On November 8, 2019 Grandpa and I headed up Indian River. I was going to go hunting while Grandpa picked cranberries. We got to the first bridge at 9:30 am and went our separate ways. I headed up the river and Grandpa headed over to the muskeg where he was going to pick cranberries. We agreed to meet at the second bridge at 3:00 pm, if we did not run into each other before then.
I headed into the brush and followed the path that I normally do to get to the open timber that is back up the west fork of Indian River. I only saw a couple fresh sets of deer tracks while I was walking through the brush on my way to the open timber. I had brought a trail cam with me to set up in a spot just after I reached the open timber. It was just about 10:00 when I reached the open timber. As I was setting up the trail cam, I heard a few shots that sounded like they were coming from or near the muskeg that Grandpa was going to. A couple of the shots were from a bigger gun and the last few sounded to be from a smaller gun. I knew Grandpa didn’t have a gun with him and he and I had seen some fresh people tracks on the main trail on our way up, so I figured it must have been them shooting. I continued up the valley after I had set up the trail cam. Not to long after I had left the trail cam, I remembered that there had been some fungi on a tree next to it that I had wanted to take some photos of, so I turned around and headed back and took some photos of it. After I had taken some photos of it, I headed back up the valley. I had been walking for a while and came up to a dry creek bed that I would normally cross to continue up the valley. This time though, just as I was about to head down to cross the creek, I heard what sounded like a snort. I knew deer made that noise some times, so I walked along the edge of the creek to see if I could see what made that noise. After a few steps I looked between a couple of trees and saw not a deer but a Brown Bear walking down the trail towards me. I said “Hey Bear!” it stopped and was looking in my direction, so I clapped my hands a few times and it turned around and ran back up the trail and into the bushes. I stood there for a few moments and one of my legs started bouncing up and down like sewing machine. I decided that I was not going to walk up the trail, and I didn’t want to stand around there for too long since I wasn’t sure if the bear was going to come back, so I went and crossed the west fork of Indian river and continued up the valley on the other side. After about fifteen minutes or so, I saw a deer on the opposite side of the river. I slowly walked to a log that was close by to try and take a head shot. I got to the log and took the shot but missed. The deer ran behind tree, so I went over the log to try and see if I could see the deer. Just after I got over the log the deer came back out and this time I took a free handed shot at the shoulder and hit it. It lunged and went down behind a log. I quickly got across the river to the deer and started cleaning it. I have never cleaned a deer faster in my entire life than I did that one. Since the bear had run back in the general direction of the deer and I was not sure how close the bear was, I did not want to be by the gut pile any longer than I had to. As soon as I was done gutting the deer, I carried the deer back across the river to put it in my backpack. While I was doing this I continually checked to see if the bear had come out to the gut pile, but I never saw it, so once the deer was in my pack I headed further up the valley.
