Deer hunt starts slowly and gets worse

When the sun came up on the fourth day of my 2014 deer hunt I was sitting in front of a computer at our dining room table instead of glassing a remote hillside in central Nevada. Not because I wanted it that way, but because unforeseen circumstances had whittled away at what was supposed to be a 10-day hunting trip. Now it would last no more than three, and the jury was still out as to whether I would make it into the field at all.

“Why drive all the way to central Nevada to hunt for three short days? After all, what could possibly happen in three days?” I asked out loud but to no one in particular.

With my plans significantly changed, and my pickup truck suffering from a significant mechanical ailment, I actually began to think of forgoing my much-anticipated hunt. Then I heard the mid-season deer tag calling out to me from its place in the front pocket of my daypack near the front door. “You can’t miss out on this hunt,” it cried. “You waited three years for this opportunity, now take it.” And so I did.

When the last email was finally answered, the last sentence in an article finally written, and my gear finally loaded in a borrowed pickup, I made my way north. It was Monday afternoon.

Despite what my kids think, I really don’t like finding and setting up camp after dark. It just seems to happen that way, especially when you can’t leave town until school is out. But those days are over and I had only to find my friends Don and Jane Nash who had setup camp the Friday before. It was just after dark when I pulled into camp. As always, Don had a welcoming camp fire burning and Jane was putting the finishing touches on elk tacos.

Over dinner we talked about what they had and hadn’t seen while on their forays afield. Jane had both a cow elk and a mule deer tag to fill, but things didn’t sound real promising. With daytime temperatures unseasonably warm, the deer and elk both were bedding down early and staying put all day. Where we normally see several bucks a day, they had seen only a handful since Friday, and all were pretty small.

After making plans for the morning hunt, we slid into our sleeping bags. It was warm enough that I didn’t bother zipping it closed, and that made me wonder whether my tag was right. “Would the hunt be worth the wait?”

We were up and moving well before sunup on Tuesday. After a cup of hot chocolate and a bagel we made the short drive to the edge of the wilderness area where like to hunt. When legal shooting time arrived Jane and I shouldered our rifles and began our search. She and Don worked their way up to where the toe of the mountain meets a long, gradual slope that leads to the valley floor. My path paralleled theirs but was lower on the slope.

As the morning passed I saw only 25 deer, two of which were small bucks. I did spend some time playing peekaboo with a small heard of antelope, but that wasn’t going to fill my deer tag. So I made my way to a large boulder Don likes to use as a vantage point from which to survey the area. This would be a good place to meet up with Don and Jane before making our way back to the truck. At least I thought so.

As time passed with no deer sightings, I got the crazy notion to take one of those artsy photographs of the rifle laying across my backpack with the valley and surrounding mountains as a background. I emptied the rifle’s chamber and setup for the shot. Then all of a sudden the rifle fell, but I was too far away to catch it. I shuddered at the unmistakable sound of the scope slamming against a large rock.

As I examined the rifle, there was no missing the large dent on top of the scope tube and what that meant. My rifle would be useless, a thought later confirmed at a makeshift gun range. At that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my tag was wrong and that I should have stayed home after all.

To be continued …

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His “In the Outdoors” column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.