away, right? Blacktail weren’t real deer, they were mini-deer.

Hindsight, sweat, blood, exhaustion, torn clothes, rattlesnakes, frustration and disbelief have taught me this stupid initial evaluation of how I thought things were going to be was terribly wrong. Among many other things, I failed to consider several important factors when hunting blacktail in Central California: the heat, the near total absence of water and THE MOUNTAINS.

The mountains were the hardest schoolmaster. Failure was the only option until I understood its strict and uncompromising conditions. Following are the classrooms used, the curriculum taught and the lessons I learned in humiliating, shameful, don’t-come-home-for-Christmas failure. The hard way.


Shame Hill
When I started hunting in California I had not talked to a soul about where to go, etc. I didn’t know anybody out here who hunted. So my quest was organic. (What? Deer season is in the summer??) It did not take long to figure out that water is as scarce in August on the Central Coast as common sense is between Bernie Sanders’ ears anytime. But by opening day I had found water sources and narrowed things down to hunting a mountainside in Big Sur. And by mountainside I mean park the truck and huck upwards about 1800 vertical feet. (Then I used to walk back down for lunch and climb back up for evening hunt...you’re starting to get it aren’t you? You see why I’m a black sheep, don’t you? You can shut up now.)

So there I was looking down on to this canyon at the top of a series of ridges. The canyon had a small ridge of its own so it really had a finger of woods to its right and to its left. It really was a nice spot. Until a buck showed up. Out pops this very nice deer. He was big; 4x4 with a hefty authoritative body. He was doing what I had hoped he would do and right where I hoped he would do it. He stood at the cliff edge looking down. I aimed right where I should and squeezed the trigger. I looked up to watch him hit the dirt. But he didn’t. He didn’t do anything. Nothing happened. He just stood there and looked around. Well, I thought, perhaps the distance is a little longer than my gun. Let me raise it a little, try again and watch for where the bullet hits if I miss him. So I did. Pow. Again, nothing. No running deer, no bullet impact, no anything. I was stunned. And then the buck started to get fidgety.

I knew my brush gun (35 Rem) had limitations. It was great for shooting pumpkins through thick woods at whitetails but the ballistics got ugly fast past 150 yards. I surmised he must be well past 150 yards. (Dang genius ain’t I? ) The buck started to trot across this canyon’s mini-ridge so I tried one more, this time keeping both eyes open and looking anywhere for a bullet impact. It worked. I saw my bullet impact WAYYYYYYY below the buck on the wall of the cliff he had been standing above. That was shocking.

But at least I had an idea. I adjusted and fired again at a sprinting deer this time. Bullet was much closer. Adjusted again and fired again. This one was closer yet and almost. One more in the chamber and...and my last mortar landed right between his legs just as he went over the far end of his ridge.

I sank to the ground in utter disbelief. I had never missed a deer before. I had never emptied my gun in the process. Two things became crystal clear: 1.) I needed a long range rifle. And 2.) I realized I had NO CONCEPT OF DISTANCES in the mountains.

That second realization was the real issue. I had no idea how far away that buck was. In the mountains I could not tell 100 yards from 400 yards. The trees were too unfamiliar, as was the plant life. Is that bush down there twelve inches tall or four feet tall? Or eight feet tall? My mind could not calculate the distances between canyons or to or from anything. Put me at the edge of an alfalfa field, in a corn field or in the woods and I can do the math. But out here in these dang mountains I had no idea how far away anything was.

So this humbled student learned two Mountain Lessons in my initial baptism:

Lesson 1: Gun up. Bring a 300+ yard gun to hunt in the mountains.
Lesson 2: Get a laser rangefinder. It is just as important as the gun.

Those were big lessons. I resolved them which got me in the game. But the Mountains had more harsh lessons to teach and I had more to learn.


San Benito Slide
Hollister, California is about 25 miles inland from the Central Coast. It is in San Benito County which is sparsely populated, hot and dry. I was hunting deer on some nice private property in the mountains south of Hollister. By this time I had already learned the importance of glassing far and wide in the middle of the day for bucks sitting under a shade tree sipping cocktails. On this day I found one.

I was on the edge of the top of a hill when I saw the deer who was laying down. It was across a valley on another hill. There were branches covering its head so I could not tell the gender. I would have to go to the left in order to get an unobstructed look at its head. Instead of going left I went backwards and moved slowly clockwise around the hill. I came around and the deer came into view. It was clearly a buck. He was a nice one.

So now the rangefinder gets pulled out and he is 506 yards away. Wow. That is a ways out there, I thought. There is no way for me to move from me to him without getting busted. I would have to take the shot from here. BUT I do not know the bullet drop of my rifle at 500 yards. I knew it at 200, 300 and 400 but had not thought to know 500 yards.

Another dilemma. So I thought I do not know this but I know someone who does. I pull out my phone on the side of a hill in California to call up my brother in Wisconsin to ask him what the bullet drop of my .270 is at 500 yards. I was willing to take the guaranteed berating from him just as long as he could give me the info. Out of luck. No service.

Well, I kind of know what it might be. Let me see if I can get a bead on him and go from there. But I am on a steep, very steep incline here. How can I do this? I set my backpack down in front of me and laid down to try to rest my rifle on it. As soon as I did my feet slipped and I slid downhill about six inches. Ok, reach up, grab the backpack and pull it down to where I am now. Alright. Got the rifle on the backpack, now look through the scope. Nope. No can do. The hillside is so steep that I cannot get my head far enough over to the right to see through the scope. My head simply runs into the hill. I mean this is an 80 – 85 degree slope I am on. So I jimmy the backpack, contort by body to see if I can see the buck through the scope. My toes are digging in to virtually nothing to keep from more sliding fun. Finally I can just barely see the deer through the scope. That is, I still cannot get my head over to line the crosshairs up with my eye. What a dilemma. I hate these dang mountains.

More adjusting, more contorting. At last! There he is. So I start to line the reclining buck up in the crosshairs with a several-foot over-aim. I think I am in the ballpark. I am just about ready to squeeze...when the toe hold gives out. I slide five feet down hill with no ability to control or stop it. The slide and the rocks create a sound commotion which the buck hears. And sees. He stands up and in two bounds is gone.

There I am incredulous once again on a hillside. I’ve shamed my family once again and they don’t even know it. Yet. How does a man regain his dignity after such a fail? And to think I had turned down a much closer shot at a 300 lb. wild boar a few hours earlier. For what, an inglorious slide down a mountain? I’m sure that buck was laughing to death while bounding away.

What Mountain Lessons did the taskmaster teach me in this session?

Lesson 3: Always know the bullet drop of your rifle out to at least 600 yards.
Lesson 4: If the mountain is too steep to shoot from, find another way instead of spooking the deer.

You might think with the above lessons learned my magnificent fails would be over. This was not the case.


Scope Scar
The northern section of The Los Padres National Forest is a wicked place. Yes it is beautiful but it is mostly inaccessible, dangerous and unforgiving. Much of it is basically vertical; straight up, straight down. I guarantee there are places no human has ever been. Its western slope of the Santa Lucia mountains looks down to the amazing rugged coastline of Big Sur and on into infinite Pacific. Filled with redwoods which are watered by daily coastal fog it is usually a temperate climate. Frankly is it gorgeous. But in a vampire kind of way.

As you would move east however things change. The vertical element of the mountains remains treacherous but the height of the range has blocked the coastal climate. The cooler air cannot make it over the mountains. Things therefore become fiendishly hot quickly. The mountains descend into hell. There is no better way to describe it. Sufferable. Unrelenting. Unforgiving. Punishing. Uncaring. With no escape from the brutality.

So hell is the setting of my next, um, situation.

