Home again

Well I've returned from my hunting trip with my boys and my dad. It was a fun trip. Saw some new and awesome sights. But saw very few deer. We saw 4 deer on Sat. 2 does and 2 fawns. The coolest part about seeing the deer on Sat. was that I have never seen a fawn that still had the white markings on it. That was a high point of the trip for me. I didn't have time to get the camera out to get a picture though.

On Sun. youngest son did really good and spotted the first deer of the day. He did exactly like he was supposed to do to. He tugged on my shirt, gasped quietly and whispered 'Dad there's a deer'. I turned around and there was a doe standing out in the open. She stood there for a few seconds and continued walking and eating. Soon her 2 fawns followed her down over the hill out of sight.


The highlight of the trip for the boys was getting to shoot the .22's. My dad and I found a secluded spot where we had a good back stop of a hill and set up some cans and some paper targets. They had a blast shooting them. Well youngest had a blast trying to shoot them. Oldest did a good job of hitting the cans consistantly.

After we were done shooting we continued down the road doing some road hunting. The road ended up being a dead end so we had to turn around and go back the way we came. In total from the time we started on this road to the time we got turned around and got back to where we were shooting was about 90 minutes. This is important to the story.

after we got a few turns past the shooting location my dad stopped the truck and said that he saw something strange. He got out of the truck and told the kids to stay there. He told me to come with him and bring the binoculars. When I got to where he was at and looked down the side of the hill we saw a truck at the bottom that was on it's side.

We were talking the situation over trying to decide whether or not it was there when we came through earlier. We determined that it wasn't there when we originally came through. So that meant that we needed to go down to the bottom of the hill and see if there was anyone inside still and if they were hurt or not. We both said at the same time 'I really don't want to go down there to find a mangled dead body'. As we started our decent we saw 2 CDF trucks drive up. They said that the people who were in the truck were ok and were on their way in another truck. At this point we were blocked in. So we stayed there while more CDF guys and 2 CHP officers arrived. The occupants of the truck came up with the CHP officers. When they got there we got the story of what happened.

Apparently they were road hunting like we were. In this type of hunting you basically drive around on old logging roads at an idle watching the hillside for signs of deer. So your going at a speed of maybe 2 miles an hour. Anyways they saw a buck and went to stop the truck. The next thing they knew they were going backwards down the hill. When they got to the bottom they hit a drop off and rolled over. At that point they were able to get out of the truck and by some miracle their Nextel's worked to get direct connect to an emergency number. That explained to us how the emergency crews got there so soon. And the helicopter that had been circling us for awhile.

After we got the story dad and I walked down the hill to check out the truck. It was about a 150 yard drop from the roadway. It was STEEP. We got a little over 2/3 the way down the hill and decided that was close enough and took some pics and made our way to the top of the hill. Oh did I forget to mention that the occupants of the truck walked away without a scratch? They were wearing their seat belts. Something that you never see while hunting these old logging roads.

So here is the story that my dad and I came up with as to how they ended up down there. They saw the deer. The driver went to put his foot on the break. In his excited state of seeing a buck he missed the break and hit the throttle instead. This in turn launched him over the edge into the tree pictured. When they hit the tree it made the ass end slide away from them. Then they rolled down the hill until they hit the bottom where they rolled only one time. The driver said that the only thing he remembered was seeing a deer and then rolling down the hill backwards.

That was the extent of my hunting trip. No deer so we will be going back up there again in two weeks with the hope that we will have a storm come in to move the deer around more. Being later in the season there will be less people hunting as well.

There are a few updates to make about our sons schooling but that will come tomorrow night. It's now time for some desert and bed.