I hunted blacktails for 24 days one season before I finally saw a mature buck. But by the time I got my aging friend on it, the buck had vanished into thick cover. I hunted the next four days and never saw it again. Then the season closed.
It was one of the biggest Columbia blacktails I’d ever observed while hunting, and just seeing it made for a good season. Could I have killed it had I been alone? Most likely. But sometimes opportunities don’t align, and it would have been the buck of a lifetime for my friend.
That was two seasons ago. I hunted 28 days during the general rifle season in October and the first few days of November. Most of my time was spent around 3,000 feet of elevation in the Cascade Range. It was big, rugged, heavily timbered land—the stuff in which wise bucks