I am two miles down an old dirt access road [now gated; thanks Federal Government, you self-serving jerks]. But I am lucky to be on a road. There are only like 5 roads in the entire Los Padres (north section.) There has not been a vehicle on this road for a decade or two. Way up on a steep hillside I spot a very nice blacktail buck snoozing under a shade tree. He is clearly a very legal buck. He is beautiful.

What happened next was that a spontaneous episode of the Three Stooges began. The parts of each stooge were played by me. The incline between the deer and I was steep. If I laid down on the ground (which Larry did) I could not see the deer. The deer is 500 yards away, I am not going to offhand shoot a deer at 500 yards. So maybe if I walked away from this incline I could get to some flat ground. So Moe walks away from the deer, down-slope seeking somewhere flat where I could lay down and see the deer at the same time. Moe walks in circles, wasting precious time, looking for the right spot, hoping the deer is not enjoying the show.

A ‘suitable’ spot was finally found. The backpack was dropped to rest the rifle on. So Curly drops down to start acquiring the deer in the scope. BUT, it was just too steep. That is, the barrel of the rifle was at such an incline that Curly could not lay down and look up in to the scope. The near end of the scope pointed down toward Curly’s shoulder; that’s how high up the barrel was pointed. So Curly had to kind of bend over like he was touching his chin to his shoulder and then tilt his head to the left to see down[uphill]range though the scope. It was a horrible precarious shooting position. [Author’s’s note, it was not a shooting position. It was a disaster position. Do not try this at home. Or some fool will write about you too on a hunting website.]

So there I am almost ready to take a shot. I had ranged the deer at 500 or so yards. Now what exactly was that bullet drop? Um, it was, um, well, I just read it. I knew it a few hours ago. What was it again?

I know, I will do my best guess then watch where the bullet hits and adjust. (Seeing any patterns here yet? Any themes?). With the plan all set Curly pulls the trigger. The high powered rifle recoils. The scope slams into Curly’s eyebrow, shoves his head violently backward and instantly fills Curly’s shooting eye with blood.

You enjoyed that, didn’t you? You can see me sitting there stunned with blood pouring in to my eye, can’t you? You’re laughing. At my expense. You just called me an idiot in your head, right? You know I have no idea where that bullet hit or where that deer went, don’t you? Like if you could watch a deer if I came over and punched you in the eye? Would you do better than me, tough guy?

Sorry about that; Curly suffers PTSD episodes from all those punches to his head.

I sat there in hell, in my familiar position: on the ground defeated and in total disbelief. A sane hunter would have done some deep self-evaluation and probably stopped hunting about then. Not me. Instead I got the bleeding stopped and went up to look for blood where that buck had been laying. There was no deer blood. The only blood was on my handkerchief and my shirt.

But it wasn’t over. I dejectedly trudged myself back toward my truck feeling like an idiot. For some reason I cut through this dry river bed to check things out. I was not necessarily watching my feet. It is then I heard the rattle. I froze. I was very close to a hidden rattlesnake. Rather I was VERY CLOSE to a HIDDEN RATTLESNAKE!!! I ******* HATE snakes! I HATE them. Have I said yet that I HATE SNAKES?!! I see one, it dies. That’s the rule. And now a ******* RATTLE snake was shaking its rattle at me.

As a pig hunter I always carry a .44 magnum sidearm. You have to when you hunt boar. I also do it out of habit, over-achieving mountain lions and general hunting continuity when I hunt deer. It did not take me long to pull the .44 out and start looking for that rattler. Soon enough I spotted him. I let him have it. He was mortally wounded but still alive. I let him deal with his condition and I started walking the other way. I went about five steps and then I heard it AGAIN. ANOTHER RATTLESNAKE!!! Oh my goodness. Another rattlesnake is shaking his warning at me. If doom has a sound, a rattlesnake is the one who makes it. Did I mention that I HATE SNAKES? Wow. OK, he is coming from over there. So that means I am going to go this way over here. I took three steps in a safe direction and A THIRD RATTLESNAKE started rattling at me!!!

In all my life I have never wanted to run as fast as I could as I did in that moment. I was in a dang RATTLESNAKE PIT! But I COULDN’T run. If I ran fast I would be sure to inadvertently get too close to one and get myself bit. My skin was CRAWLING. I prayed Captain Kirk or Scotty would beam me up instantly. I was in hell and surrounded by hell’s rattlers.

I spit the difference between the two active rattlers and started moving slowly but absolutely deliberately to get the heck out of Dodge, watching to the right and to the left very, very closely. Oh feet do not fail me now. Every moment I wanted to sprint but instead I had to slowly ease my way out. My flight instincts had never screamed louder but I had to suppress the urges and go by the book...nothing there, nothing there, nothing there, nothing there, etc. About 100 yards on and I started to relax. I got back to the road and began my walk of misery and shame back to the truck.

So what did the mountains teach me this time? The first lesson is a corollary of a previous lesson

Lesson 5: Always know the bullet drop of your rifle out to at least 600 yards. Memorize it. AND WRITE IT DOWN AND BRING IT WITH YOU
Lesson 6: Don’t shoot with your darn eye too close to the scope

For the record, I now memorize the bullet drops all the way out to 650 yards. I hunted with a 30.06 last year during the opener. I can tell you the drops are 7 in, 14 in, 23 in, 32 in, 43 in, 5 feet, 6 feet, 8 feet. That is the 50 yard drops from 300 to 650 yards. (Fun fact: the rest of the numbers are 10 feet, 12.5 feet, 15 feet, 18 feet, 21.5 feet, 25 feet, 29 feet. Those are from 700 to 1000 yards offered simply for perspective, not for shooting advice.) AND I write them down and bring it. I also brought a .308 and had those figures on my cheat sheet as well.

If you thought the above disasters were enough for one guy, you are a poor judge of character and have underestimated particular people. However, you will have to wait to read the next two BlackFails, or blacktail failures: Scope Butt and The Abyss. They and a few more will be presented here ...eventually.


I hope the lessons from my failures are in some way helpful to a young hunter or two. If anyone else cares to share lessons learned from their own failures I am sure young hunters and all of us could learn from those stories too.

 

[sportyg]

That was a fun read can't wait for the next one.

 

[blazintowers]

Very well written. enjoyable read!...You have the hard part down, finding the bucks, now you just have to kill them! Over the years I learned to tape the bullet ballistics to my butt stock so they are always right there.

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail Part II

So the fact that you are reading Blackfail Part II after reading the first part with all its revealed misery not only proves you are a poor judge of character but you are a tinge sadistic – you came to see me humiliate myself more didn’t you?

Well you came to the right place.

Scope Butt
Over the years I had learned a lot of things about hunting in California, hunting blacktails, in Zone A, in the blazing heat, in the dang mountains. And in the particular area I chose to be my primary hunting grounds I learned what the deer do on Opening Day. Now this is not necessarily an easy hunting area. In fact I have brought four individuals, three of whom all happened to be ex-Army, to this area and none dared return. And though there is a lot more to that aspect of the story, and one fellow said to me, “You go places even the Rangers wouldn’t go,“ which I suppose were his words of reluctance as I led him across this narrow ledge at the top of a ridge with a very long fall on both sides, there are other people who do hunt there. So knowing that other hunters hunt there I figured out a way to capitalize on their Opening Day movements. What I would do would be to position myself between where the deer are when other hunters begin to pressure them on Opening Day and their perceived sanctuary. In other words I would have the other hunters drive the deer right to me.

So I very darkly (pre-dawn) worked my way to and up a particular hill top which acted as a sentinel to the deer’s sanctuary which they would soon be fleeing to. This hilltop also overlooked flat areas that had openings in the trees. The flat areas would be where they were coming from. So I got comfortable. As soon as it got light I pulled out the laser range finder and established a 300 yard circle using landmarks around myself as I always do now. That is so I do not have to re-calculate ballistics within that circle. If it shows up and has forks it gets the cross-hairs and says good-night, all in short order. Given that the closest shot should would likely be about 150-200 yards and there was little space between trees in the flat areas I bumped my scope up to 8 or 9 so I could make a quick determination on horns.

