I had not planned to go hunting today, but Micki reminded me that she had a ladies dinner at church tonight and would not be home until late.  That being the case, I quickly packed up my truck with my hunting gear and headed down to the lease.

I decided to go back to stand 35 tonight, hoping that the big buck would return.  On the way down, I realized that I had forgotten to put my digital camera in the truck, so I stopped at a little convenience store on the edge of Great Falls to buy a disposable camera.  I'll just keep that in the truck for the rest of the year in case I forget my digital again.

There were only a couple of guys in the woods when I got to the lease, and I chose a path to drive in on that would keep me away from their stands.  By the time I got in my ladder stand, it was 5:45 pm, and there was only about an hour and a half of hunting time left in the day.  I settled in, making myself comfortable in the stand.

I read for awhile, as always looking up after every page to see if anything was in the area.  At one point, as the sun was setting, I saw a flash of red fur to my left.  Thinking it was a fox or a coyote, I raised my binoculars and tried to peer through the thick leaves to get a glimpse of whatever it was I had seen.  I couldn't find anything, but I kept looking and within about 5 minutes I finally saw the back leg of a deer that was showing through the branches and brambles in front of me.  It hadn't been fur that I saw; deer have hair after all, not fur.

I continued to look through my binoculars, and finally I saw the grey face of a mature doe.  She was staring back at me, so I kept as still as I could.  My arms soon got tired from holding the binoculars, but she wouldn't look away.  This staring contest went on until my triceps were aching, and finally she lowered her head.  I dropped the binoculars into my lap.  The doe looked up, and again we stared at each other.

She stomped a few times, hoping to startle me into moving.  I held my place, and as I stared back I heard something walking in the woods to my right.  I cut my eyes in that direction, getting a slight headache from the effort.  Three deer had come into view thirty yards away on my right:  a good sized doe and two fawns.  I had seen that particular doe before; I recognized her deep grey coat.  The fawns were still red, but their spots were gone.

Looking back to my big doe, I saw that she was still looking at me.  I wondered if she could see my eyes move, but she held her ground, still not moving.  A very small fawn came into view behind her, coming from a different direction than she had appeared from.  The fawn ignored the doe and walked over to the other group of deer.

I looked back and forth between the big doe and the four deer on my right.  The grey doe had become alerted to my presence, and was now also staring at me and stomping occasionally.  I moved not at all.  When the grey doe put her head down, I slowly started sliding my rifle through the slit in the camouflage material in front of me.  It took me all of five minutes to get my rifle where I wanted it.

The big doe was the deer I wanted, but I decided that the grey one was a shooter too.  I would take her only at the last minute if no opportunity to take the bigger deer came.  As I thought that, I saw that the big doe had started walking towards the other deer.  I had a great broadside view of her, but my rifle was in the wrong place to even try to move it toward her.  She disappeared behind a clump of trees, and I relaxed a bit.

The four deer on my right continued to feed for quite some time, and the grey doe would occasionally glance in my direction.  After another twenty minutes of this, I heard the big doe start walking again.  She had decided that all was well, and she was going to join the bigger group of deer.  I lowered my head below the blind wall and got down on my rifle and in position for a shot.

I watched through my scope as the big doe stepped back into view.  I had a clear shot, and I waited until she paused before squeezing the trigger.  She collapsed, dead on the spot.  One of the fawns dropped to the ground, looked around, then spun around and took off running.  The rest of the deer were already gone.

[doe picture]

I could see that the doe was not moving, so I climbed on down from my stand, tagged her, then dragged her up to the road.  I got my disposable camera out and took a few pictures after posing the deer the way that I wanted her, then struggled to load her onto the basket on the back of my Jeep.  There's got to be a better way to do that, but it sure is hard for one man to load a big deer by himself.