Sorry, I forgot the story of that first pic. It's hard to believe but that was about two in the afternoon. And yes, that is a form of bamboo. Unfortunately it is completely useless and covers much of the forest here. It can grow above a guys head and is very hard to hunt in. But as you can imagine, the deer love to live in it.
It had snowed the day before. I always love the snow because the tracks in it never lie. Driving down a podunk trail, I noticed the tracks of a group of stags going right down the road. The footprints showed the deer were relaxed and lazily browsing the edges. I guess they were just a few hundred yards in front of me because the tracks showed they took off running.
I stopped the truck and thought for a bit, then decided to back up to where I could sorta get off the trail and parked it. I quietly grabbed up my gun and pack and sneaked down the road. The wind was pretty good as I recall and I followed the winding road, slowly peeking around every corner. The deer had stopped running and were browsing again. This kept me on point the whole time. I couldn't have moved any slower, the whole time thinking that the deer are probably moving faster than me, and that I might not catch up to them. Maybe you know the feeling. But I knew that trail was a dead end and that at some point I had a chance of seeing something.
After what was probably two hours, I came up on the last corner, and there they were, standing at the old landing area for the logging that happened there decades ago. The deer had no idea of my presence. I stood behind the corner being nervous, wanting to peek at them again, but knowing better to. I got on the ground and crawled up the rut on the left side of the road, careful not to get snow up the barrel, which was in front of me. I saw three stags, two were real nice and I decided to go with the closest one. He was looking left and broadside, head down. I had him in the scope, probably 80 yards or so. Then the smaller one came up and locked horns with the stag I was about to shoot. They pushed each other in the snow a bit, then stopped, looking right at each other. I don't remember it clearly, but the gun went off and that stag reared straight up in the air like a wild stallion while letting out a death bawl, and came down and lunged forward into the brush. The other two stags came running straight down the road and passed me! I was still laying down, which was an interesting feeling. I watched them fly down the road behind me. Pretty cool. I got up and ran up to the stag and found him stone dead, shot in the neck.
Eric