The setup, honestly, was beautiful and was working exactly as it was supposed to because I started seeing does moving right to left toward that sanctuary. And, slipping in to a character near the end of a Scooby Doo episode who finds his hands and fee tied up and his mask suddenly ripped off, “It would have all worked out if it hadn’t been for that darn”...buck.

I heard a crash and then rapid stomping. But it wasn’t in front of me, below me, it was from behind me to my right. Whatever was making all the noise was in a hurry and it quickly sunk in that whatever was coming was not doing what it was supposed to do. It was supposed to run around the hill in front of me not up the hill AT me! So this hilltop is only perhaps twenty yards wide. I am on the top. A vertical mountain is an east wall to this hilltop. I was hunting south and west (the sanctuary is to the east.) But something is charging up the north side of this hill. I was not sure if my .270 was going to be a rifle or a club as it got closer to the top. So I pull it up to my shoulder ready for a bang-bang play. Right away the deer crests the hill. All I see is horns and a bounding big deer who when he sees me, immediately cuts to angle away from me. That is, instead of running me over, he was polite enough to steer clear and move over to the other part of the available twenty yards.

Now, do you remember what my scope is dialed in at? If so, you know where this is going. You see I have guns with irons sights for pop-shooting in brush, guns with tip-off scopes so either iron sights or scope can be used, but I was coming to a hilltop this time, right? I was going to mid- to long-range shoot so I brought a fixed-scope rifle. Which was still dialed in to 8 or 9. So I pull the scope up to shoot the polite buck and what do I see? Nothing. Blurry brush and grass of the hill. My scope is zoomed in to far to find the deer! And he is rapidly chewing up the twenty yards of available real estate on this hilltop. So I pull my eye off the score and reach up and dial it back as much as I can with a quick flip of the wrist, hoping it will be enough to be useful. I point it once more and look and what do I see? I see a big butt in the scope. It is bounding up and down. And by up, I mean out of frame or out of the scope’s field of view. And by down I also mean out of frame. I know my time is limited but I try one more twist of the wrist on the scope’s zoom settings hoping I can get a decent look. With the scope backed off some more I had very little time and pulled it up to see a flash of front brown deer and I squeezed the trigger. I looked up and it was gone.

So the deer was either dead in the tall grass, disappeared off the planet altogether or had made it to the other side and was in happy land down the other side of the hill and around that quick corner which was there and for all practical purposes in his sanctuary. All I knew is that I could not see him. And I was in disbelief. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Did I just get punked by another blacktail buck? I really was not looking forward to finding the answer out because I knew my trigger pull was a Hail Mary. Because of the bounding aspect of the deer I could not be sure where exactly it was by the time my finger had pulled the trigger and the bullet got there and I had no time to wait.

Like a child who takes his time going home after school on the day he has a ton of chores waiting from him there (look up dilly-dallying), I slowly walked over to look for a deer I was pretty certain was not there. There was no deer. But was there blood? This would give me hope. I looked and looked and looked. No blood. So I followed the direction the deer would have gone. No blood anywhere. I got out into a more open area and there I met another hunter. This hunter said he saw the buck I shot at and that it was limping like maybe it was hit in the foot or something. He went that way, he says. “Dude” I think, “why didn’t you just drop it for me?” Of course I will never know the answer to that question.

So there I go, up hill into the sanctuary on one of a few dozen trails which split into three different canyons looking for blood. I did not find blood. I just figured out that I did get punked by that blacktail in these dang mountains.

Lessons the mountains taught me, albeit more bitterly than usual:

Lesson 7: Do not start with your scope zoomed in too far. Start wide and zoom in as needed – you do not know what is going to happen

Lesson 8: If caught in a situation with a zoomed in rifle and a close-proximity target with little time to react- DROP the dang rifle and pull out the .44 magnum – that’s why you carry it, for unforseen emergencies

Up next time: The Abyss.

And then I get to share what it’s like running out of water in 100 degree heat. Not once. Not twice...

 

[Turp]

These stories are fantastic

 

[jls456]

Pretty good.

 

[sportyg]

nice well written, you'll make a hunter out of yourself yet.

 

[Sawfish]

Once that you have discovered and corrected all of the mistakes you thing that you can possibly make, a new crop of unforeseen occurrences will rear its ugly head. I have been hunting for over 60 years and learning "the tricks of the trade" is a never ending process,, and part of the joy of participation.

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail Part III

Hemingway in Farewell to Arms wrote, “No one ever stopped when they were winning.” But you didn’t come here to see if I stopped hunting when I was winning, did you? You came to see if I stopped hunting when I was losing. Well, I didn’t. I gave the mountains additional opportunities for me to lose again. The mountains did not fail.

The Abyss

Let’s say that for some reason you went and lived in North Korea. Your leader, Kim Jong Newsome did things differently than you were used to. People had different values than you and the things you personally valued were regularly chipped away at and undermined not unlike a termite would do. You watch this and see this going on day in and day out but nobody seems to have any concern for the things you personally value, it is all only about what Kim Jong Newsome and his well-placed termites, er, friends want. And then one day you meet a fellow American. Now imagine the conversation you are going to have with that American! You will talk each other’s ears off because you are talking to ‘someone from home.’ It would be refreshing, engaging and all kinds of fun.

Well, sadly, that is sort of what it is like to run into another hunter here in California. They are few and far between. Most of the people you run into on a daily basis have nothing to do with hunting and often despise it. And then there is the class who assume you are a murderer because you own a gun. So this is how the next scenario begins. I am near my chosen Opening Day hunting area the evening before, set up in a one man deer-camp of sorts a short drive away from the next day’s activities which I will initiate a few hours before sunrise. In pulls another truck. He parks in a space not that far from me. At some point a conversation begins between the two Americans in North Korea (hunters in California). The familiarity of each of us with hunting and the culture means the words are flowing easy. With my guard comfortably down, the other hunter, whom I will call Lee Harvey, says he has never hunted this area before and asks, “What do the deer do here?”

You know, I had not spoken to another hunter in a long time. And part of me said inside my head, “Shut up, you idiot.” But it was just too nice to talk to one of my people and I was feeling generous. The fact is is that there are very few people still alive who really know how to hunt the particular area. Guys come up from LA and they all do x. But I have come to learn that doing x is not the answer, but doing y is the answer. And normally I let everyone do they x’s to their heart’s content while me and one or two others do y.

But why do y, you may ask? Because over several decades of brutal climbs, miles of hiking, trial and error, observation in deer season and out of deer season and casual conversations with former care-takers of the area and the old boys who hunted here their entire lives, I learned that does with fawns do x. Does with bucks and bucks themselves do y. I may say more about them old boys at another time but let me just emphasize that from very early on when I ran into folks in this area, the older the better, I chatted with them. And I listened. I always felt that God gave us two ears and one mouth so we would listen twice as much as we talk. And that is what I did for many years. I never knew it at the time but I met the key people who hunted this area their entire lives and knew it well. (I even met and know Native Americans who’s ancestors were the original originals in this particular area.) I guess the point is that now I too know the area.

I just did not forsee Lee Harvey asking me that question in the middle of a friendly, open conversation. I was not prepared for it. So with my conscience all the time trying to shove a boot in my mouth I explained parts of y to Lee Harvey. It was kind of funny to watch the gears spin in his head. He had already asked me about this aspect of x and that aspect of x so I knew he was intending on x-ing. So when I dropped y on him he was clearly re-calibrating his world view of the area. At the time for me I did not see his involvement as a short term threat because I knew he did not know of where I was going to be and at worst all he could do to was send deer my way. And I guess I never thought of the long term consequences.

