# 2014: Year in review



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Well, I never did catch up with that buck of a lifetime that I was after. 
I probably saw more quality bucks this past pre-season than I have ever seen before.
Many of the bucks ended up being killed by other hunters but I'll share my time scouting some of them.
It all started towards the end of June checking out a new area to hunt. 
By July 5th, we had a half dozen or so trail cams spread out over several miles.
We scouted out a new area to set up a back country camp and it was near water. I was so excited about the idea of not packing in gallons of water like we had done in years past. 
I filmed these bucks on the July 5th trip. 




Right after I filmed the bucks, one of my friends asked if I had seen the 27-28" wide buck go over the top of a distant ridge. I hadn't but made plans on making a scouting trip overnighter on July 18th-19th. I was able to find the buck my friend Roger had seen, so I named it "Roger". It went right to the top of our hit list. I'll share more about "roger" on a later time.
Here's "roger" 


I was able to find a couple other really nice bucks that same day.

This may take a while to write up, so be patient.
to be continued....


----------



## brendo (Sep 10, 2013)

Man that roger sure is a NICE buck!! I'm looking forward to this thread!!


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

On July 24th my cousin and I checked out an adjacent canyon from where we were on the 19th and once again we ran into the "Roger" buck. He had already put on another inch or two on each tine in just 5 days. He was looking really nice at that point. He was growing a 3" cheater on his left G-3 just like that buck I filmed on July 5th.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

The next time we ran into the roger buck was on Labor day, Sept. 1st.
We had been hunting other bucks in other areas the past few weeks but on Sept. 1st, we went back to where I saw the roger buck on July 24th. 
Right at first light we spotted him about 300 yards below us with 3 other smaller bucks. He was only about 100 yards from where he was a month earlier but he had us pegged this time. 
So we just sat down and watched as the bucks slowly fed their way down canyon. I was there with my friends Paul and Corby. Our other friend Tom had family business but was on his way to meet up with us. 
I had one really big problem that day. It was my Grandpas 90th birthday and my family was having a big party for him that afternoon. So the latest I could stay on the mountain would be about 11:00 am. Paul also had to head home about that time. By 11:00, the big buck had not bedded yet and looked very nervous. It was really hard to leave my friends and miss out on them making a stalk on the big ole buck but family comes first.
Come to find out, the buck feed over the ridgeline into the next canyon and neither Tom or Corby could relocate the buck.
Here's video of the buck right before I had to leave.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

The next encounter I had with the Roger buck was on the evening of the muzzy hunt opener. In the morning we had hunted an area where we knew of a giant buck I was calling "the trashy three" buck(I'll talk about him more at a later time). After checking several areas that morning and dealing with other hunting in the same area, we decided to go back to the areas we had archery hunted.
That afternoon we split up to check different canyons.
I went to check out a canyon just North of where I had last seen the roger buck. Which I had also seen a cool looking drop tine buck earlier in the summer. 
As I gained elevation to find a good glassing point, I also looked for a good tree or band of rocks I could tuck myself up in to get out of the wind and afternoon sun. It's much easier to glass and use a spotting scope that way.
I spotted a small buck with a doe about a mile down canyon that was about 500 yards above where I had parked my ATV.
Then a few minutes later a larger buck walked out, after looking at it through my spotting scope, I could see it had been shot in the hind quarter and blood was running down its hide for about 6". The buck walked with a slight limp but seemed to be eating ok. Moments later as the sun was getting ready to set, I heard rocks rolling near a small pocket of trees up in some ledges.
As I watched buck after buck started to feed out of the trees. There was 12-15 of them and most were 2 or 3 year old 3 and 4 points with a few big 2's.
Finally I located a wide 28" buck that had a 3" cheater on his left G-3.
It had to be the roger buck but he seems a lot less massive now that he had lost his velvet.
It was amazing to see how so many bucks can hide up in just a small pocket like they had. I may have found a nice little honey hole for years to come.
The strong winds were blowing right up canyon in their direction and I don't think I could have made it to within shooting distance anyway, So I waited until dark and snuck out of the area.
I couldn't wait until morning.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Sept. 25th
I had so much hope for this day. We had a game plan, I would hike up the bottom of the canyon to the South of where we had seen the Roger buck in the past and hike up to the ridgeline on the South side of that canyon. That way I could see where the bucks went if they got busted out of the canyon my cousin was hiking up that morning(which was the one I was in the afternoon before).
We were hoping the down canyon winds would keep Johns scent from spooking the bucks. 
My other friend Corby would be in the same spot we had seen the roger bucks on Sept. 1st. Just in case he moved there over night. 
Well, the winds were blowing so hard from the South(about 20-30mph)
that even in the morning, the "down canyon" winds were blowing up canyon. The bucks spooked before John could get close enough for a shot. 
The hike I was on took a lot longer than I thought it would and I never made it to the ridgeline until an hour after sun up and that was leaving the trailhead an 1 1/2 hours before light.
I did see a few smaller 4 points but nothing I was interested in.
Once I got to the ridgeline, I could see three bucks just a couple hundred yards below where Corby was sitting but he couldn't see them from his angle.
The bucks slowly worked their way down canyon for about an hour and Corby was finally able to spot them.
About an hour later, the three bucks went up in the cliffs and met up with the roger buck! We couldn't believe we found him again. The buck was all by himself and Corby said the roger buck was within just a few yards of where we had seen it on Sept. 1st. Hoping they would stay there and bed, I started working my way down the backside of the ridge that the bucks were on.
For some reason, the three smaller bucks spooked and ran down canyon and a few seconds later roger followed them. They all went into a group of thick trees not just a few hundred yards from where my atv was parked. 
We all decided to meet back up at camp and come up with a game plan on how we could push the bucks out of the thick trees into an escape route where one of us could get a shot.
to be cont....


