But we made, I guess you could call it our hail Mary pass, and made a trip to Grandpa Castro's house. This was our last shot at harvesting anything. Grandpa had made some arrangments so that we could hunt some areas where he had seen some deer. We left our house at 4 in order to get there before the morning hunt (which starts at sunrise for you non-hunters). We walked around this area for awhile before coming up to the river bottom. Then we saw the deer. There were probably 4 or 5 does in this river bottom. Since I had James in my front carrier, I couldn't shoot at this time. So Gabe and Amanda got ready to take a shot. Amanda shot and hit a doe.....but we couldn't see where she fell as the brush was pretty thick as you got closer to the river. So we hiked down there, and thanks to Grandpa we also realized that they had started swimming the river to get away. Then we saw what made our hearts sink. The doe that Amanda had shot had also swam across the river. But she must have not quite had the strength to climb out as she was still in the water close to the bank.
This is where we had to make a tough choice. Do we leave her lie, shoot her to put her out and hope that she doesn't fall into the current or just wait it out and see what happens? Well, we knew that we couldn't swim the river for all the obvious reasons....Nov (too cold), too wide and deep. So after consulting with Grandpa Castro we decided that he should go across the bridge (which was just a little ways down stream) and then see if he could get this deer out of the river. We waited and watched on our side of the river so that he would have a reference point and know how much farther he should go. He got right down to her and she wasn't dead! She jumped back out into the river and started swimming farther downstream. Yikes! But we did know that if we would leave her that she wouldn't survive much longer as her hip had been blown away from Amanda's shot. So now we were really focused on getting her up on the bank so we could safely put her down and finishe what we had started. Gabe started throwing rocks down at her to scare her up on the bank. She finally got tired and swam up to the bank and Gabe took his shot to put her down. Then we walked back to the car and drove around to get her. Talk about an exciting start to the day! It was a lot of work to get the doe safely up the hillside and out of the river bottom. But we did. Here is Amanda with her day after we hung it up in Grandpa's carport:
We went back to Grandpa and Grandma's house to take a break. For you non-hunters, deer will come out to eat in the mornings and evenings, but usually bed down for the rest of the day. So it is easier to find them during the morning and evening feeds. By the time we got Amanda's deer taken care of and into the car, the morning hunt was over.
So we still needed to find Gabe and I a deer. Since Amanda had harvested hers, she was still going with us, but now she was babysitter for James. I guess at this point should explain why James was even with us while the other children were with Grandma. I am nursing James and we discovered that although I had breastmilk for him to drink.....he wouldn't take a bottle from anyone but me. So rather than have someone else suffer him crying because he was hungry, we took him with us.
Grandpa knew of a different place where we could get our deer. He had said that he had been watching the field for a few days and there were several head of deer there. So off we went for the evening hunt (about 5 pm). We found the field and my heart started racing as the deer were already there. There were actually two herds...one of white tail and one of mule deer. Since mule deer are bigger, less nervous and easier to put down (Gabe says it takes a lot to get a white-tailed deer to die)...we went for the mule deer. Besides we were also looking for bucks (as that is what this part of the area said) and there was only one white-tailed buck, but 2 mule deer ones. We sat and watched them and tried to plan our best approach. The herds were seperated by a hill and that was to our benefit. The white tailed deer were on the lower field and the mule deer where in the upper field. This was our plan. Come in on the lower field and scare the white-tailed deer off while keeping out of sight of the mule deer. Get closer to them and get a better shot. So we put our plan into action and for a while I thought that we wouldn't get them. The light was fading and the deer wouldn't give us a good shot. They were facing the wrong way and although shooting them in the butt sounds good, it isn't a very effective way to get a deer. Finally they presented us with a good shot. We took it. Gabe's deer went down, but the deer seemed confused as to which way they should go. They just stood there. After Gabe's buck went down, the one that I shot walked over to him as if to say "Hey, what the heck are you doing? Get up we have to go". Then I shot. I hit him, but he didn't drop right away. I remember saying to myself "go down, just go down" as I didn't have any more ammo to shot him with. Finally he fell over and we were done! What an exciting day.
This is Amanda and Grandpa right before we were leaving. Standing in front of all the deer.
This is Gabe with his buck. It is a 3 by 2, but man he is one big dude. I could barely help him drag it off the field. It took 3 guys to hang him up when we got home!
Here is me with my deer. I thought he was just a 2x2, but when I looked at him closer when we got home, he is more like a 3x3. He is really beat up though. Several of his tines are broken off. We think that he was really old, but he too is a brute. They had a ton of fat on them and will be good eating.
