Okanogan Here We Come!

[Washington Wapiti]

Heading out for our annual family deer trip tomorrow . . . 10 beautiful days in Oky, where even the mulie does are as big as small elk! There are some real bruiser bucks out this way, but I will be happy with whatever I get. I look forward to this trip every year. Since I've missed going the last 2, this year is extra special. Wishing everyone continued success, and I will let you know how it all panned out the week after next!

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[wawhitey]

so? wheres the bone?

[Washington Wapiti]

Trev's Little Whitey

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Right here!! LOL, my bro shot a whitetail on the morning of 9/18 - which he thought was a doe. We tracked "her" 40 or 50 yards from where he shot "her." I was the first one to find it, and because of the way "she" fell, I walked up and STILL didn't see there were antlers. I should back up . . . while we were tracking, we lost the trail for a bit and went left where we should have stayed going forward. We crossed a small draw and while on the other side heard a bunch of crashing around about 90 yards up on the hillside above us. I figured it was the other doe that ran off after Trev shot his. Ohhhhhh no! After hearing the rustling around, a huge 5x5 or 5x4 (couldn't see the other side) comes trotting out of the brush and starts side-hilling away from us. Surprisingly, he didn't appear that alarmed. He wasn't bounding away, tail up and fluffed out. He merely trotted away like "No big deal." LOL I point up at him speechless, whispering "Trev! Trev! You see him??? Holy "s#@$!!" We were both just staring in awe. We are used to seeing mature muleys up there, but not big 'ol whitetail bucks like you see on Outdoor Channel. In either case, we are not trophy hunters, but it is always impressive to see deer that size. The whitetail population up there this year, at least what was visible to us, is exceeding the muleys by quite a bit. Usually it is the other way around. I decide that after we find Trev's deer, that I'm putting up a stand and spending a few days going after this dude! I'm hoping he hasn't spooked too bad to come back to the area. I'm still feeling really crappy about the muley doe I shot the day before and couldn't recover. The blood trail just flat out stopped and we were not able to pick it back up after nearly 4 hours of searching. But that's another story. After our big guy encounter, I jet back over to our last point where we had blood and continued forward. Sure enough more blood and the spots are getting bigger. "Trev! I got blood over here!" He starts making his way back over to me . . . "Trev! Here's your arrow! Ohhh . . . hey here's your deer!!" After a round of congratulations and hugs, he heads over to field dress and take care of his quarry and I head back to the truck to grab my stand and ladders. This spot is only about 100 yards off the FS road and seems to be hot! As I'm walking up to the general spot across the way where I plan on setting up, Trev yells over, "He's got antlers! He's a 2x3." "WHAT??? Antlers? What antlers?? I even had my hands on her, I didn't see any antlers!" And so it was. My bro got his first whitetail back. In our unit it is any whitetail deer and 3pt min or antlerless for muleys, so he's a legal buck. He ended up with about 100 pounds of meat, so not too bad at all. Never saw Big Whitey again. But I know he's there somewhere. If he makes it through to next September, then there's something to really look forward to next year!

Here's where I put my stand. About 50 yards just across the little draw there is where we found Trev's buck.

