Bad luck turns good with sighting of three-point buck

This is the second of a two-part column on Doug Nielsen’s 2014 deer hunt.

As I looked again at the dent in my now worthless riflescope, a wave of depression came over me. With that unexpected development, and all the other things that had reduced my hunt time to just three days, the deck seemed stacked against my deer hunt from the start.

Placing the rifle in its case, I couldn’t help wondering what the morning would bring. That .270 has been the friend on my shoulder through every rifle hunt since 1982. It would be replaced by a borrowed rifle, a .308 that Don’s grandfather had favored and he now carries on his hunts. Perhaps that was fitting given the circumstances. After all, if it weren’t for the generous loan of another friend’s pickup, I wouldn’t have made it to camp in the first place.

Wednesday morning found us back on familiar ground, but the temperature remained unseasonably warm. Don and Jane made their way diagonally up the hill to a point that overlooks the convergence of two shallow draws where tall brush gives way to sparse and low-growing vegetation.

Meanwhile, I shouldered Don’s rifle and worked across the hill below them. At first, I thought Don and Jane would stay where they could monitor activity in the draws, but instead they chose to continue moving north along the edge of the tall brush and eventually disappeared over a low ridgeline.

Normally, I would have kept moving parallel to my friends, but for some reason I felt drawn to the convergence of the two draws. So I made my way to the point vacated by Don and Jane, arriving just as they disappeared from sight. From there, not only could I see any movement where the draws came together but also across a wide swath of country from there north to the ridge my friends had crossed.

Using a clump of bitterbrush for cover, I began glassing the slope between me and the low ridge. But after about 20 minutes without seeing anything but a handful of cattle in the distance, I began to grow uneasy. What if my decision had been wrong?

Then suddenly a movement caught my eye and three does popped over the ridge in just about the same place where Don and Jane had crossed. I couldn’t help but laugh at that irony. Then just behind them came another deer, one that made my heart skip a beat — perhaps two. Even without my binoculars, I could see this deer was no doe, but a buck that carried wide, dark brown antlers.

This one required a closer look, so up came my binoculars. At first, I was disappointed because he had only three points per side. Then I looked again, and again as he and the does came closer. True, he was only a three-point buck, but his antlers were symmetrical and swept wide beyond his ears before turning upward. Just above the bases was a matching set of eye guards that turned toward each other near the tips. With each glance, he grew wider and more beautiful.

“I’m going to take him,” I whispered.

Don’s rifle settled into the V on my shooting sticks, and I pulled its stock into my shoulder. The buck stopped briefly atop a small dirt mound just below the convergence of the two washes and no more than 100 yards or so from my hiding spot. I placed the scope’s crosshairs on his chest, took a slow, deep breath and let it halfway out. Then I squeezed the trigger.

The rifle bucked, and the deer lunged forward. He ran up the hill in my direction before dropping in the sagebrush no more than 40 yards away. I saw right away that the buck’s antlers suffered no ground shrinkage, but instead seemed even bigger up close than they did through my binoculars.

Don and Jane came back to help me with the deer. I told him the buck’s antlers were at least 30 inches wide. He agreed the buck was good, but thought it was no more than 27 or 28 inches wide. We both laughed, and he started dragging the deer to the truck.

Halfway there, Jane brought us one of those plastic deer sleds. What a difference it made.

Once we reached camp, Don dug out a tape measure and threw it my way. Guess he wanted to settle our little disagreement. Nervously, I put the tape on the widest portion of the buck’s antlers and read the measurement out loud: “31.5 inches.”

So what can happen when your 10-day hunt gets whittled down to three? Plenty, thanks to a borrowed truck, a broken scope and a single round from a loaner .308.

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.