Stumped and Duped by the blacktail bucks

Today as a addendum to a very successful deer hunting season I thought it wise to take a friend from church (a coast guardsmen from florida who has never shot a living creature) on an alaskan deer hunt.
The day started well with a early morning break in the rain and a pleasant, yet difficult climb up a very steep hill. After several hours of hiking my friend finally came out with the proverbial question, "so have you killed anything this year?" The insinuation of course was that my guiding skills were lacking and that there was some uncertainty about my ability to navigate and guide a non-resident to a Sitka Blacktail Buck (which of course if he had read our family blog, he would know that i successfully assisted cousin George already this year).
Anyway, after calmly telling him that I had indeed been successful this year already, the overall attitude of our hunting party changed from pessimistic to mildly annoyed that I had apparently lost my skill as a woodsmen in recent weeks since my last hunting adventure. I offered up the encouraging words that I myself have heard on countless such hunting adventures when my feet just didn't want to pick up anymore, all my extremities were wet and cold and slightly frostbitten and my candybar supply had run low: "all we can do is keep looking." It never sounded good hearing that as a boy and as it escaped my mouth today I felt my friends pain, but what else can you do?

Anyway, slightly later in our adventure as the discouragement of wading through devil's clubs and sliding down muddy hills was setting in, we jumped up two bucks (a fork and a spike) for which neither of us was ready and both of which deftly escaped.
Now this is a tough mixing of emotions. On the one hand just seeing a deer after countless hours of laboring through very dense wet wilderness is encouraging, but to spend countless hours laboring through dense-wet wilderness and to finally see a buck (none the less two) and to have it simply run away without so much as a warning shot through the ear (thank you cousin George) is just down right discouraging.

After this initial upset my friend and I trudged for another hour or two through more dense-wet wilderness until we finally could see the logging road from whence we came at about 300 yards out. At this point in our journey we had accepted our defeat and were just bush-whacking our way through toward the road when much to my suprise and chagrin I spotted a forked horn Sitka Blacktail Buck just staring at me from about 50 feet away. RIGHT NEXT TO THE STINKING ROAD!
This was obviously the Lord blessing us and i could hardly believe it so as quickly as i could i loaded a shell in the chamber of my rifle and removed my scope covers, put the cross-hairs of my scope on his neck and pulled the trigger.......CLICK! Not Bang, not boom, but click! I still had my safety on and upon seeing all the commotion the 3rd buck of our day quickly ran away from us not knowing that had I been more in-tune with the safety mechanism of my rifle he would have "been a goner!"

Now at this point in our trip i could only shake my head and laugh uncomfortably because we had been fortunate enough to see more bucks in one morning than are often seen in a multi-day trip, but had failed to harvest any. After a brief bathroom break and a quick lament about how we should have been ready, we continued on the last 300 yards down to the road, quite encouraged and discouraged simultaneously.
With the road about 30 yards in front of us I noticed much to my glee and chagrin that yet another forked horn Sitka Blacktail Buck was standing in the middle of the logging road looking at us talking, and then a brief moment in time later running as fast as possible the other direction.
Inspired by our lack of success harvesting a deer so far in the hunt, I took after my Cousin George's example and tried the "sprint after the running deer to get another shot technique". Unfortunatly for me, the only shot that presented itself was at about 125 yards with the deer in a dead-run away from me. I did the only thing I could and quickly squeezed off a shot at the deer (hoping for a successful gluteus-maximus shot which proved successful for Cousin George on our last hunt). Unfortunatly for me, however, the 4th and final buck of our day continued running unhampered by my attempt to harvest him.

The blatant contradictory emotions we were both experiencing on the 30 minute walk back to the vehicle was nothing less than comical. How can you not be happy with going hunting for 8 hours and seeing 4 bucks, all the while within eye-sight of downtown Ketchikan? Yet also, how can you be satisfied with seeing 4 bucks in one short hunt and not having the skill or luck to harvest even one?

These are the tangled struggles a young hunter faces in todays complex world.