Best hunting season ever (photos)

[LDB]

There's a reason why I choose to live in a province with high taxes, potholes on major highways the size of the hood of your truck, winter temperatures of -40, and an unbelievably idiotic socialist government. That reason is the incredible hunting opportunities that are available to Saskatchewan residents.

I had some close calls during the bow season, but my last chance to connect came to a halt at 10:40 am on the last Saturday of September when my watch alarm went off, alerting an otherwise unsuspecting mule deer buck to my presence 20 yards away.



My first tag was cut on a great muzzleloader muley buck. I waited 40 yards away from him for 4 hours before he finally stood up from behind a patch of willows and offered me a shot. The 12-point rack grossed 191 3/8:



The next tag was filled with this 38-inch spread bull moose:



In between the big game hunts, Rosy pointed at a lot of birds for me, and I inexplicably made more shots than I missed:



The mid-season highlight was helping a friend take an 18-point, 185 and change muley buck:



My last tag was filled this past Saturday. Here's the short version of the story (still kind of long, but bear with me - it was exciting):

I almost backed out of the hunt because of the weather (windchill approaching -30C, -22F), but CLB convinced me to go. Saturday late morning found CLB and I freezing our hind-ends off, watching a nice whitetail buck with a doe about 250 yards away and waiting for it to either settle down or offer a better shot. I thought it was a 150-class initially, but Cam talked me down into thinking it was 140 at most. I decided it was a mature buck in any event and was going to shoot it if I got a better opportunity. Cam wasn't interested - he had dibs on any big buck, but he didn't want this one. While we were watching it, two other bucks approached it. One of the imposters lowered his head, and it was on! While the two bucks fought, the other imposter immediately went to the doe and started chasing her. Cam and I took advantage of the situation and moved 150 yards closer. I set up and waited for the bucks to seperate. Meanwhile, two more bucks had heard the fighting and had approached within a hundred yards. Cam noticed one of the new bucks had blood all over the side of his face from another fight. The larger-antlered buck lost the fight and began trotting off. I waited for him to turn broadside, led him a bit and took a shot. We heard the solid wump and he ran about 50 yards before skidding to a halt, stonecold dead. Meanwhile, there were 4 bucks standing around not knowing what the heck had just happened. The winner of the fight was about 100 yards away with his mouth open grunting about how great he was. The buck with the blood on his face actually started walking towards us.

Cam wasn't interested in any of those bucks, so figuring my buck wasn't going anywhere, we took a quick look around for a bigger buck that had led us to that spot in the first place. We couldn't find him so we headed over to the dead buck. As we approached it, Cam began thinking the buck was a lot bigger than he had first thought. When we got up to the buck, we both realized the buck was a lot bigger than we both had initially thought. Saskbucks would later score the buck at 169 2/8 with 13 scorable points.







The hunt was far from over. As I was tagging the buck, Cam said something like "Holy @#$%, I want a pig!" I looked up to see a feral herd of wild boars (actually they were sows) moving about 150 yards away. Despite frozen hands, we began blazing away. Cam hit the lead pig, and I hit the rear pig. None of several shots were good. In fact, poor shooting led to a bit of a rodeo as we blood-trailed the wounded pigs. Cam's pig took a few more shots to anchor her. The last shot from about 10 yards hit her through the lungs; however, her immediate reaction was to charge. She was only able to charge about 3 steps before tipping over, but the image of a wide-eyed Cam running out of the buckbrush with his rifle in the air will be an inspiration for ribbing for years to come. We then set out to blood-trail my pig, not quite as bold as we had been a half-hour earlier. After a high-adrenalin mile of bloodtrailing through patches of buckbrush, she got up about 10-20 yards ahead of us and ran away. Cam put her down for the count. When the smoke cleared, we had 2 dead hogs and one dead buck to load into the truck.





It was an exciting finish to a memorable season.

[drkillemquick]

Sounds like a great season to me!!!! Congrats!!! great pics and stories!

[OJR]

WOW! You did have a good season!! Congratulations!!

[Colorado Bob]

Those are some nice animals---Conglads---CB

[Shaun_300]

Nice animals! Congrats on a successful season! Didn't know you had pigs in Saskatchewan. Learn something new everyday.

[KirkV]

Holy poop move me in next door I have lot's of warm clothes and a 4 wheel drive. LOL
Nice pictures and congrats on a great day!

[Mathews XT Man]

LOL Canadian bacon!! Ther ereally is such a thing! congrats on the season

[Ohiobucks]

Awesome season, congrats to you! Great pics as well, thanks for sharing!

[Adjam5]

I agree..AWESOME season and great stories too!
Gonna be a hard season to top

[PAstringking]

talk about a grand slam season

congrats

[TOMSD5]

awsome season congrats...

[Cutter]

Congrats on a awesome season Dan. Great pics.

[bigmoss]

Great story and greats pics, if I left Ontario Sask would be where I would go.

[Shawn]

id have to say that was a most awesome season

[dogdoc]

great lookin' animals and congrats on a great season

todd