----------



## USMARINEhuntinfool (Sep 15, 2007)

I absolutely love your posts man, keep em coming.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

USMARINEhuntinfool said:


> I absolutely love your posts man, keep em coming.


Thanks for the feedback.


----------



## JuddCT (Sep 7, 2007)

Keep it coming.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

I'll try to finish out this adventure with the "roger" buck.
After we got back to camp, I discovered my dome tent was flat on the ground from the strong winds.
This year we were camped right out in an open meadow just off the road. So I pulled my truck up next to my tent and used my atv tie downs to strap my tent poles to the frame of the truck. Worked like a charm. While we were getting things ready for our afternoon adventure, a guy on an atv rode past our camp and up the same trail we were going to use. The trail did split and most people were using the other one that we would be using. The plan was for my cousin John to head out about an hour before Corby and I and get set up in a little saddle. Once Corby and I got to the trailhead, that other guys atv was there but since he had gotten there almost two hours before us, I figured he was some where far up the canyon. As Corby and I started to push the trees towards the saddle John was watching, Corby heard three shots on the other side of the hill we were on. I never heard the shots but Corby thought it must be John. I got hold of John and he thought it was us that shot. Come to find out it was that guy we saw. He was only about 200 yards away from John on the other side of the hill and John must have bumped the bucks when he was hiking in and they went right to the other guy. Unfortunately, he made a bad shot on the largest buck(roger) and had to track it. He had two friends come up and help him track it the next morning but they lost it. They were planning on bringing up a dog to help track it too but in the end after several weeks looking, it was never recovered or seen alive again. 
Needless to say, it was very quiet back at our camp that night and the following day. We were pretty bummed out. Not that another guy lucked into picking the right place at the right time (he had never seen those bucks before but had hunted those trees in the past) but to see a buck we worked so hard on, possibly go to waste, was the real bummer.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

July 26th

Just one week before, I had found the roger buck and a couple other real nice bucks that most people wouldn't hesitate to put on the wall, so my expectations were already high but the canyon I was to check out this day, I was really excited about checking out.
I had taken a friend archery hunting to this area last year and we found a really nice buck. 
It had a large split in its right ear, so I would know the buck if I were to find it again. This was the main reason I put in for this area in 2014 and wanted to scout it more. 
My friends and I had placed a trail camera up high in a basin in this same area on July 5th. So this time I was coming in from the bottom of the canyon and from the other side of the mountain.
After doing some google earth scouting for the best route to a rocky peak that looked good to glass from at first light. I was ready to make the unknown hike in the dark.
I was on my own this day because all my hunting buddies had other commitments. I arrived at my glassing spot just after first light and instantly saw a big mature buck high up on the mountain within just a few hundred yards of one of our trail cams. This buck was heavy, high and had a very unique 16" extra point coming off behind his right G-2. I named this buck "dagger" because of the strange extra point.
I then spotted another great buck right out in the open, he had two cheater points on his left side and was a clean typical on the right. So I named him lefty.
Moments later, I spotted another great buck straight across the canyon from me. He was a good looking 5x5 in which his upper tines turned inward, like a basket. My cousin had already named another buck like him but smaller, "the basket buck". So I named this one "the big basket buck". I know, real original names.
Here's a look at the big basket buck.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Aug. 2nd

