Lonnie Terrell writes, "This was the second weekend of California's D-6 season. I had began my hike at sunrise to an area I had never been before, into the Hoover Wilderness area. As I reached the top of the 11,000 foot summit, I began glassing into the canyon below. I spotted a lone buck about 700 yards down into the canyon. I was above the timberline and had no cover for a stalk, except for about 5 pinions that were below and to my left. After glassing this buck for about 15 minutes I got up to start moving to the trees. As I got to my feet, there were 5 does a 100 yards below me and they were heading right for those trees. After the does went into this group of trees I side-hilled away from the buck and above the does. As I started to move down the shale rock canyon, I stopped to glass where the uck had gone. He had came across a drainage to where 7 more does were, which I did not see earlier.
Once all of them dropped into the drainage and were out of sight, I moved down the far side of the hill to stay out of the line of sight of the deer. I got to a ledge looking into the small valley in the bottom of the canyon and was heart broken to see no deer at all. I thought to myself, "I may have passed them on there way down".
Well, that is what happened. There were 3 eight foot rock formations in between me and the drainage. I walked to the first one and peeked over it into the drainage. There were all the does and my buck---he was feeding away at 120 yards. This 2 hour stalk was now near the end.
I got a good rest and waited for him to turn broadside. It seemed like forever, but he finally turned. One shot from my Remington .270 and he dropped right there and rolled into the creek about 10 yards below him. This was my first buck I had ever taken, and he was near perfect---a 20" wide 4x4 with 3 inch eyeguards and he scored 156-3/8."