Hunting in Montana

Heather and I were debating whether or not to go hunting this year. Neither of us have ever been hunting before, and I have to admit that I was a little hesitant about the whole idea. Many of you know that the ranch where we work gets a lot of its meat from hunting. During the first week of hunting in Montana we do not have school, and the kids go out with their housedads and other staff. Heather and I decided to get tags for deer because deer tags are less than $20, and that is a cheap alternative to beef.
We went hunting one day with some of the staff from the ranch and a couple of the kids, but we saw very few deer and non that were close enough to take a shot at. Later that same week, we were going to visit a friend of ours in north-central Montana. Her dad owns a 4,000 acre ranch, so we thought this would be a great place to hunt. Central and Eastern Montana is so different than the Western part in which we live. Our friend's ranch was flat and desolate, with very few trees. Deer are more prevalent in this part of the state and since there are few trees it is easier to spot game.
On Saturday we went out shortly after daylight, and we spotted deer within the first hour. We really couldn't get very close, so we kept looking. We spotted a couple of does that were close enough that I could have probably taken a shot. I had the gun on one of them, but just didn't think I could hit it from that distance. We got back in the truck and drove some more until we spotted a herd of deer. There were probably ten deer and one of them was a nice size buck. I told Heather that she should take the shot since I chickened-out on my shot. We made it close enough and she took a shot at the buck. All of the deer except for the buck ran off, which I thought was weird but he wasn't acting like he was hit. She fired two more times but missed. She told me to try, so I shot several more times. He had been laying down but got up at this point and started to run away from us. We followed him for about a quarter of a mile, I shot again, and missed. At this point you are probably realizing how bad of shots we were. The next couples hours were spent following the buck. We would get close to him and then we would keep moving away from us. I knew that if I couldn't hit him laying down, I probably shouldn't try to hit him running. Our friend was with us and was becoming just as frustrated as we were. We felt we couldn't less this large buck just get away. Also, we kind of thought that I had hit it because I could see something that looked like blood on its mouth.
We had walked so far from the truck that our friend decided to go get it and we would keep following the deer. At one point, we met up with some hunters at a road that the deer had crossed, and they said that the deer had definitely been shot. The red that I saw on its face was blood because somehow I had managed to shoot it in the face. Yeah, I know. Who shoots a deer in the face? We followed the deer, and I was able to take two more shots that could have hit it but it certainly didn't drop. We drove around the field that it was in and finally got within 50 yards of the deer. I chambered a round and brought down the buck. The last shot I took definitely did the trick and it was pretty much dead when I approached it. At this point, we were able to see just how many of our shots actually hit the deer. I had hit it in the jaw, across the front of the leg, and then the finally kill shot. I felt horrible about this entire process. I wanted to kill the deer with one quick shot so it wouldn't suffer, but it certainly didn't happen that way. At this point, I think Heather and I had no desire to go hunting again. We were able to get the deer field dressed with the help of our friend's dad, which was a interesting and probably too graphic for this blog. The buck was a pretty good size mule deer, and he had a 4 X 3 rack. This meant a total of seven points, three on one side and four on the other.
Maybe the funniest part of this whole trip was that we took our four door car with us, so that is how we got it home. I didn't like the idea of putting it in our trunk, so we wrapped it in a tarp that I had and put it on the top of the trunk. It was extremely red-neck and definitely turned some heads on the five hour drive home. Some hunters at a gas station commented on the nice size of the deer, but I bet they were crack jokes the rest of the day about the deer strapped to the back of our car.
After all of this, Heather doesn't have any desire to fill her tag this year. We had the deer butchered here at the ranch, since there were several other deer being processed. We were able to quite a bit of meat from the deer. I don't know if I will ever hunt again. It will need to go a lot smoother if I do. I would love to get an elk since they taste amazing and the tags are just a couple more dollars than a deer tag.