Western Hunting Journal, Premiere Issue whj001_premiere | Page 72

TECHNIQUE
Ken Werner with a coastal giant.
hunt in miserable conditions,
pursue an animal in terrain
that is difficult to hunt, and
ultimately try to find a deer
that rarely shows his face in the
light of day. When you notch
your deer tag, you know that
you’ve accomplished some-
thing meaningful.
It is commonly believed
that blacktail deer are some
of most difficult animals to
hunt. While I don’t disagree,
the fact is that each deer specie
has its own unique challenges.
Certainly, luck plays a role in
any hunt, but to take quality
animals on a consistent basis
is no accident and any ma-
ture buck is a tough trophy to
harvest. Whatever species you
are hunting if you consistent-
ly take mature animals you’re
doing something right and no
doubt working hard for them.
Whether it’s a mule deer’s abil-
ity to use open terrain keeping
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WESTERN HUNTING JOURNAL
distance between himself and
the hunter or the whitetail’s
intolerance for anything, good
bucks are hard to come by. And
the blacktail buck is no excep-
tion. While he offers some of
the same challenges as mule
deer and whitetail, there is one
added problem and it’s a big
one: a mature blacktail buck
rarely shows himself in the light
of day. Hunting them for over 30
years I can attest to the number
of days (or years) it takes to find
a big mature buck.
Actually killing one requires
a little bit of luck, an under-
standing of their behavior,
knowing where they live, and
the ability to catch one out in
the light of day before he melts
back into the dense cover they
call home.
Back in the early ’90s I had
the opportunity—or I should
rephrase that and say I made
myself the opportunity—to
hunt everyday of Oregon’s
blacktail season. I was in col-
lege at the time and was in the
midst of transferring schools.
Taking fall term off and hunt-
ing 33 days straight seemed like
the right thing to do. And that’s
what I did. The previous sum-
mer I had located two bomber
bucks, each one in a different
drainage but close enough to
hunt on the same day. I’d seen
those bucks a number of dif-
ferent times throughout the
summer and even had both of
them on video, which back in
those days meant holding your
camcorder up to your spotting
scope. Once the season started
I hunted those two drainages
exclusively every morning and
every evening. I would see the
same does and fawns just about
every day and once in a while a
smaller buck would appear, but
never the two giants. On day 30
I was questioning my own san-
ity but had too much invested
in these bucks to change areas.
Knowing where one record
book blacktail lives, let alone
two, was not something I was
going to walk away from.
Knowing those two bucks
were in the area I stayed the
course. I could only hope that
one of them would show itself
before the season ended. Two
days before the end of season, I
parked my truck and began my
walk in just like I had the other
31 days. In the first area, there
were two places I would glass
from; I would go to the closest
spot first and then move to the
second spot farther away. This
particular morning, however, I
went to the far end first. As day-
light broke my eyes were glued
to the optics searching for the
gray face of a mature blacktail
buck. Minutes into my hunt the
morning stillness was shattered
with the loud report of a rifle.
There was no question where
it had come from. I raced back
to my first looking spot (that I
passed over that morning) to
find a hunter lying in the prone
position starring through his
scope. And laying dead on the
hillside was one of the biggest
bucks I had ever seen. It was
definitely one of the bucks that
I spotted in the summer.
Absolutely crushed, I had
no time to feel sorry for my-
self. I high tailed it to the other
drainage where the other buck
lived. Taking a deep breath
with my game face back on, I
approached the area and be-
gan glassing. It didn’t take long
to find what I was after; there
looking back up at me was a
stone white face with heavy
black horns. To this day I’m not
sure if I was shaken by the event
that happened earlier that
morning, but panic set in. Nor-
mally cool as can be in these
situations I was a wreck. It took
me forever to find a good rest
and when I was able to find one
I looked through my rifle scope
and it was fogged and watered
in. While I scurried to wipe my
scope clean the buck bounced
out of my life. I hunted him the
remaining two days but never
saw him again. The point is not
to show how unfortunate I was
to have a hunter walk in behind
me, or how bad I blew it, but
instead to point out how reclu-
sive mature bucks are, and that
they live a lonely existence. Out
of the 33-day hunting season,
those two bucks showed them-
selves in the light of day once.
I know because I was there the
other 32 days.
The Columbia blacktail’s
range is long and narrow, start-
ing north in British Columbia
and stretching as far south to
central California. Their range
extends from the shores of the
Pacific Ocean, eastward to the
western slopes of the Cascade
Mountains in the north and
the Sierra Nevada Mountains