My stand placement for Big Whitey

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The next day Big Whitey didn't show up, but a small group of mule deer does did. They were, however, out of range. I ranged them at 76 yards, and too much brush anyway. They were walking the fringe of the more open area. Bummer. 3 hours later at 12:18 I've got my hoist rope tied to my bow and getting ready to lower it. I have to drive into Tonasket to meet up with my girlfriend and son. We are all excited about getting to spend the last couple of days of deer camp together, so I gotta get my butt out of this stand. I start feeding out the line and for some reason I look back. I did a double-take. There's a blonde-phase black bear cruising almost the exact line of Trev's buck the day before. He's just walking along completely unaware of me and I stop all motion. "I've got a bear tag" crosses my mind . . . hey! I've got a bear tag!! I watch him and it dawns on me, he's catching the scent of the remnants of Trev's buried gut pile and is making a wide turn and bee-line right for where it is buried. I yank my bow back up, nock an arrow and have my bow in position ready to draw back when the time is right. The hoist rope is still clipped to the top. LOL There's a small tree in-between he and I, so I'm just catching little glimpses of what he's doing. He's walking around, pawing at the ground, playing with his new found food. I range him through a small hole in the tree branches; 45 yards. I figure he's walking a natural contour and when he's done here, he's gonna continue down the little hill and present me with a nice clear shot at 30 or 35 yards. I'm just gonna sit here and wait him out and it's gonna be perfect! My thinking was interrupted . . . out walks a whitetail doe from roughly the same direction the earlier mule deer went to. She's walking the general direction of the bear. She spots him, stops, flips around and goes bouncing off into the woods from where she just came. Damn! 10 minutes later, a road-hunter (that's how most people hunt the area we go to) is slowly coming down the road. I'm only 100 yards if that, off the road. I can hear the crunching of gravel under his tires as he approaches closer. So can 'ol blondie. He spooks and takes off running down the hill, the exact path I KNEW he was going to take eventually. He skids-out a little bit, throwing dirt, and heads the same direction as the whitetail did 10 minutes before him, and the mule deer does 3.5 hours before that. Damn, damn! What just happened here?? I was incredulous. I just sat there shaking my head, trying to absorb everything that just happened. I also thought, "Well ALL the animals seem to like to head THAT direction so maybe I should set-up further in." I sat there for a little bit longer feeling defeated, feeling pissed, I checked my cell . . . 1:00. Uh oh I gotta go!! I lowered my bow and climbed down, high-tailed it back to the truck and sped off to Tonasket to get my family. I decided for the next day's hunt, I would in-fact, set-up further in. I wanted to minimize disturbance in that area, since Trev had shot his doe-buck there and I had set-up one of my treestands shortly afterwards. Neither one of those things being very quiet, I didn't want to tear down my stand and move it 40 or 50 yards. Setting up blinds are not very quiet either. But at 4:30 the next morning I hiked my blind in approximately half the distance from my treestand to where I had seen the first set of mule deer does. I ended up setting it next to a couple of rubs that looked like they were probably made by Big Whitey. It was a good spot to tuck-in between some trees, and still have good views and several good shooting lanes. Absolutely nothing the next two days. Our last day on Sunday, I had a couple of near-pursuits at different areas. On Sunday afternoon, my brother dropped me off at a spot where I had taken a 32 yard shot at a whitetail doe, but my arrow deflected off some smaller branches that I didn't see covering her vitals. I heard it sink into a nearby piece of windthrow. I was still-hunting the general area, and had the sneaking suspicion she'd be around since she had the last two days in a row between the hours of 1 and 3pm. I finally hunkered down on a stump 60 yards into the understory and sat there slowly scanning the area. Nothing. I heard my bro pull up and started making my way towards him. I was maybe a hundred feet from the truck when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. My head whips to the right side and I see little miss thang standing completely still in a small row of trees; staring at me, like my son does when I've caught him digging into the sugar bag (Dont ask me, its a new thing. He apparently likes to free-base sugar). I immediately draw back and aim. She had other plans. She steps behind a ~15 inch DBH ponderosa pine and does a little hop over the remnants of a barbwire fence, dodges behind a couple small tamaracks and then she was gone. More head shakes, more sighs. At least my intuition was right. But you can't grill intuition. For the evening, I decided to go to another spot that had been pretty hot earlier in the week and where I shot my doe. More nothing. More head shakes and sighs. It was an interesting week of highs and lows, thunder and lightning storms, and torrential downpours. Sounds like we all experienced very similar weather regardless if we were in the Pacific NW or the Intermountain West. We've never had weather like this in Okanogan ever! Usually afternoons of 70s to 80s; evenings and mornings of 30s to 40s. Rarely rain. Never thunder and lightning. Well, there's always late season . . . rut season! Hopefully, I can pull it together in November/December.

[wawhitey]

well sounds like you had a good time anyway huh? seems like you should be seeing more and more whiteys up there as the years go by. i hunt a little further east in 121 and its mainly whitetails, but there are pockets of mule deer around. everywhere the mule deer hang out tho there are also whitetails.

