When it rains it pours

I'm back from my extremely long hunting trip. Moral of the story:

When it rains in North Dakota in November, it pours. I wish it was snow, as the hunt would've been a tad bit easier. Instead almost every good hunting road was impossible to get down. My brothers 4-wheel drive truck, doesn't have the tires, or the ability to go where we wanted to go. Thus, I was the only one of 11 hunters to harvest a deer on Friday. That's right of our 28 tags we needed to fill. 1 was filled on Friday, which according to our beer drinking records on Friday night, might be take the cake as the shittiest 1st day effort my Great Uncles can remember. Even more weird was Friday morning my brother and I went to sight my rifle, dad's rifle, Abar's rifle, bro's rifle, and my backup rifle in, and we saw 10 deer that morning!!!!! All were gone come noon.

So for those keeping track:

Deer 1 --- Brett 1 --- Hunting Party 0

Saturday morning, we saw nothing, walked a few places, and nothing. Later at night, we saw maybe 1 or 2 all were out of reach. (And when I say out of reach I mean if they are over 600 yards, because if they are within 600 yards I'm shooting at them) Oh ya, we did spot a Moose, and its calf, when the Moose finally stood up, and the calf started walking, they kicked up a Buck that was bedded down about 15 yards away.. Weird I know..

Deer 2 --- Brett 1 --- Hunting Party 0

Sunday brings about new life, and many are thinking today's the day we start filling tags.. Well that became a dream. Saw nothing in the morning, and so I take command of the hunting party. That day we had about 14 hunters with us, and around 30 tags to fill. So I bring us to a place where I think we should push. Sure enough we walk it, and kick out one of the nicest bucks we've seen in the past 10 years. So what does the Buck do?? He runs straight at the truck that has the only single shot rifle, and it's my uncle who has the worst Buck Fever Shakes you'd ever seen. So I hear 2 shots, obviously they missed, and give chase, but said it was long gone, by the time I get done with the push.. We went back and pushed where I saw that Moose and calf, and Buck lay down. But nothing was there, as the Moose was across the road today.. That night, my cousin shot a doe late at night.. So we only have about 28 tags left to fill..

Deer 3 --- Brett 1 --- Hunting Party 1

Monday Morning ahh yes... My dad decides he's not going to get up real early, and so my brother hops into my truck, and we blaze on. That morning I see 2 deer about 500 yards off the road, and so I shoot 3 times at each deer (they were about 200 yards away from each other).. Since it's just me and my bro. We decide were going to walk this big half mile square grass land, because I know I hit one of them deer... Well we decided to walk it, and sure enough we kick up 2 deer. But these deer were in a different area then where I was shooting at. So we walk on, and I spot a huge blood trail. This must have been the 1st one I shot. So we tracked it, and you could see where it stopped to lick itself, and tracked and tracked, and without any avail, the trail went cold.. That deer was gone.. The rest of that day sucked, as we did see about 10 more but they were all on posted land... Later that night I ended up kicking up a doe that one of our hunting party members shot, and tagged..

Deer 4 --- Brett 1 --- Hunting Party 2

Alas, my final day back home. I woke up around 5:45am. About a half an hour earlier then I had all week. I knew that today was my last shot at getting my buck, and filling both my doe tags... Never, would I have thought that I would have gone 4 days and only harvested a doe... Never has that ever happened to me.. This deer season has been brutal!!!
So Tuesday I'm on a mission. If it has a white tail, and is moving I'm killing it.. Plain and simple. So my brother and party can't seem to wake up early, and I venture it alone. Within the 1st 10 minutes I'm already shooting at 7 deer. I get my doe early in the morning. Later we walk and I shoot my buck.. Then we go back to a place where we saw a nice buck Friday morning, and I walk the cat tails, and I shoot 2 more does. Then we get 2 trucks stuck, and that eats about 4 hours of our day, as we had to get a Farmer, and his big 8 wheel tractor to come pull them out. Everyone decides to call it quits, but not me, I convince my bro, and dad to continue the hunt. So we do, and low and behold we get stopped by our friend the Game Warden. Gary knows my family pretty well (not in a bad way) we chit chat, and drive on. Only seeing a few deer out of range we call it a day. My deer season has ended..

Deer 5 --- Brett 5 ---Hunting Party 3