| Marble Mountain Magic By Joe O’Brien It was an icy cold morning sitting on the edge of a large brush covered ravine at 5:30 am; this was the start of the late B-6 deer season in Scotts Valley near the Oregon border on a 2,000 acre ranch that we lease from a local rancher. As usual coyotes were howling, and in the dark, I was looking out for mountain lions that frequent this area especially in the early morning. As the morning progressed, I could hear deer snorting at me or something else but saw nothing but does returning from the oaks on their way to their traditional bedding areas higher up the ravine. Just before the season, we were seeing large bachelor herds of truly big bucks but I wasn't seeing any of them this morning. Checking on the radio with my hunting partners, they were all experiencing the same dearth of eligible bucks. This year the oak trees are brimming with an unusually large crop of acorns. What this means for the upcoming winter is anybody's guess but most of the locals feel it portends an unusually cold and wet winter. My guess was that the bucks were higher up the mountain at the 4,000 foot elevation gorging on the acorns rather than coming down to the lower elevation as they normally do. At around 10:30 am, I put on my fanny pack and headed up to where I thought the bucks were hanging out. I started seeing a lot of does and I felt that I made the right decision. At around 11:30 am as I was walking quietly through brush and oaks, I noticed a large grey face of a big buck staring at me. I knew the moment I took the rifle off my shoulder he would bolt but I rehearsed my setup, quickly aiming and fired. The buck was about 75 yards from me but in an instant was gone. I knew I placed a good shot and sure enough, when I got to the place he was standing, I saw blood on the ground. I followed the blood trail through the thick brush and found him about 50 yards from where I shot him. He was stone dead but I couldn't get over how big he was. I knew he was a legal buck when I shot but from the grey face, I knew he was going to be big. He is a four pointer with nice eye guards. Field dressed, he weighed 190 pounds. That is big even in an area where a lot of big bucks are bagged. According to my brother-in-law cattle rancher, the deer is a high mountain or Marble Mountain buck. According to everybody else and including Taff Vidales (Taxidermist in Hayward), he is a mule deer. There are a lot of mixed deer in this area. All I care is that I got a truly memorable buck! On a side note, on the last weekend of the B-6 zone deer season, I bagged a 4x3 that field dressed out at 175 pounds. Both my hunting partners limited out on deer, culminating in one of the best deer season to-date on the historic deer wintering ground of the Fort Jones Mountains. |
| Marble Mountain Magic |
| Nice Deer Joe!! Click to enlarge |
| Foster City Rod and Gun Club |
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