New rifle makes meat!

[vikingsword]

Went out today-fifth day of trying to fill ML tag and finally connected!Spent two hrs walking straight up, and finally found the bedding area, tracks everywhere, but no deer. Walked along the highline, exhausted from the climb, when I turn around doin one of my crazy Ivans( I figure if the deer do it to survive maybe there's something to it) right where I just came from, stands a small buck, digging and feeding and keeping a casual, unconcerned eye on me, while I draw a blade on him and let go, he flinches, but stays put, still chewing, unconcerned, while I fumble to reload, and just start to cap up, when he ambles over the horizen., so I climb up to his trail doing the follow up to make sure it was a clean miss, and it was( very unusual for me at 80yrds), so I turn around to head for home, almost glad to be not cleaning and packing a deer as tired as I was, (I had wandered a lot farther than I'd intended), when I turn around and look at the alders he had come out of, there stands a doe, stone still, beleiving she was undetected, at, 40yrds, I leveled off on her and let er rip at the only target she afforded me, the head and top of the shoulder, so drilled her in the spine right on top of the shoulder and she dropped like a rock. After a fast reload, and cleanout job on the doe before the magpies and bears zero in, I had an hour and a half climb down with this deer trying to bowl me over, but I made it, exhausted and happy! My new rifle that I mentioned is a halfstock Hawken made for me by Steve Zihn.It's an exact copy of an original at the Cody, Wyoming Museum. It's a 54cal, and shoots extremly well with a 530RB, with 12thds patch in front of 90grns of 3F goex, and let me tell you, I can, without a doubt, verify that the sharp curved buttstock on a Hawken mnt rifle was Not an accident, It's a climbing tool, among other things, and will save yer bacon, and get ya up the hill!!! Had to take these myself, as a mountan mans a lonely man, and finding someone to take the pics can be tough at times. This is one of the biggest blacktail does, I've ever seen!

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[rabjr]

Very nice! Congrats! :thumbsup:

 

[RickD]

Wish I could have hunted this year..nice kill

 

[shootemup]

Congratulations on the deer AND the new rifle - both look pretty good...

Spot

 

[PreglerD]

Hello from Germany,

nice story and nice doe. Seems that you was more climbing than real hunting. Here in Bavaria in the Alpes you only have to climb when you want to get a chamoise.

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[playfarmers]

:thumbsup: That looks like good eating. I just started using a .54 this year and realy like how it hits. Good story.

 

[Roy]

Nice :thumbsup:

 

[wirehairman]

Well done! :hatsoff:

 

[Rebel]

Nice deer and great rifle but why did you shoot it at the Fairgrounds? :rotf:

 

[shortbow]

Prob'ly 'cause it was Fairgame! :rotf:

 

[jethro224]

Grats! :hatsoff:

 

[PitchyPine]

Good huntin, congrats. :thumbsup:

 

[Mountainman56]

Congratulations on the deer and the rifle.

 

[snagg]

Nice lookin deer. Congra :hatsoff: tulations. Nice rifle too. I like that alot.

snagg

 

[tg]

Nice deer and nice gun, how big does the average Blactail get up there , I have seen a lot of them in S.E.AK. but never had the chance to hunt the islands, I just wonderd how they compared to the coastal Blactails down here in the Pacific N.W.

 

[vikingsword]

Well coming from Wyoming and hunting mulies most of my life, the blacktail seems like a runt deer to me. On Kodiak Island our blacktails can average from 80 to about 140pds, that being a heavy deer. This doe had as big a body as some of the heaviest deer that I've seen personally. She was with a buck that was keeping her coralled and he was half her size. She appeared at first to be an old doe, looking at her hooves, but her face, and the fact that she was still a little wet but drying up makes me think otherwise, no fawns were around, and I believe they had been run off by the bucks anyway.

 

[Pork Chop]

Man, that must be one heck of a fair! All that I get to shoot at when I go to the fair is paper targets. Plus, it took you a month and a half to drag it back to the truck!! :blah:

Nice deer!

 

[BrownBear]

Now I found your post. Great job!

I'll speak up about the rifle, and second those that think it's a great gun. I've handled it, and it balances really well even with a 36" barrel. And yup, those hooked butts get pretty shiny in our steap hills.

Before moving up here to the land of Sitka blacktails thirty+ years ago, I hunted Columbia blacktail in the Northwest. We weighed quite a few of those, and for a while I weighed all the Sitkas I shot here. Wish I had been aging them too rather than counting points, cuzz I think that would be the best way to compare weights. Round numbers, I'd say that the Columbias average 20 pounds heavier than Sitkas. But there are outsized monsters and runts in both species. The Columbias "look" bigger because they are lots longer legged. Sitkas remind me of an Angus with their short legs and stout bodies, compared to other deer.

The biggest doe Sitka I ever weighed field dressed 135. More typical is 80-110. Never weighed a doe Columbia, cuzz we couldn't shoot them. Heaviest Columbia I ever weighed was a 4x3 and came in at 178, but I've heard of bigger. I've weighed a single Sitka 4x4 that topped that (191), but it had so much fat on it, I don't think that weight counts for anything. Without the fat it would have fallen in the 150-160 range I expect for his body size.

Here's the way I summarize field dressed Sitka bucks based on racks and not age, and with lots of wiggle room: Spikes- 50 to 80, Forks 60 to 90 (unless they're really old white-faced regressive bucks, which can weigh as much as 4 pointers), 3-pointers run 110-150 or so, and 4-pointers run 125 to maybe as much as 170 if they're pretty fat. No science there, and my numbers are based on only the first 50 or so I weighed. Scales broke about 15 years ago, and I haven't weighed a deer since.

Based on the pics, I'm backing Vikingsword's impression that it was a really large doe, hitting near the top of the range I've seen.

 

[vikingsword]

Yeh, them fairs can be a humdinger sometimes!

 

[KyFlintlock]

Congrats on your deer!

Wess