Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
The author searched for hours to locate a particular big old buck, and now he has him in his sights. But so are the barns and buildings of the Winery Headquarters. Can he take the shot?
On the Pacific Coast, beginning in California and running northward along Oregon and Washington and into British Columbia, lives a small cousin to our more common mule deer. Known as the Columbian Blacktail deer, they look somewhat like a diminutive muley. They are challenging to hunt, mostly because there is not a lot of readily available public land upon which an aspiring hunter can venture, but also because much of the land that is available is deep forest. Rain-wet, fern-filled, big-timber stuff where visibility is limited and shots tend to be hard-earned and close.
Table of contents
Toward the southern end of their range blacktails can be found in more open terrain. The golden pastures and oakey groves and vast vineyards of California can provide superb hunting, but those places are almost entirely private land. Hunting opportunities there are desirable and in high demand.
Good fortune found me hunting Blacktails in California this past August. This was border country, where coastal mule deer and Blacktail ranges overlap, but local authorities assured me that the deer found here were indeed of the Blacktail variety. My hunting grounds were the verdant and well-managed lands of Steinbeck Vineyards, and absolutely teeming with deer.
Rifle, Optic, and Ammo
My rifle for the hunt was a lightweight and comfortable Patriot bolt action from Mossberg, chambered in .308 Winchester. A Leupold VX-3 4.5-14X40 scope complete with Boone & Crockett reticle was mounted atop. I don’t typically use a .308 much, and finding California-compliant ammo on short notice was a bit of a challenge. Only lead-free projectiles are legal there. Fortunately, a local sporting goods store had a couple of boxes of Winchester 150-grain Copper Impact ammo in stock. The advertised muzzle velocity is 2810 FPS – this ammo would be perfect for California Blacktails.
The Blacktail Hunt
Deer were everywhere. Even so, finding a mature blacktail buck and manufacturing a clean shot opportunity proved challenging. The old bucks would duck out of sight and slip away, leaving us picking through does and younger bucks trying to locate them. The green rows of grapes were lovely and made stalking easy, but made escaping easy too.
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An afternoon hunt found us moving along row ends at the top of a hill, checking each row for deer. We spotted a big buck, standing with a doe in one of the rows. Then he ducked over the crest of the hill and was gone. We circled the field and set up, glassing the slope where he’d headed. Multiple bucks and double handfuls of does browsed among the grapes, but in an hour and a half of looking, we couldn’t locate the big buck.
Dusk was upon us, and we moved to another field, circling, looking for the big buck. We finally spotted him and stalked along the rows and into position for a shot. As he fed across rows I settled my crosshairs in his vitals, only 90 yards distant. But I had a problem; directly beyond the buck was Steinbeck’s headquarters. If I pressed the trigger and got a pass-through, or missed, it was likely that my bullet would impact someplace among those buildings, potentially even hitting a person. It was an immediate no-shot scenario.
Another Attempt At a Blacktail
Glancing around, I noticed a hill behind us, rising high enough above the surrounding fields that it would give my shot a downward angle. We turned and backed carefully out, then sprint-stalked across the rows and onto the hill. We’d doubled the shot distance, but should now have a safe backstop for my bullet if we could find him again.
The blacktail deer were still there, browsing on grape leaves, moving right-to-left through the vines. Crouching forward, we got into position and I sat, my rifle rested across my guide’s shooting sticks. The angle and backstop were both good; now all I needed was a clean shot at the buck. He was bringing up the rear as old bucks are likely to do, and as the other bucks fed through my lane, I practiced settling the crosshairs on their vitals. Then there he was, walking across the row and stopping to feed on the grape leaves roughly 200 yards away. I settled my sight and held my rifle steady across the sticks. His head and front shoulder were obscured behind the leaves, so I had to hold a couple inches behind the shoulder crease to avoid a deflection.
TAKE THE SHOT?
Place yourself in my position; you’ve traveled far to enjoy this rare opportunity, and now have a big blacktail buck in your crosshairs. You are sitting, with sticks for rifle support. Adrenaline is flowing, and you’re not perfectly steady, but the sight is staying well within the vital area. A clean trigger squeeze and this buck will be yours. Will you take the shot?
Here’s What Happened: True Story
I took the shot, carefully. Had I not pressed the trigger carefully I could easily have missed or made a bad hit, so I made sure my squeeze was clean. The buck was hit hard but ran perhaps 160 yards before crashing. I attribute the long run to the fact that I had to place the bullet through the rearward portion of his vitals.
READ MORE:California Man Who Poached Massive Blacktail Buck Gets Sentenced
Conclusion
Would I take that shot again? You bet I would. Everything was perfect except the obscured shoulder and the sitting position; both of which could be coped with. I was thrilled to harvest the beautiful 5-year-old Columbian Blacktail buck, taken cleanly with a single shot.
What about you? Would you take that shot? Let me know in the comment section below.
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