[Washington Wapiti]

Definitely had a great time! A lot of good action, although frustrating. And I learned a little more about that area this year. It was strange seeing the whitetails overpowering the muleys. Usually the bulk of the whitetails are in a bit more of a seperated area than the muleys. But both of their ranges are completely overlapped this year. Makes for interesting hunting! Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. Oh there you go, 121 . . . lots of turkey there too. Lots of good hunting in that part of the world in general.

[wawhitey]

yeah turkeys are pretty much pests here, running all over the road all the time. fun tho in the spring to go out on the porch in the evening and gobble and hear a whole crapload of em go off in the timber all around. can do that a handful of times before they decide theyre sick of answering

[Washington Wapiti]

Haha, that is excellent! Wish I had that problem over on this side! Turkey is the first thing I ever hunted with a bow and I have yet to get one. Even paid for a guided hunt this last spring, but we hit it too late and didn't even get on birds at all.

[wawhitey]

i think youll find that with a little bit of door knocking in the ne youll probably be able to find somebody who will let you hunt birds. dont think many farmers are too fond of them. heres a pic of some trespassers around my parents chicken coop. http://imgur.com/hxqxnme

[Washington Wapiti]

Those are my kinda tresspassers! Especially with 2 unfilled turkey tags in my possession! That's good to know. I've actually always been a little apprehensive about knockin on doors, I don't know why. I've probably blown some really good deer and turkey opportunies in the past from not trying.

[wawhitey]

when i was about 12 i was hunting with my dad down around dayton, and we spotted three big muley bucks from the road, two of which were fighting. the property was posted and i kept tellin my dad to go to the house so we could ask, and he refused. next day some guy was draggin one of those huge bucks down the hill so we stopped to talk to him. his response was " oh yeah i just asked the guy if it was okay this morning and he said go for it"

[Washington Wapiti]

Doh! Point well taken. And what a cool thing to see as a youngster. Bet your dad was kickin himself!

[Swede]

I used to live near the Twin Lakes road and worked out of Twisp. There were some great bucks in those hills. The bodies on some of the bucks made a great set of antlers look small.

[Washington Wapiti]

You aren't kidding Swede! Our 2010 trip, we were on our way to an area and saw two huge bodied bucks just standing there 15 or so yards off the gravel road. The antlers were impressive, but the sheer body size of both were even more so. The one in front was beefy, with really long main beams. He happened to turn his head to the side, and I couldn't believe it . . . forky! I even looked for 1" eye guards. Nope. Here was this huge buck and not even legal. The one behind him still remains as the biggest mule deer I've ever seen. He was simply ridiculous. And needless to say, he didn't hang around long. He was off like a bullet.

Ahh, good old Twisp. My folks used to take us up to Diablo Lake for a week of camping every year when we were kids. That was back when they had the cabins on that lake. I went up there a couple of months ago with my significant other - the first time in YEARS. It was barely recognizable . . . North Cascades Institute where the little bait store was, a medium-sized parking lot, and just a mere footprint where the cabins used to be, and totally overrun with people. That was the middle of nowhere back then. What a disappointment.

[Washington Wapiti]

I worked out of Forest Grove spring/summer of 2010, and Oregon has some good sized blacktails there on the west side. I saw quite a bit more larger bucks (6 and 7 points) than I do here on the west side of WA. Some healthy elk herds too. One of my favorite experiences from that year is when I set up my blind about the 2nd week of August in a very elky looking area, a mere 40 or 50 yards off the state forest road. I was just trying to do some scouting because I thought I might hunt Oregon that year. So after my shift about 5 in the morning, I was sitting in my blind with my coffee, curious to see what might come through. Intuition again paid off. 6:45am, crack . . . crunch, snap . . . I know THAT sound. A set of antlers swinging left and right came into view. One, then two, then three . . .a small bachelor herd of elk, all 5x5s came in feeding about 25 yards from my blind. Wish I had brought my camera or video camera. That was a neat morning!