With the guide season winding down and the football season now in full swing, I've made huge strides in completing the Cave. I picked up the mount on the right yesterday and added it to my collection. The deer on the left was the first deer I ever shot with my bow. It weighed in at 215 lbs. after hanging for three days, which is pretty damn impressive. The deer on the right was shot last year. I never weighed it but the neck on that deer was a full two inches bigger than the first and it was shot well before the rut.
The rack wasn't all that impressive but still cool so I did a European of them and swapped it for the biggest deer my dad shot while he was alive. Those antlers were mounted on a plaque that hung in our basement when I was a kid. We liked to play kick-ball down there so the antlers took quite a beating. I actually tried remounting them several times as a kid but never got them to look right. About 20 years ago, we did have a taxidermist mount the horns on a deer I shot in Wisconsin but the body was too small for the rack and the guy did a horrible job. These guys at Trails West in Helena definitely did it justice. So the body was from the deer I shot last year but the antlers are a remount from some 40 years ago. It's hard to tell in the picture but when you compare the two, you can really see how different whitetails from different parts of the country can look. Plus, the deer I shot last year was and old, old deer that might not have lasted much longer.
I still have a little work to do but it is comfortable and it does reflect the boys in this family. (Notice what's on the big screen? The king of man caves; the Dan Patrick studio in Milford, CT.)
The house is coming together and since I don't like to spend much time in the woods during the opening week of the rifle season out here in Montana, we'll be on to the next phase of the house, which is the kitchen. Eighteen boxes of cabinets are scheduled to show up today...
Keep 'em where they live...
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