We had a nice little Thanksgiving this year, just my folks, my brother with his kids and us. We spent the day eating too much and playing games, it was very nice just to hang out for a day. It was even more nice to have Mark home for 5 days! Wednesday we slept in, ran some errands in town and ate Chinese at my parents house while we made homemade eggrolls~a Thanksgiving tradition here. Friday we went up to the ranch and fed cows while my father-in-law was away for Thanksgiving.

Mark and Zayne going to feed...

Zayne mesmerized with the bull....
We were able to get in quite a bit of hunting/wood hauling in over the weekend. Deer up at the ranch have been very scarce this year and we ended up only getting a couple of quick glances at them. It seems to be that way throughout the region. Fish Wildlife and Parks say it is from the couple of hard winters we’ve had which probably account for some of it but we also have a lot of wolves running throughout the area. In the five years we have hunted up there it used to be that if you did not see 50 does something was wrong. This hunting season there were days where we would not even catch the flicker of a tail. Same thing for little spikes and little forkies, normally they are always grazing in the meadows, this year we did not see a single spike and only one lone forky. So whatever it is, deer numbers are definitely down. This year out of seven tags we filled two of those and one was here at the house.
Normally the guys have no problem filling their tags and I just sort of go along for the ride and enjoy being out with Mark, Sawyer and who ever else is along with us, but this year things were a bit different. I was the only one (with the exception of Sawyer who shot his here at the house) to fill my tag.

My first deer, a nice 4x5 at the "Game Check Station"...
I feel a bit bad as Mark had spotted the two deer in trees and when he went to shoot he lost them as they went behind some other trees, but they were in full view for me so I shot. The deer that I shot at reared up on its hind legs and jumped and then…took off running through the trees. We caught another little glimpse of him as we ran over to the edge of a hill but then lost him as he went through the thick timber. We went back to try to find some blood but never found a drop, so I thought I had missed. :0( Later the guys went hunting back through there hoping to spot him again….well they did when Jason seen something laying in the creek, my deer very dead. He ran ~1/3 of a mile and dropped dead in the middle of the creek. If he would have made it another couple of yards and made it through the creek we would have never found him in the tall grass and bushes on the other side. We never did find any blood, even where he went into the creek. I had hit him right through the windpipe missing the artery. That would probably explain why he reared back and the lack of blood.
Jason had a rope and was able to fish him out, we were wondering if we should have a fishing licence too! I was very glad to have 3 strong guys there to pull him up the steep bank and then gut him. This pregnancy stuff makes all that so much worse…yuck! Then they were kind enough to drag him back to the pickup.

The guys hard at work...
The rest of the weekend we only seen a couple more does, but had a great time and had fun with family. Sunday we left with a beautiful sunset reflecting off the creek and some more great memories.
