The BowHunter's Code

Though shalt pursue wounded quarry until thy skeleton rots in the high desert.  This is the code of the bowhunter that I cursed and pleaded with for the last few hours.  I had blood and tracks but still no body and the sun was slowly cooking my brains.
My son Tanner and I miraculously drew tags this year for a premium X zone Archery Hunt in Modoc county.  Usually I hunt my friend Roy's private property where bucks cross from Alfalfa to rocky cliff faces to bed.  This year however, he was building a large barn/garage and construction was loud and heavy.  On the opening weekend, we saw only does and a perfect bedding imprint of a large buck in deep dust.  Like a snow angel made by a kid, the bucks toes, antlers and large mass were all perfectly etched in the ground urging me to continue hunting this locale.  Unfortunately, when we returned I found a skeleton from what I assume to be a Mountain Lion kill turned coyote feeding frenzy.  Even the antlers were chewed off.
So we found ourselves on Sunday morning driving up a draw to high ground to watch the alfalfa at first light.  Tanner and I hiked up to a point that overlooked several promising fields to the east and a perfect mesa to the north.  Any bucks exiting the field just before first light would be in the crosshairs of our optics and provide an opportunity to spot and stalk them.  Nothing.  I decided to glass every last Sage bush one last time and set up my spotting scope on a line that separated standing timber from the mesa side which had been eradicated of Junipers.   No sooner did I look through the scope than I spotted a spike buck, staring back into the timber.  I watched him for five minutes or so, urging him to grow another point so my son would have a chance but no joy.
"Let me see Dad"
"OK but don't bump the scope, It's set up perfectly"
Of course he kicked the tripod as we switched seats.  "You're going to have to find him on your own now" exclaimed grumpy know it all dad.
"I found him!  He's a fork!"
"Tanner I've been watching him for the last five minutes, he's just a spike"
"He's a fork I swear" Tanner insists again as it sinks in that he might be right.  Sure enough another legal buck was now out in the open and feeding slowly up the open face to what I presumed to be their bedding spot at the foot of a rocky outcrop near the top of the table.
Tanner wanted to go and go right now but I insisted we wait and watch. 
"Once they bed down, they will stay down for awhile and we can plan a good stalk.  We've got all day so let's do it right."
An hour later and 1500 vertical feet find us on top of the mesa with the wind somehow at our backs.  I don't understand this as the sun is now up and the thermals should be rising so we proceed slowly and try to keep the bedded deer at an angle that won't bring our scent to them.  We creep down the face and get to within 35 yards of the dead timber they put to their backs.  I'm just about to have Tanner take the lead when I hear them bust.  They're not fill tilt boogy though and I try to range them through the snags of Juniper.  47 yards but he's the spike.  Now I have the fork but he trots off behind more slash piles so we followed them up and around the mesa only to find...another hunter?  He's dressed in the latest camo and tells us he just saw them at 80 yards, running across the table top.
"I couldn't take the shot, they headed up that way" and sure enough I catch movement farther up the hill.  The white rump disappears slowly behind a brush pile.  The Lone Archer who appeared out of nowhere graciously suggests that we go after them and so we're gone. 
We pick up tracks at the last sighting and decide they went over the face near where we came up and peek over the side.  The spike is staring at us from the side of the hill about 100 yards away and we hatch a plan.  I will drop down after 50 yards and Tanner will stay on top of the table in the hopes that I will bump them up and over.  "Stay on the edge of the rim and keep eye contact" I remember telling Tanner before I slide down the slope and start to side hill.  I'm not being too sneaky as I want to bump them to Tanner.  I look up and Tanner is nowhere to be seen.  Just then I realize there's a buck staring at me behind a fallen tree, frozen like he doesn't think I see him.  I raise my binoculars to confirm that he's the legal forked horn.  I can see his tall tines through the dead branches, so I act like I don't and range the tree to his left:  50 yards.  I face up the hill, count my pins so I know for sure I'm using the red 50, take a step backwards, and come to full draw, all the while staring up the hill so as not to put him on guard.  He stares back nervously and I settle on his chest.  It feels like he's right there and I let it fly.  An eternity seems to pass as the arrow arcs and spins.  It takes so long I get that sinking feeling I've missed.  I remember holding my follow through, willing the arrow to connect and then it does.  The reassuring "WHACK" brings me back to reality.  The buck humps up, breaking the dead branches of a tree and rockets downhill with a noticeable limp from his back leg.  I think I see blood but can't be sure.   I drop my pack where I released the arrow and went to inspect the point of impact.  There's a few drops and splatters of blood and no arrow so I think it's a fatal shot.
I head up the hill to find Tanner and let him know what just happened.  He is happy for me but disappointed that he didn't get a shot.  I'm not counting but we've probably had at least a dozen hunts and he still hasn't gotten an opportunity to shoot.   It's bittersweet for me but I'm excited to share this part of the hunt with Tanner:  The blood trail.  Little do I know what the rest of the day has in store for us.
We follow the blood and tracks down the hill.  I let Tanner take the lead up to where I last saw him.  Every time he finds a track I swell with pride that he's gaining the tools to one day bowhunt on his own.  We find a shady spot and relax for awhile, hydrating and organizing our packs.  I grab a roll of TP to mark the last blood locations and then we take off after the trail.  If I learned anything on this ordeal it's to apply the same basic principle of bowhunting to blood trailing:  be patient!  Several times I get excited and race ahead of the track, over confident it turns out, that the buck will be just ahead as they have been for me so many times before.  This time is different however, this buck sidehills all the way to the valley floor and then disappears into the sea of chin high sage brush.  Plenty of cover for a buck to lay down and hide.  Plenty of cover for a buck to lay down and die, slowly cooking under the rising sun.  This last thought maybe is part of why I'm so impatient.  I want to get him gutted and cooling ASAP but the tracks don't lie and so I go back to the drawing board again and again.  I start to see a pattern.  One track prints perfectly.  He must be favoring it.  One barely registers, like a tiptoe.  One isn't a hoof at all but he's walking on his wrist. And the last has blood in it nearly every step.