3 and a half hours of flight from Toronto, we were at Calgary in the morning. You can see Calgary is a flat flat region. When you are driving, you will see endless of flatland from all direction.

From Calgary, we drove north to Red Deer for about 2 Hrs the turn west to the Rocky Mountain foothill areas.

My host is living about half an hour from Red Deer, and since weather reported that there were more than 6 inches of snow in our hunting area, so we decided to stay in his home for a night.

We were planned to hunt on horse back this year, but my host's horses didn't well trained enough. So we changed our plan to hunt Jackfish Lake, a provincial recreation area only 30 minutes away from our original hunt site.

We took off in the morning and cruised around the area for camp site and scouted a bit the first day and saw more than 10 deers! What a deer country! We are out numbered!

This is the uphill road we walked almost everyday to scout and hunt. It is only about 75 yards away from our camp site, but we needed to walk cross the little creek every time.

Next morning, we scouting on foot within one hour distance from our camp site, we found 3 separated clearings with tons of fresh tracks on a hill top and we planned to set 3 guys up there that night.

Bang! my buddy got his first Alberta buck and let go of a doe. What a night of hunt for him!

Day 2, I set up on the same spot my buddy got his buck. 4 does passed by 300 yards away with clear boardviews for more 2 minutes. I put them in the centre of my crosshair one by one, and my trigger finger moved to the trigger and left. I was in a perfect sitting shooting position and my 300wm was sighted in fot 300 yard shoots, but I was not travelling from Ontario to Alberta for a doe only, with the number of deers I saw in the past few day, I passed.

Day 3 and 4 I had a chances to intercept 4 does from 75 yards and 50 yards and again, I passed, but my host's son got his first Alberta doe that night!

Second deer, first doe of the camp.

Day 5, I went to a new spot. I climbed up a hilltop that over look 3 separate clearings. I picked a spot that half back from the slope which I can see only one and a half of those clearings, but my shooting ranges reduced from 300+ to 100-300 yards.

I sat in front of a falled tree. I'm facing downhill and the rising sun was behind me.I decided to stay there for 2 hours. It was 9:00am.

10:45am, I caught a movement from my right. Something black and small was walking on a fallen tree. It was so small I thought it was a groundhog or something. Since it was on my right, I had a hard time to move my rifle to the right side and check it out with my rifle scope but I finally made it (after it moved forward for another 75 yards). It was hiding in front of a fallen tree just like me. It's colour was perfectly blended in with the background. It was not a small animal! It was a deer and to be exact it was a young buck, the second buck I saw in this few days so far!

I carefully place my crosshair right on top of it's heart. It was about 100 yards. No wind. A bit downhill and the deer was facing a treeline 300 yards away. If my first shot didn't drop it, I would have a second chance for another shot. And I talked to myself that I want this little buck! So I squeezed the trigger.

and while I met my partner for help dragging the deer back to the road, I found out that my host got himself a doe just 10 minutes after me!!! So within 24 hours, our group got 3 deers!!!

so we have a FUN time to gut and skin them the following day...

Day 8, 3 of us from Ontario had a day off and followed our host to visit the area we supposed to hunt this year.

only 30 more minutes away, this little mountain holds tons of bears, deers and out trophy, mountain sheeps!

My host said he could actually count the number of mountain sheeps wandering on the cliffs.

But there are no truck access, only by horses or your own feet! We will carry our camping/hunting gears and horses with a horse trailer

and drive to the staging area of the mountain where we unload all our gears and put them on horses back and then UpWard, Ho! to the mountain!!

We also visited a little remote town named Nordegg on the way.

Brokeback Mountain? No, just father and son from our group. We had a nice steak lunch and cold beer. and chatted with an American hunter who just got a bull Moose!

9 days in the camp, I saw more than 50 deers (and if you cruise by truck you will see much more!).

Next year, when the horses are ready, we will go even deeper into the Rockies.

PigFish