After a while I crossed back across the river and continued to look for another deer. Since the one I had gotten was fairly small, I figured I could handle another one. I had been walking up the Gavan Hill side of the river for a bit, when I saw a deer standing in the trees behind a couple of bushes. I raised the rifle and shot; the deer took off and disappeared behind a tree, but it kept its tail down so I was pretty sure I had hit it. I tried to reposition myself so I could see the deer fall. As I was doing so I saw a deer. I figured it was the one I had already hit so I just stood there. It took off like nothing was wrong and disappeared behind a tree though, so I decided I must have missed it when I shot at it the first time. I walked up more to see if I could see it again and get a second shot. I walked up a bit more, saw a deer standing there and shot. That time I knew I had hit it. As I was walking up to it I saw a deer standing there. I left it alone since I only wanted to try to pack out two not three. Just after the deer trotted away, I came up and happened to look side ways around a tree and saw a deer lying there. I knew that I had not gone far enough to get to the last one I had shot at and hit so I figured this must have been the first one I had shot at and thought I missed. That meant there had been at least three deer there not one like I had first thought. Now instead of have two deer to pack out like I had planned I had three. I set my backpack down with the first one and took the rifle and walked up to find the third one. I found the third one laying down and was still alive, so I finished it off and dragged it back to the first one. I got both of them gutted and started packing them out. I planned to turn one of them into a backpack, have one across the front, and drag the third. It turns out that it is harder than I thought, so I ended up packing one on my back and dragging a second one behind me for a short ways then sat them down and went back and dragged the third one. After I had gotten them across the river, I stopped to eat lunch since it was just after 12:00. The distance I had left to the muskeg that Grandpa was picking cranberries in would have taken me probably 45 minutes to an hour to walk if I was only carrying a medium sized deer or something smaller. It took me three hours just to get to the edge of the muskegy area with the three deer. Since it was 3:00pm when I got there and I was supposed to meet Grandpa at the second bridge by 3:00, I stashed two of the deer and carried the third with me. I got to the second bridge by about 3:30. Grandpa was there waiting for me. I told him we had a situation. He asked what it was and I told him that I had accidentally shot three deer and two of them were still up at the upper end of the muskeg. We stashed our packs by the trail and headed back up there to get them since it was getting close to being dark. It gets dark about 4-4:30 this time of year. Grandpa and I got back to the lower end of the muskeg with the two deer just as the last of the light was starting to fade. Then we walked into the woods and it was like someone turned out the lights. I could just barely see the ground under my feet. All I could see around me were shapes. Just after we got into the woods, we stopped and rested on a log. Grandpa gave me an apple to eat so that I could get some fluids in me since I had drank the last of my water over three hours earlier. I felt better after I eating the apple, and after we rested there for a few more minutes we started off into the dark woods.
We stumbled around in the dark woods for over an hour before I decided to try to use the light from my phone screen to help us through the woods. We had already left the deer that Grandpa had been carrying because he was having too hard of a time staying balanced with it on his back in the black dark woods. It was just after 6:00pm when we finally made it back to the main trail – well down from where we had planned to catch it. After we got back to the trail, my spirits improved quite a bit. As we were walking down the trail and crossing a bridge that went over a creek that had salmon in it, we heard a big branch crack. Grandpa hollered “hey bear”. When he got to me he said he was pretty sure that was a bear, so we started talking louder. After a while I saw a light coming towards us. We got to it and found it was dad. After we told him our packs were still up the trail, he gave us a flash light and continued up the trail to get the packs. Grandpa and I continued down the trail with the flash light which was nice. Once we got to the car I dropped the deer off, rested a bit, then headed back up the trail to help dad with the packs. I meet him a bit before the bench muskeg. I got the backpack with my deer in it from him then headed back down the trail.
We got home just about 7:30pm and after we got all our wet stuff off and hung up it was 8:00pm. Even though I had rain gear on I was soaked. I could just about ring water out of my socks even though I had not gone over my boots and my rain pants were on the outside of them. The water was probably from sweating, and I didn’t even feel like I was sweating that much. Although after a while of carrying the deer, I just stopped noticing or caring about things like that. I had gotten some devil club thorns in my hand and I hadn’t felt a thing. I was up until 11:30pm cleaning the two deer.
The next morning at about 8:30am Grandpa and I left to go find the deer that we had left up there in the woods. We knew roughly where it was but not exactly where. We got to the second bridge and started looking for it since we were pretty sure it was up the river from there. I remembered that it seemed like we had left it down in a low spot by the river, so I headed over towards the river to look and Grandpa walked up the trail that went to the muskeg we had carried them out of. After a couple of minutes Grandpa said he found it. I walked over and there it was laying on the ground not even a 100 feet from the main trail and the part of the trail that we had intended to come out on. We however, had come out a couple hundred yards from there. We had to have walked across the there to get to where we had got onto the trail, but we couldn’t see that we were on the trail in the dark woods. I picked the deer up and carried it back to the car, then we headed home.