Next morning while it is still dark I am up in an overwatch position. It is a different place than anything spoken of in earlier stories. It is the King Kong position of the entire area. Once again when it got light I marked out my 300-yard circle with my laser range finder so I know my bullet is generally on target within that circle of landmarks and I will not have to re-laze it if a deer shows up within it. A particular log down to my left about 10 o’clock was 304 yards out and was my outside marker for that side. We will call that log Log 304. I have a 180 degree area to watch so my head is slowly moving back and forth as I keep an eye on things. Often the binoculars are pulled up and a suspicious object or area is double-checked. There is nothing like the opening hour of Opening Day!! It is truly what we live for. I was in the zone and everything was perfect.

About 45-60 minutes after first light my glancing had moved back over to my left and there standing at Log 304 was a buck. I could see horns right away but could not confirm forks. But his horns – they were big and thick and brown. Not like a monster buck thick – but like a mountain lion’s tail thick. Puffy. The binoculars confirmed that this buck was in velvet! I had never seen a buck still in velvet on Zone A Opening Day or after. All those thoughts of course, ran quickly through my mind as my real attention was looking through the binoculars intently to see if he had forks or not. I could not tell. Then he turned his body and his head to his left and looked right at me. He definitely had forks. He was mine, I thought. He is dead, I knew. So I decided to take him with what I had and all I had was a frontal shot at his neck (Log 304 was blocking any body view / shot.) I took the safety off and put the crosshairs right at the top of his neck when part of me said, “Hold on! Don’t be so dang impatient. That neck is skinny. Just wait a moment until he turns to the side and you get a body shot.”

Why I listen to myself sometimes and not others is a complete mystery. Did I listen to myself when I was yapping all my secrets to Lee Harvey? Nope. So why would I listen to myself now? Again, total mystery. But I did. OK, we’ll just let him turn a tiny bit and then we’ll squeeze. The buck stood there looking at me. I did not think the temperature was warm enough yet for there to be a downdraft from me to him so I thought I was safe from wind detection for awhile. And I was pretty cammo’d up. Was not moving. I doubt he saw me. So it took me by complete surprise when he took one more step to his left, flipping his original intended direction, which put his entire body behind Log 304, then took another step and was GONE! This deer DISAPPEARED! In my scope! It’s like he stepped right into the abyss. He was NOWHERE!!

I simply could not believe what had happened. I could not see him and could not figure out where he went. I was once again sitting on a hill gobsmacked and dumbfounded. I kept looking back into the scope and then over the scope again to see something that would explain how a buck just disappears. I had just been robbed in broad daylight! That velvet buck was mine – I had him dead to rights at 300 yards. This was the perfect setup and he showed up as he should have.

I was checking all available nearby open areas for any sign of him with no luck. Finally I zoomed way in with my rifle and looked at the ground where his last few steps had been and I could see that there was a sharp decline. That is, it headed downhill quickly. I could only see two or three feet of it but it was definitely angled sharply. Log 304 was at the top of a tiny hidden valley just deep enough for one velvety buck to duck behind. And from there there was a ravine and many escape routes covered with trees. Who knew? I was sick. I should have pulled the trigger. He was mine. I could not have known that he would just take two steps and drop into the abyss.

After vigilantly checking every possible area for re-emergence with no additional sightings of my velvet buck I sat on top of that hill and licked my wounds. It was about ten minutes later when I heard a BOOM from over that direction. I knew what that meant.

I stayed on the hill for a few more hours and at late morning decided to call it. I walked down past Log 304 and sure enough, there was a wicked hill just behind it. I looked back up at where I was. It was a ways up there. I don’t think he saw me. But something made him do an about face and abandon his plans (and my plans); there must have been a downdraft and he must have winded me.

So with Plan A ending up in some form of cosmic larceny, I made my way out of the area knowing that there were other areas to mid-day hunt and I would drive over to those areas and do Plan B from there. As I was unloading my rifle a few yards from the truck I noticed some activity over at the truck next to mine. Why, it was Lee Harvey, living up to his name in every aspect and manner and making me push sudden thoughts of changing my own name to Jack Ruby out of my mind. He had had some luck. He was up in his truck skinning a deer hung up in a tree.

A velvet deer.

Lesson 9: If you have a deer in your crosshairs and he is yours, dead-to-rights, pull the dang trigger

Lesson 10: “Shut up, you idiot”

Next time: 100 degrees. Miles to go. Water gone.

Note: I apologize for typos in my stories. I spell fine but type badly and Jesse’s Hunting only allows Editing in the first 15 minutes of a posted story. Sometimes I do not catch all such errors until after the 15 minutes and then there is no way to fix them.

 

[MUDXICANHNTER]

Great stories keep them coming

 

[THE ROMAN ARCHER]

Yep u definitely are not hunting Whitetails In Wisconsin any more, it’s a whole total different ball game hunting deer on the west coast.
your post reads like a “Blacktail Hunting Diary” the miss adventures of a Black Sheep Blacktail Hunter, epic and priceless…lol
Good luck on your next outing I am sure it will b another exciting hunting adventure!…tra

 

[sportyg]

Awesome adventure reading you may have to write a book you have the talent. But not before your stories on here are complete

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail Part 4

The California Zone A blacktail deer population does not only have the ruthless mountains as primary guardians and protectors, they also have the formidable, genie-level deterrent of August heat. Together, it’s literally not fair. The prey has the advantage. But if the prey has the advantage and is not threatened, and is protected by a genie, who then really is the prey? I think if you’ve read this far, you already know the answer.

The Genie
Never mind he fell for a stripper (more than once). Never mind he was from West Virginia where they are supposedly well-versed in the ways of the outdoors. And never mind that he had a bunch of guns, knew them well and had served this country in the US Army. What defined “Ernie Dell” was that he was the nicest guy you could ever meet. He really was. Just a sweetheart of a fellow who put most of the rest of us to shame because of how well he treated all people in his life and those whom he came across. You might call it charming, but none of it was fake or manipulative. Ernie was just a very nice human being. So when Ernie, a friend of a friend, asked me to go hunting with him I was pretty sure it would be a fantastic time and said yes.

He told me what he had in mind. He wanted to take me to a place he had been and had a little insight into. I had never been there before and knew nothing about it. So a few weekends later after a long drive, which was the usual pleasant which happened around Ernie, we got to the location. When you get to the hunt site it then becomes a matter of thinking through and then packing into a backpack or pocket everything you might need for this particular outing. Most of the real thought went into figuring out what you would even bring along, so this on site work is just finishing touches and making sure you don’t forget anything. Everyone does it different and no one can do it for you. When you are alone and you are done, it’s go-time. When you are with someone and you get done first, you go stand a few yards from the truck and begin checking the wind or otherwise looking at any other hints you can discover such as sounds, orientations, visible ridge lines, or other tea leaves that might in some way make for a more successful hunt. This is when the smell and feel of the place really comes alive. If you are the guy who is second, you hurry to finish up because your buddy is waiting.

So we were a few miles on foot back into this rugged (forsaken) area and having a very nice time when Ernie stops and unzips his backpack. He rummages around and then stands up and gives me a puppy dog look. “I left my water in the truck,” he says. “It was right there and I was going to grab it but I just forgot.” I paused. Then I busted out one of my canteens and handed it to him. “Good thing I brought two,” I said. It was spoken out of satisfaction with the principle, not out of confidence. But neither was there fear in this initial thought. There was a hopeful optimism that things would be alright. I didn’t see it but I know the genie smiled.

We kept on with the original hunting plan and destination for awhile. Then after some unspoken reflection and evaluation on both our parts, it seemed that perhaps we might best modify the hunting plan and sort of hunt our way back towards the general direction of the truck. If we turned and went up this direction it would let us swing around and be not that far from his water. So we turned. We would be alright.

