With plenty of space to fill, here’s a deer story about the two doe I harvested during the Fontenelle Forest hunt in Bellevue:

The hunt is held for a one week period in December each year at Fontenelle Forest. To be eligible for this hunt, you need to contact the head ranger at the Forest and ask if you can participate. If there is room for more hunters, you need to qualify by demonstrating that you can hit a target at 20 yards with broadheads and attend a bowhunter education class. If you participate in the hunt, as long as you do not break any rules you will be invited back the next year.

The hunt is a doe only hunt. However, hunters can accumulate points to make them eligible to shoot a buck. You get points for each year you participate in the hunt, and points for hours hunted (up to a maximum point value for these items). You also get points for shooting an anterless deer. When enough points are accumulated, you can shoot a buck. If you do shoot one, then your points go away (except for your years hunted points) and you need to start building points again.

The way the point system is structured, after you accumulate the maximum point value for years hunted, you need to shoot 2 doe before you can shoot a buck. The last deer I shot in this hunt was a buck, so I needed to harvest 2 doe to be eligible to shoot a buck again.

The opening Saturday of the shoot was a little brisk but not too bad. I hadn’t shot anything yet in 2008 and was hoping for a little luck that morning.

At about 8am, 3 deer came over a rise in front of me and walked towards me. They were all smaller than I was hoping, but they were all doe. I focused on the largest of the three, and when it was broadside and about 15 yards away, I was at full draw and shot. This was the first time I shot a deer using a lighted knock. It was really neat. When I shoot, I normally can’t see my arrow fly. However, with the luminox I saw the light all the way to the deer, saw exactly where the arrow passed through the deer and could see the arrow brightly in the ground after the deer took off.

I watched the deer run for about 30 yards, it stopped for a few seconds, then while it was looking back to see what had scared it, started to wobble a little and then fell. To me, that’s the absolute best scenario in hunting; the deer runs only because it heard a noise and is scared, doesn’t know it was shot, and simply falls over.

After I make a shot, if I have another permit in my possession, I always knock another arrow just in case. I did that here, and it paid off. Almost immediately after knocking an arrow, two more deer came up over a rise on my left, fairly close to where the deer had fallen. One of them stopped at about 20 yards and gave me a pretty clear shot. I drew back, aimed, and shot. This arrow had a regular knock on it, so I didn’t know for sure where it hit the deer. It ran for about 20 yards and stopped. When it ran, I could see it was limping, and thought that maybe I had just hit it in the leg. When it stopped, it’s head was directly behind a tree so it couldn’t see me at all. I took an arrow out of my quiver, saw it was a practice arrow and dropped it to the ground. I quickly took out another arrow, this time a field point and dropped it to the ground also (I might have been a little nervous by now). All that was left in by quiver were hunting arrows now, so I took a third arrow out and knocked it.

I used my range finder on the deer and it read 32 yards; so I put my 30 yard pin on the deer and shot. As soon as the arrow hit, the deer dropped. I waited for about 10 minutes, saw no movement from either deer, and slowly got down. I went to the second deer first. My first arrow had passed through the vitals and hit the opposite leg so it was a fatal shot. It was probably ready to go down at the time I shot my second arrow. The second arrow actually went right through center of the heart, so I felt pretty good about my shooting that day.

I went to the first deer, dragged it to the second one, canceled both of my bonus tag permits, and field dressed them both together. I hung each deer with a rope in a tree, and washed them out using a bottle of water I carry with me that has a little bit of vinegar in it to break down the blood. I also have a shower misting top I put on the bottle that lets me squirt the water as I wash out the deer.

I rolled up my tags and pushed them into each of the deer’s ears (as it says in the Game and Parks Hunting Guide), and headed out with my gear to get my game cart. When I got back with the cart, I took the deer down and pulled them together for a picture, turned my game cart on it’s side to use it as a tripod, took the picture, loaded the deer and headed out.

I hunted the same stand four more times but didn’t see a deer within 50 yards of me. Guess the deer changed their patterns rather quickly after an opening morning with trees full of hunters. I’m already looking forward to next year, and thinking about where to set up where I’ll have a good chance to get a buck.