The next time I saw the "big basket" buck was a week later, when a friend of mine and I went up the ridgeline to the North of were I was a week earlier. We spotted the big basket buck within a 100 yards of were I saw it before. That would be the last time I or any of my hunting friends would see it again. 
I'm not sure if an archery hunter went in there and shot it or what happened. We saw several of the other bucks it was with, including "Lefty" and "dagger". We hunted the draws and canyons within a 3 mile radius of this area but no luck seeing the BB buck again.
Here's another video of the big basket buck being startled by a coyote.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Aug. 30th
This was probably the most fun I had all year.
It started out with me hiking in about 3 miles by myself to get the last of our trail cams. I had great hopes of finding some really good pictures of some really great bucks but for some reason, the trail cam took over 3,000 false triggered pictures in a 24 hour time period and filled up the card.
We had really bad luck with several different cameras doing that same thing this year.
As I reached the canyon the camera was in right around sun up, I spotted three nice bucks about 500 yards down slope of my location. I watched them feed out of sight into the bottom of the canyon, so I hike up and around the top of the canyon and down into where the camera was. After that I hiked into the next canyon and glassed for about an hour with no mature bucks seen.
I decided to go look for the dagger buck again now that I was on the other side of the canyon. As I dropped over the ridgeline to look, knowing the wind was at my back. I still figured the dagger buck would by far enough down canyon, it wouldn't smell me.
But because I was a little careless in this approach, I bumped 4 does. After watching the does run into the next canyon, I moved down slope another 20 feet and bumped a really nice buck, now I was really kicking myself for not just sitting down when the does first took off running. 
Here's the buck that I bumped, I figured him to score in the mid-170s. 
After I got home and viewed the video on my computer, I realized it was the buck I named "lefty".





This would be the last time I would see the "lefty" buck.
He was shot with an arrow two days later and not recovered. We spent several days and weeks in this canyon looking but to no avail. We can only hope he moved out of the area.
to be cont....


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Since I kind off ended the story about "lefty". 
Here's video of the first day I saw him on July 26th.


----------



## USMARINEhuntinfool (Sep 15, 2007)

Awesome! I wish I spent as much time in the outdoors as you. Do you go and hike in and camp or do you mostly do day trips?


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

USMARINEhuntinfool said:


> Awesome! I wish I spent as much time in the outdoors as you. Do you go and hike in and camp or do you mostly do day trips?


Funny you should say that, my wife has said; "enough already,
It's time to put in our back yard"!
So that's my spring and summer project before I can scout any more next year.-O,-

We have backpacked in and set up a base camp in the past.
This year we were scouting a whole new area, we intended on setting up a backcountry camp this year but we got so spread out on the canyons we were scouting and hunting that we ended up setting base camps off the road or trail head. So we could be more mobile and hunt different canyons each day if needed. Some of the canyons we were hunting, were over an hours drive apart. Then a couple hours to hike into. 
I did do some day trips from home but in meant getting up before 3:00am and getting home around mid-night, which makes for a long day.


----------



## USMARINEhuntinfool (Sep 15, 2007)

Right on. That's kinda where I've been, too much always going on. I always swear I'm gonna spend more time only to end up busy with other stuff. Next year will be better hopefully.


----------



## JuddCT (Sep 7, 2007)

Awesome stuff. Keep it coming!


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Cont.... 
After watching the "lefty" buck go over the ridge, I looked down canyon to see if I could locate the 4 other bucks including the "dagger" buck. Sure enough, they were all staring up in my direction.

I stayed still for several minutes and the bucks finally went back to feeding. Then a bird landed in a tree next to me and started cawing at me. It was one of those "camp robber" jays.

Sure enough, the bucks were all looking up in my direction again. I could tell they knew something was not right and they all started walking further down canyon.

They went out of sight around the ridgeline, so I called my two friends that were hunting a different area a few miles away. They had been hunting a neat 6x5 27" buck(which was killed by someone else on the muzzy hunt) and a 22" wide, very tall long tined buck(which was killed by another hunter on the rifle hunt).
As I worked my way back the way I had come, it started to rain pretty hard.
So I found a flat spot at the base of a small cliff and waited out the passing storm. 
It took a couple hours to travel about 3 miles to good glassing spot overlooking the far side of the canyon the bucks had disappeared into.
I got a call from my friends about an hour after I had settled down in my new spot, telling my they had located the dagger buck.
After trying a stalk that lasted a couple hours, my friend Paul was within 60 yards but missed the buck.
After the bucks blew out of the canyon, the three bucks ran up canyon and took the same route they had traveled earlier in the day.
The bigger "dagger" buck headed over the ridge into some very nasty cliffs. He would look around for 5 minutes, then walk/trot up canyon and back into the cliffs, wait about 5 minutes watching/listening, then do the same thing again. He did this several times until he finally went through the same saddle as the other bucks had but he then went up into a small group of tall brush mixed in with a couple pine trees.
He had stayed put in this spot for about 20 minutes, then I called Tom and told him where the buck was hiding and there was a small band of cliffs just above the brush the buck was hiding in.
About a 1/2 hour later, Tom was 30 yards above the buck but had a hard time seeing it. He finally did see it and just as he drew back, the buck saw his movement and blew out of there as fast as a deer could run. 
It was really fun to watch my friends try a couple different stalks from a distance. They were so close.
That would be the last time I would see the dagger buck alive.
I had heard rumors that it was killed during the rifle hunt but just a couple weeks ago, while surfing the net on taxidermy and outfitter sights.
I found a picture of the dagger buck. It was true, he had been harvested.
Here's the picture I found of him and video of the bucks when I first saw them earlier in the day.