As late morning got closer to noon the temperature lost all inhibitions and went into an unsettling bake mode. Ernie and I each were aware that our portioned water rations were, out of necessity, dwindling down quickly. Way too quickly. We sensed trouble and stopped hunting altogether. We both knew that we simply had to head directly back to the truck. There was a problem with this idea that we did not see right away. But you know the genie saw it.

After about a mile of steady and direct walking we both thought it best to sit down for a minute and finish off the little bit of water. I had always heard that when you are in the heat you are supposed to drink before you get thirsty. So it was with a little bit of that ideology that we drank it now hoping to ward off more thirst later. The genie knew that all my deer hunting back home had been done in weather that ranged between 30 degrees above zero and 15 degrees below zero. He knew that I was a mental midget when it came to what he had on his to-do list that day.

Eventually Ernie and I had a mile to go. It was well over 100 degrees. I believe 104 to 105 might be accurate. Maybe warmer. This direct path we had chosen? Well it was the fastest as the crow files. The trouble was that we were not crows, we couldn’t fly, and we needed shade and there was NONE. There were no trees on our path. Not even close to our path, it was all hilly and open. We had no shade. Doom hates shade.

Just a few hundred yards later we both agreed that we should take another rest and sit. We were starting to slog. Our feet were beginning to get heavy. So we rested five minutes or so then sucked it up and continued on. But we didn’t make it another few hundred yards. We made it maybe a hundred and we had to stop again. With the absence of shade we thought about getting to trees. But the trees were way over there which seemed entirely counter-intuitive and it would take us farther from the truck. We might not have the strength for the extra steps and it sounded stupid to add distance to our struggle. The genie, you see, had us right where he wanted us. But he hadn’t stepped on us yet.

I do not know the exact medical terms. My medical training and education is all from The Boy Scouts. In other words, all I know about this is that in 7th or 8th grade my Boy Scout Troop went over Heat Exhaustion, Heat Stroke and Shock. My buddy Gary was the guinea pig laying on the ground as we gave him a pillow, shade and elevated his feet depending on which condition the Scout Master declared him to be in. The funnest role was to be the guy who went for help because he got to run out the door and up the stairs. That guy usually came back.

But I wasn’t thinking about Gary, Heat Exhaustion or Heat Stroke, I was thinking that we were in trouble. I knew it. The reason I knew it was because eventually Ernie and I could not walk more than 40 or 50 yards. Our legs were not strong enough. All the strength was sapped from our legs as soon as we stood up to walk. So we stopped. Rested. Got up, walked 40 yards and rested again. Until the cramps started. The leg cramps. The genie stood on us and laughed. They were like charley-horses. Your whole front and back of your upper leg would just cramp up and you couldn’t do anything about it. How do you walk back to the truck if you can’t walk? Nobody told me that heat could disable your ability to walk! All we did was elevate Gary’s feet – no one said he was having leg cramps.

So with the leg cramps, the max distance we were able to walk shrunk to about 20 yards and our rest time doubled. The fact that we kept getting up as soon as we could and endeavored forward is why we got out alive. Neither quit, neither thought of quitting and the mood was light-hearted in our grave circumstances because Ernie is the nicest guy in the world, even a yard from hell. We were fully aware that we were in big trouble. We also knew that if we didn’t move we never would.

It’s the leg cramps that kill you. Medical terms are whatever. Water levels, body temperature, internal processes, etc. are whatever. What kills you is leg cramps. They will keep you from walking, you will fall asleep out of exhaustion and they will find you in a day or two. Get up and walk. In judo there is a saying, get knocked down 7 times, get up 8. That’s what this is. Get on your feet and walk. Then do it again. And again. And again. The genie doesn’t provide wheelchairs. You walk. Or you die.

My friend Ernest Dell and I made it back to the truck many hours later and we shared his water. A few years later after a really ugly breakup with a non-stripper girlfriend, Ernest called me at my work and said, “My .357 is loaded, pointed at my temple and it’s cocked. Can we talk?” I said, “Ernie, will you please do me a favor? Will you please walk that hammer back down and set the pistol off to the side for a second?” A few minutes later I asked him to please put the guns in the closet and leave them there while I get over there. He agreed. I arrived as fast as humanly possible. I walked in, opened his drawn curtains and listened. We slowly put one foot in front of another. Once again Ernie and I walked together out of a desolate, waterless, forlorn and forsaken wasteland.

Genies aren’t the only kids on the block. Or the biggest.


Lesson 11: ALWAYS check and verify your buddy has water
Lesson 12: Out of water? Find shade. No matter what. Walk out at night if you have to

Note: I experienced two other out-of-water situations which I will explain later. I survived both of them based on what Ernie and I had learned together.

 

[sportyg]

Well done glad to see you guys hung in there and didn't give up

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail 5

So who exactly gets to draw the line between bold and foolish? If you do something and you fail, it’s foolish but if you do something and succeed it’s bold? I mean some things are clearly delineated – if you want to learn how to box and get some training and get into a ring with a sparring partner, that’s bold. But if you antagonize Mike Tyson, say, on a plane, and get multiple well-deserved lumps on your head, that’s foolish. And don’t we reward some of the activities which might fall into either camp? If I had not been bold, I probably would not be married to my wife. Well, that one leaned a bit into the audacious category, but had she told me to go fly a kite, I would have looked foolish. Who gets to decide this? Who or what gets to decide if something is bold or if it is foolish?

To be honest, I have always struggled with this line. Climbing everything in town with my high school buddies was bold (even though the exact legality of those activities might have been somewhat fuzzy). Getting caught by the tower or building owners would have turned the events into foolishness. Hanging a mannequin from the town’s water tower by a noose on Halloween was bold, but had we the perpetrators been caught, it would have been “Those foolish kids…”. Climbing the cafeteria building in college (high school buddy and I went to the same college; BIG mistake in terms of how small-town boys should behave in public in a large city) turned out to be foolish. Well that’s what the campus police said. (And they never actually proved that we instigated an actual food fight in that same building a month later. I will say that it started with a large biscuit that just happened to sail over my left shoulder.)

To be honest, to successfully blacktail hunt in Zone A on public land you usually have to be bold. The terrain is such that to get where the bucks are most often requires massive physical exertion. I will hand it to blacktail bucks – they are smart and they know how to get where people can’t reach them. But we try. And in that effort I am going to admit I have got myself into some situations in these dang mountains and some crazy stuff has happened. The fact that I lived through them all means it wasn’t foolish...right?

Crazy1
Year 1 Season 1 in California. I had found a regular water source that deer could use. I found a way up the mountains to hunt the upper regions of the water source. And by up I mean your climb starts a half mile or a mile away from the water source, you climb up one ridge, cross over and climb up another, cross over and climb up to the third level. From this location you can see forever. The mountain tops overlooking the Pacific ocean in California offer amazingly beautiful views. If you can get there. Canyons start up there and split off going all directions. One could follow a ridge to the right and at the bottom would be many miles away from the guy who followed down a ridge to the left. You can pick which way you want to hunt or go. But it comes with a price; once you commit and descend, there is no easy way back up to the top. That is, if you pick wrong and have to turn around, it will be at an extreme physical cost.

On one day of Season 1, a month or so into the season. I stood at this mountain top and thought that if I went down to the left and hunted the canyons related to that family of ridges, it seemed that I could get back down to the road. But I had not seen any access on that part of the road before and I thought I had looked carefully for such. Nonetheless, it seemed do-able, I was reasonably confident so I committed. Of course coming downhill is a different experience entirely than climbing up. Different muscles are used. You need to be very careful because of foot-slides and that gravity thing.

After a very nice hike with amazing views and having gained much insight into the lay of the land I started to get near the bottom. At one point in the bottom fourth of the descent, I was faced with a near vertical wall. I could slide down one side on my butt safely enough, but I could not yet see the road or the exact path to get there because of how mountains often are, which is that not all their features are visible from one spot. And once I slid, getting back up was almost impossible. I had to choose again. Do I turn around and climb back up this very vertical mountain or do I press forward and hope for the best? (You see my problem, don’t you? ‘Hoping’ is not seeing, is it?) My final decision was either bold, or it was foolish. I pressed forward.

