Post by BlueNorther on Sept 10, 2007 15:46:32 GMT -5
Went out to a ranch in the Archery zone just N.W. of Calgary with Ron friday afternoon.I hadn't hunted it yet but Ron has been out there twice and saw alot of mule deer.We were on a fenceline and Ron was showing me the boundries and and the lay of the land.A mule deer doe pops up in front of us at 90 yards looking at us.She gets nervous and jumps the fence and crosses over to a ravine about a 150 yards to our left.Then 8 more stand up at about 200 yards but they go over the top to our right.We decide to go after the single and put a sneak on the ravine where she went.Get to the edge and look down and there she is with 5 more does and fawns.Ron ranges the closest doe at 57 yards and draws on her while I spot.His arrow hits her and passes thru but a little low,I can see the blood running down her right side.She takes off up over the top of the ravine taking two does and a fawn with her,the other doe and a fawn stay in the bottem and I go after them but couldn't get a shot.I hook back up with Ron and we watch his doe and the others popping thru a hay field full of round bales.His doe is falling behind the others and stumbles twice but doesn't go down.We've got a few hours and can see for a half a mile so we sit down to wait her out.She gets to a fence but can't jump it and falls down on her second try,I'm thinking this should be the end but no,she crawls under and now is in a cut conola field.She can't jump the windrows and is struggling to walk thru them.Finally we loose sight of her when she walks into a swell.The other does come out of the swell but she doesn't,so we give her an hour and she still hasn't come out,so we figure she's done and put a stalk on to where we saw her last.Wrong again.we bumped her and a fawn,she barely gets up and crosses over the conola into a standing wheat feild and then over into another hay field with bales and lays down.We close the gap to a 100 yards and again sit down and wait,the whole time we can see her.Her ears are down and her head is swaying.This time we're not going to move on her till she expires.All of a sudden she strugles to her feet and takes off like a scalded cat.Me and Ron look at each other wondering what the hell,she can't smell or see us.Then we see why,2 big friggin coyotes have picked up her scent and away she goes.We lose sight of her when she makes it to the horizon,again off we go but we never saw her again and she also got onto property we can't hunt.We talked to the ranch manager that night about getting on the other place but he said we were wasting our time as that guy absolutely would not let us on.But he did give us written permission to come back and shoot every damn coyote we see.We need written permission to use rifles on the coyotes as this is an archery only zone.He says they're over run by the damn things and is really glad to let kill them.