----------



## JuddCT (Sep 7, 2007)

What a cool buck


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Time to talk about some elk. Here's a scouting trip I went on in late June to one of my honey holes. It was cool to see the bucks and bulls getting along side by side.
It was good to see there were plenty of elk and deer around for the upcoming general season hunts.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

I'm not going to be able to get into all the details about this years elk hunt but I will say that it was the best success our family has had in all the years we have hunted this area. Ended up with four big bulls on opening day. My uncle ended up taking the bull on the bottom left of the picture. It was his second bull ever taken, the first one was a spike he shot 40 years ago. I put my tag on the smallest bull of the bunch but hey, it's all about the meat for me.
Here's some video from opening weekend. 
The bottom bull in the video is the one I ended up taking. 





Here's a video of some bulls we spotted on the second day while trying to help my wife's uncle fill his tag.


----------



## goofy elk (Dec 16, 2007)

You guys did very well..:!:..


----------



## brendo (Sep 10, 2013)

very Impressive ridge!!


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Back to deer hunting.

Opening day-Rifle hunt
My cousin John and I found our selves hunting the same canyon that we hunted on the muzzy hunt. We were hoping to turn up a nice buck John had missed out on during the muzzy hunt. 
Personally, it was killing me not hunting that monster buck I had found on the archery hunt. I felt the right thing to do was to let the other hunter see if he could get in on it and then I would see how things played out later in the hunt. 
When John and I got to the end of the road to start hiking, we could see there was another guy ahead of us. Right where John had wanted to go. 
So we decided for John to stay below the hunter by about 500 yards to watch for any bucks sneaking around the other guy. 
I climbed to the next ridgeline to watch the backside of the ridge that the guy was hiking up. In hopes the bucks would drop into the next canyon. 
About an hour later the guy shot a small 4 point and pushed nine other bucks over the top and about 300 yards across the canyon from me. 
Here's video of the bucks as the worked their way across the hillside.





To be cont....


----------



## MWScott72 (May 23, 2011)

Wow...those are all general tag elk and all opening day? You did very well indeed!


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

MWScott72 said:


> Wow...those are all general tag elk and all opening day? You did very well indeed!


We got very lucky.


----------



## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

ridgetop said:


> Back to deer hunting.
> 
> Opening day-Rifle hunt
> My cousin John and I found our selves hunting the same canyon that we hunted on the muzzy hunt. We were hoping to turn up a nice buck John had missed out on during the muzzy hunt.
> ...


After I turned off the video camera. The bucks for some reason ran straight down into the bottom of the draw about 150 yards below me and stayed there feeding for about an hour. My cousin met up with me about that time and we watched the bucks work their way back up over the top the way they had come. We followed the bucks hoping they met up with a larger one my cousin had seen earlier. We saw the guy from earlier that morning packing out his buck, so we moved into the next canyon. I was about a hundred yards lower than my cousin at the time, when I bumped the group of 9 bucks. They ran up over into the next canyon, while John was just going over the top himself. He later told me that the bucks ran about 200 yards down the other side, stopped ran into a tight circle a couple times. Then started running back up hill towards him. John knew the bucks must have seen or smelled other hunters and he was afraid they might start shooting. So he quickly hid behind some large rocks. Then the shooting began. The other hunters shot 5 or 6 times. When I finally made it to the top, I saw that a girl had shot the largest buck in the group. It was the one that was scratching its neck in the video.
John watched her as she ran all the way across the canyon to her buck. Then got on her cell phone and was talking on it when I came over the ridge and saw her. Pretty cool to see someone get excited like that.
If it wasn't for the fact that the buck was about 300 yards below us and we were planning on hiking another 5 miles or so, I would have went down there and congratulated her and offered the video of her buck. I have some video of it in velvet too.
Well John and I ended up hiking another 4 or 5 miles and jumped a few small bucks. We finally ended up back in the same canyon where I started the day in and to my surprise ended up seeing close to another 10 small bucks in the last hour before the light faded for the day. The deer had got pushed into that canyon from all the other hunters in the area. 
It was really a great opening day. 
On a side note, My friends son shot a nice tall 23" wide 4 point down lower in the same canyon.


----------