So I finally see the road. I’m going to make it, I thought. But still l could not see where land met the road. And on the way down I had to make a few more commitments, this way all-in or that way, all-in. I chose the way that gave me the best chances and it turned out I was right. I did choose the best way which led to the best possible option. But what was the best of all available options? My feet ended up at the top of a cliff that was 14-16 feet vertically above the road. Granted, it was better than the 50 foot option to the right or the 200 foot option to the left. But I was screwed. The mountain in fact did not meet up with the road in a human-accessible way. Good to know.

So there I stood trying to calculate how in the world I was going to get down. Just then, and this really happened, two bicyclists came around the corner coasting downhill. They looked up at me, saw me standing at the top of the cliff in my cammo clothes, hat and with a rifle, and one said to his friend, “Hey look, it’s Rambo.” It wasn’t quite like that deputy Sheriff grabbing Stallone’s arm and saying, “Just get in the car, son,” but it wasn’t that far off either. What kind of an idiot insults a man with a loaded weapon? Oh, it was a bicyclist. That explains it.

With silly thoughts of retaliation put aside, my situation remained the same. So I eased my way up to see exactly what material this cliff was made up of. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the first 6 or 7 feet were rock BUT the rest of it was dirt! Having grown up on ice skates with some skiing experience, I was quite comfortable with maintaining body control with the legs while things underneath the feet were moving. It was my only option. But I knew it would be, um hairy. So I pulled out my dragging rope, emptied my rifle and tied my rifle to my dragging rope. Slowly I let it down the cliff. Even though my dragging rope happened to be long, I barely had enough rope and I actually had to let the rifle fall a few inches. But it made it safely to the ground below.

Now it was my turn. I knew this could end ugly. I knew I could end up on the road with broken things. I got as ready as I could, pointed my feet sideways to the cliff, and eased closer to the very edge. At some point I knew I would lose total control and would be falling for 6 feet minimum. At some point that happened. I was falling. Then my feet got to that dirt and I dug into the hill with my feet and legs with everything I had. Rocks and dirt and a portion of the cliff and a human being all came down at once. And when we all hit level ground, somehow I happened to be still on my feet.

See? That wasn’t foolish!

Lesson 13: Be SURE the path you are descending on down to the road actually meets the road
Lesson 14: Do NOT commit to a vertical unknown in a descent

Coming soon Crazy2, Crazy3 (CrazyLucky), Crazy4.

 

[sportyg]

Another great read

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail 6

I admit that people like me shouldn’t drink alcohol. I do not drink and have not drank for many years, generally stopping in my early 20’s. But I did drink. Remember earlier comments about issues not being able to distinguish between the bold and the foolish? Yeah, well, alcohol did not help matters there. Don’t get me wrong, my friends and I were always having great times, filled with laughs and hilarity but when the alcohol erased that bold-foolish line, we ALL did crazy things (see it is not just me, I am one of more!) And at the end of the night if it had 4 walls and a roof, or perhaps just stood upright I (we) was (were) climbing it and if it had 2 legs and a skirt I (we) was (were) likely chasing it. Relentlessly.

But some things I just have no explanations for. One of those was when I went to visit a hometown friend at the college he was going to. We closed the college bars but weren’t done yet. So we drove down to this park on the lake where the town had a captive buffalo as some type of novelty. One buffalo. Now it was January in Wisconsin. Which meant it was below zero and that snow was on the ground. We pulled in to this park, where no one was (at 1 a.m., gee I wonder why?) and pulled up to the corral that was home to this buffalo. We jumped out of the car and walked up to the thick wood fence to go see how the big guy was doing out here by himself in the snow. But he was not by the fence, he was 25-30 feet out toward the middle of the corral. Disappointed that we would not get much 1 on 1 time with the animal I said to my friend, “Let’s go pet him.” Note: this was not a tame animal; this was a wild animal who was captive.

Over the fence I went. My friend, who had brains, did not join. The buffalo happened to be facing away from us and had paid our arrival no mind. So I get out there in the middle of the arena and I walk up to his left side, reach up, put my hand on his back and give him a few pats while saying, “Hey, howya doing there big guy?” I saw the buffalo’s head, about two feet in front of me, turn to look at me. Now all the rest happened pretty fast and I am not sure how much actual decision making went on, but about the time he got his head (and those horns!) turned all the way around, I must have decided that it would be a pretty good time to bid farewell and be on my way. That translated into: I did not know if he was going to charge me or not but I had better get out of the corral quickly just in case. I spun around and bolted. I was born a fast-twitcher so the odds were that in a mere 25-30 feet he was not going to catch me. Plus I had about a two-step head start so I liked my chances. Much further than 30 feet, yes he would overtake me, but I was betting on beating him to the fence. And of course I did not take into account winter, snow, ice, slippery things, but was spared any encounter with slippery.

So as I sprinted to the fence, I did not know if he was chasing me or not and did not want to slow down and check. I got close to the fence and launched – dove over the top. Just as my feet cleared the top board there was a massive, violent SLAM right into the fence where my feet had just passed over. The big guy DID chase me, and aggressively! He wanted to stomp me!! I heard that boom into the fence by the 1500 pound beast before I landed on the ground, so by the time I hit I knew he had been coming. So did my buddy – who watched the whole thing from outside the corral. I hit the ground, rolled in the snow and my buddy and I laughed and laughed. I stayed there in the snow laughing. My buddy almost fell to the snow himself laughing with me. It was such a kick. And we weren’t sure if we were laughing because I got chased...or because I lived. I still don’t know why we laughed or why I did it at all. Probably did it just for the thrill.

So you believe me now, don’t you? You believe that the bold-foolish line can ‘get foggy’ for me. You’re thinking Wisconsin didn’t send their best to California, AmIRight?

Well, though alcohol was no longer involved, that line has been foggy a few times for me hunting blacktails in these dang mountains as well. I’ve set out to do things I just can’t explain...

Crazy2
I almost always hunt alone but there have been rare times when I was with one or two others. So I met a guy, “Kevin,” who lived in the community I lived at the time who was a native Californian and a hunter. He was the first person I ever got to know who actually grew up here and actually hunted. And he was impressive. He had one hunting buddy who was also impressive. These guys knew how to hunt, they took it seriously and they were good. I have come to learn that the native Californians who do hunt are very good at what they do. They think, act and behave like true hunters, not people pretending to be hunters. They ARE true, committed and capable hunters. They gear up, get prepared, think things through, develop a plan, go out there and pay the price and get the game. Kevin and his buddy helped me to understand that this is how local hunters are just by how they acted and the field attitude they had. It has proven true ever since with others I have met here.

I will say by way of contrast, however, that they both had access to private hunting lands and hunted mostly there so they did not have to dive into the gauntlet of hunting public land and I will say they were primarily focused on results and the adventure part of hunting was not something they looked at. This seems to not be the case with me.

Kevin had another buddy, “Matt” who was very into guns. He was not much of a hunter but he was so into guns that when California made a bunch of restricting rules a number of years ago, Matt moved out of the state because he was not willing to live with the tyrannical overreach of the State of California. Regardless I was pleased when Kevin and Matt said they wanted to go blacktail hunting with me on public land! So we went. Being from Wisconsin, where folks will give you the shirt off their backs, I eagerly offered Kevin my favorite hunting stand way up high. His buddy wanted to hunt down low. So I decided that I would, I’d, um, drive deer down a canyon to him. Which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said because I have NO IDEA if you can drive deer down a canyon. I hadn’t seen it done, still haven’t.

So Matt was going to go in below at about 300 feet elevation. Where he was going was good deer country, for sure. Then I had Kevin up at 2700 feet elevation. And I figured I’d walk from about 1900 feet elevation down this canyon and push all the deer to Matt. The canyon was a mile and a half long from me to Matt. It was just stupid. It’s embarrassing to write. Matt didn’t need my help. And it was wayyy too far to drive deer.

Maybe what got me convinced to do this is that I always wanted to see the canyon but hunting alone did not provide the two-vehicles it would take to get back up hill once you came down the canyon. I had never seen anyone do it, in fact had never even seen people at the top of this or inside the canyon at all. I should have wondered why...

Anyway, everyone was in place and I stepped off a hilltop and started downward. I’m telling you it was a cool feeling. I just worked my down the hill in the dry grass in a general direction. It was steep. If I had been on skis I would already be flying. I looked down and saw just a deep and wide canyon which was eventually covered in trees way, way below me. Was I excited that I would not have to do any climbing, thinking it would be a cake-walk since it was all downhill? Probably.

The Pacific Ocean was in front of me, redwoods were in all directions. It was a beautiful place to be. I kept descending, taking my time, looking for deer and soaking in where I was and what I was doing. Eventually I had to begin to weave my way around things and toward things as the geography changed. Every step saw a chunk of elevation lost in this very steep canyon. Which meant that to turn around and go back up would be extremely costly and perhaps not even possible, if the ground did not hold with such an attempt. That is, every step was a commitment. Forward and ahead was my only option.

After an exhilarating, memorable and just amazing decent of about 1000 feet almost straight down, I finally got into the redwoods where I thought my work would be over and I could coast. But it was here, within the cover of trees, where the landscape evolved in a way that was not perceivable from up top. It turned into nearly, entirely vertical!!

I am not afraid of heights and am pretty sure-footed (especially with a Vibram sole on my boot) but this was just plain dicey. At one point I had to climb downhill and over a 12 -14 inch log. I put my foot on the other side of the log and there was nothing but air. There was no ground. I do not know how the log was not rolling downhill, must have had roots holding it there. So I carefully get on to the log on my hands and knees and reach my foot down and in for some land. Found it and gingerly proceeded on. If I slipped here and in this part of the trek I was going straight down and there was no way to stop other than slamming in to a rock, a tree or the bottom which was a long ways down. I would be falling with a hint of tumble and slide.

I was not scared because I believed I could ride the lightening by carefully focusing on one step at a time but the ground beneath my feet giving way would have done me in. And the ground under my feet HAS given way before and I have fallen, but not this high above disaster. As much as I might argue with myself in other situations, on this dirt cliff wall any thoughts of, “How in the world did you get yourself into this?” [legit thoughts] were instantly put aside to make room for, “How do I get myself out?” So I was steady but concentrating. I had to make sure of every step. I knew I was not going to get any do-overs here.

Sometimes I was stepping down, but with a terrain change (dirt- cliff wall transitions into more of a traditional steep hill) quite a ways ahead I knew forward would also eventually get me closer to sane ground. Forward even seemed safer because ground stepping down tends to give way more easily than ground going parallel, probably because of all the weight put on a downhill step at once. But I’m not a physicist, I’m just the fool person coming down a canyon like a mountain goat.

With a steady application of thoughtful, careful and grueling steps I finally made it forward to that steep hill spot, albeit with tired, shaky legs, wet palms and a pumping heart. I had patted the buffalo on the back and yet lived once again. From the hill I would get down to the bottom more easily in a more normal descent. By the time I got the bottom and the end Matt was long gone. I had driven zero deer to him.

Honestly? I bet no one has ever came down that wall on foot before. Honestly? I bet no one would be that foolish.

Lesson 15: Don’t make stuff up about deer so you can go adventure-hiking
Lesson 16: Stop going down into treacherous terrain without knowing what all of the terrain does

Coming soon: Crazy3 (Crazy Lucky) and Crazy4, my last or final crazy.

 

[sportyg]

Ah you were learning to become a mountain hunter the hard way.

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail 7


Crazy3
Before I learned The Big Lesson I went high and low looking for the elusive legal blacktail buck in these dang mountains. Though I normally walked uphill first so getting a deer out to the truck would be all downhill, so to speak, a few times I went down hill first. And on this day I was following a waterway down. It doesn’t take much water in California to make a waterway, just a running stream is precious and hard to find. This one in August was more than a trickle, it was a steady garden-hose- volume stream, but somehow disappeared at some points, finding inner channels, and re-appeared further down. Of course when one says ‘waterway’ everyone should think: canyon with a riverbed of sorts at the bottom here and there, and jagged, exposed rocks on the sides.

Though this canyon or waterway was very steep, the rocks made for good climbing so I was going down to see what I could see. Sometimes there would be enough dirt on the mountain off to the side of the waterway to allow part of the descent on dirt. And there were trees. So it was slow going no matter what. I thought maybe I could follow it down and maybe come across a nice fresh deer trail by a pool of water and follow that trail horizontally into some bedding areas.

But the rocks, the vertical severity, it is all just so treacherous. I knew this but had to scratch the itch and kept going down. Then I came into this area where I could not see beyond the edge of the rocks ahead. So I worked my way over to the ledge. What I saw was another sub-ledge about 6 feet below that but then there was a sheer drop off. It went straight down for about 75-80 feet. If the water had been coming down in volumes we all would have called this a waterfall, and a nice little one at that. In fact there was no water at all at this particular spot. To the sides there was no navigable options so I knew my trek this direction was over.

Well, I thought, I’ll just get down on that ledge and hang my head over the edge to look straight down. I slung my rifle over my back and carefully climbed down to that ledge. It was 6 feet wide. I was on the right side of it when I got to the end. I looked over. It was cool. Beautiful and severe, like a tiger’s teeth. So then I am going to move to the left edge. The rock between the right and left edges is covered with leaves and seems to be at a slight angle. My boot touches that rock and immediately slides, I am going over the edge and am going to fall 75 feet and die when I hit the bottom. The rock, which I could not tell because it was covered with leaves, was one of those gray very slippery rocks in creeks everywhere. My body can do nothing to stop falling where my foot and now my leg are headed. Half of me is over the edge now. It just happened that there was a leafless, dry and raised portion of rock right near where my left foot was passing when we were on our way down. My left foot stepped on that open rock area and pushed very quickly toward the other side of this little area, which at this exact point was a canyon wall. So my downward trajectory had just been changed from 100% downhill to about 70% downhill, 30% toward that canyon wall.

It also just happened that there was a small, 6 inch diameter tree growing right there at the edge of the canyon wall. And it was in the only place where I could reach it with this new trajectory. I reached. I grabbed the tree. I hung on. I did not fall over the edge.

I am pretty sure that if I fell, I would still have been there because I was alone, I always went uphill and no one would have thought to look for me downhill.

By all rights, the mountain had me, dead to rights as it were. I was done.

But velvet bucks aren’t the only things that get Crazy Lucky.


Lesson 17: The Big Lesson … will be reveled next time after Crazy 4.

 

[LosPadre]

BlackFail 8

In some corners of education and training there is something called a Capstone event, which is an expanded evaluation or presentation which covers all the aspects of one’s training, learning or discipline. The goal would be to demonstrate mastery over a wide scope of acquired skill or knowledge, or both. The Navy SEALS, of course call this event Hell Week. The Marine Corps call this aspect of their training The Crucible. They are often Pass or Fail events. All the above people participating are aware that the event was coming. All the below participated in a Capstone event without knowing it was coming: me.

Crazy4
I had a friend who wanted me to take him hunting. He was a US Army veteran. He went out and bought a hunting rifle and wanted me to teach him the ropes. The rifle he bought was an 8mm. I had never seen one before. I think this was a Mauser. I think it might have been Swedish but am not sure. But it was a sweet bolt action set up and the 8mm is a legit round. I was very impressed and truly would not mind having one.

I will call my friend “Singer” because his actual name is identical to a singer you’ve heard of but they are not the same person. We get out to the field and did not see any legal bucks in the morning hunt. I suggested we change it up because the deer were done moving. He asked, “So where are the deer now, then?” I pointed to the mountain in front of us. “Up there,” I said. “Well,” Singer said, “let’s go up there and get them.” I kind of looked at him and looked at him some more and said, “You know that is tough sledding up there. It is steep and unforgiving and is a lot of work.” Singer replies, “I was a ground-pounder in the Infantry for 20 years. I’ve seen it all. Ain’t nothing up there that I haven’t seen before. Let’s go.”

So I lead Singer over to where you could get up any of the three canyons, which splits into four and which can lead to any one of five ‘mountain tops’ (ridge tops which all lead to a single higher mountain.) I said, pick a direction and he did and we started climbing. After awhile we had to go left or right. I asked him once again and he again chose to go left. So we went to the left. I asked him for several reasons: I did not want to get blamed for choosing any really bad paths; he was new to this so I wanted him to have some measure of control. I personally didn’t care, I could have done any of it, but wanted him to climb at a level he was comfortable with. That was a good plan, until it wasn’t.

We are going up the ridgeline on one of these sub-mountains and though he chose it, I could see things were starting to get hairy. We were coming to this tiny, narrow crossing between wider aspects of the ridge. I knew we could cross it but thought that if I pointed it out he would panic and get fearful and perhaps make a mistake. If I say nothing and just move across it myself with ease, perhaps he would follow me like he’s been following me the whole way up and not think anything of it, thus not giving fear an opportunity. So I didn’t say a word and just moved right across at the same walking tempo and pace I had been doing. The crossing was about 12-15 feet long. It was slightly larger than a brick wide, let’s call it two-bricks wide. But the drop on both sides was big. 50-70 feet either way. Granted you would have landed on dirt, but that dirt was at such an angle that you would have then slid to the bottom. You would have lived but been pretty scraped up.

So I walk across in silence and then wait a few seconds until I think he might have crossed. The plan worked. As soon as he got across and was safe I apologized for not pointing out the severity of that crossing and explained that I said nothing so not as to magnify any fear he might have had. His eyes got big and that is when he said, “You go places even the Rangers wouldn’t go,” referred to earlier. Then he gushed about how nervous he was and scared and that he couldn’t believe he walked across that and all the relief he felt that is was over. We laughed about that and he understood why I had not said anything.

Now I am telling you all this because though we had crossed this just fine, later on when we were thinking about coming back down he declined to go back this same way and insisted we find another route. OK, that’s fine I thought but we were both flying blind at this point and I had learned a thing or two about dangerous descents. So we made all the decisions of which way to go down together. We ended up choosing one of the middle canyons in one of the middle mountains.

Please let me pause and say, looking back ALL my non-water-related Crazy situations in the mountains had to do with descents. All of them. Going up is the easy part. Coming down, headed gravity’s direction, is where things can get out of control. And each one had to do with NOT KNOWING A ROUTE DOWN ahead of time. (Since then I have learned the route down should be established on the way up, not on a wing and a prayer on the way down.) And this was my final exam to demonstrate I had learned this lesson. (I hadn’t.)

This stuff was steep. There is a reason the deer go up here. It is pretty severe. But we chose a path and were going to see it through. So we are coming down the middle of this canyon, where the water would flow in seasonal rains. We do not have to go far, it is only about ½ mile, but in that space we are dropping 700 or 800 feet. We get about 2/3 of the way down and come to this ‘waterfall’ area – a drop off. This time, however, the drop off is only about 30 feet AND there was a fallen tree tipped over and leaned right up against the rocks we were standing above. We tried to find alternative ways around or down this thing but there was nothing else. To get down were were going to have to use the tree.

Singer was not feeling it but I was willing to go first. If I lived, I hoped he would be daring enough to try. (Pro-tip: don’t use me as a baseline if something is do-able or not. Just because I do not die does not mean it is possible, I just might have been lucky.) So I am first up. I knew it could get exciting but from previous adventures I also knew worst case scenario, it was only broken bones at the bottom, not a funeral. Plus it was going to be a little fun sliding, sort of, or is it falling? down this tree. Off I go. It went quickly. There was the part where I was going through some of the branches of the tree that made the outcome uncertain for a few moments but once through that things went as hoped. Singer was as happy as I was that I made it. He now believed. He mustered up the courage and plunged forward. He was on the ground beside me in no time. From there we navigated down another drop off but this one was only about 10 feet and we could jump three of it on to a rock. We get down to the flat ground about 30 minutes later and are excited to have made it full circle. By now we were dirty, tired, sweating, and worn out and it was 2 pm heat which meant it was beating down on us.

So I reach for my final canteen of water which was on my pistol belt in a pouch designed for just this. But all I feel is pouch...there is no canteen. Remember when I ran into the branches sliding down that tree? It had torn off my canteen. I have no water. I asked Singer how his water supply was doing. He showed me what he brought – two 10 or so ounce water bottles to start. Now there was ½ of one bottle left. And we had quite a hike back to the truck. I knew all to well what this meant. It meant that though we had gone through one ordeal, another and deadlier ordeal was in front of us. And I didn’t even know this was Hell Week.

Singer and I started walking slowly toward the truck. True to form, after a while and after the water was gone we began to get very heavy legs, very exhausted to the point that we could only walk 40-50 yards and would have to rest. And then eventually we did start to get the leg cramps. But the difference this time is that we stayed in the shade! Fortunately were were in an area where we could often walk in the shade if we chose to and we did. As a result, our rest times were not as long as they had been in my earlier out-of-water scenario with Ernie Dell. We were able to get up and start moving much more quickly. Singer had never experienced this before. His Ranger buddies in the Army must have never lost their water. Probably from all those sissy paths they take, right? I believe that it was of some comfort to Singer that I explained what was happening. He started to believe me when the leg cramps, which I told him were coming, began. But I told him, we will recover each time and we will be in the shade as much as possible, which contributed to our recovery times. Singer didn’t panic. He could have because we were in some deep water, but knowing that I had lived through this with no shade helped to put it into perspective for him. So it was a long, exhausting walk out, but we made it in relatively good shape. Funny, Singer never asked me to take him hunting again...

And that was my last Crazy trip. You see my wife had not heard all the stories presented here, but she had heard enough similar ones and when this event happened with Singer and she found out the details (WHY was your canteen of water lost?), she communicated in all seriousness that I had to stop taking the extreme risks because the end of my luck was somewhere and she did not want to be around to pick up the pieces when I found it.

So I have had to make some modifications to stay in the good graces at home. The only things I’ve done recently is cut the crap out of my leg crossing a fence, and having the ground fall away under me on a steep, well, slopette, let’s say, not a mountain, but a littl-er hill thingy, and I came crashing down between two rocks and my cargo pants got ripped open. Of course I did not realize when it happened that my phone fell out through the hole in my pants. No, I did not realize that until I got to the bottom. So I had to go back up to get my phone. Other than those two things I have been hunting fairly tamely.

As a matter of fact I have come to accept a very big lesson, one that I did not know and could not accept previously. Which is why I got myself into Crazy situations. Granted not all of that Crazy would have killed me, but some of it could have. And one should have. So what’s this biggest and most important lesson I have learned hunting blacktails in these dang mountains?

Lesson 18 The Big Lesson: There are places in these mountains that God has made for only the deer to go, and not for man. Just because a deer can go there, does not mean a man can. Or should even try.

Because kicking off Hell Week when it wasn’t on your schedule can be a beast.


OK, we’re done with Crazy. But we’re not done. Because you have not heard about other things...such as my encounters with Law Enforcement including WILD JUSTICE in these dang mountains when they all assumed I was guilty...