For FishingMagician.com, I'm Eric Granstrom. It sounds like the deer herds may have taken a bigger hit that first thought. Two pretty big snow winters in a row seems to have depleted the numbers quite a bit. Saturday, at the invitation of some Cashmere friends, I hunted an area near town where they said there'd been some legal bucks hanging around. I'm always up for an adventure and take pride in getting up and down some rugged terrain, but this was a little much. It must have been at least a 60-degree pitch on this hillside behind their place. Less than two minutes into the hunt, after struggling mightily up a short stretch of the hillside, I stopped to catch my breath and looked up to see a buck standing broadside, 75-yards away. I quickly raised my binoculars only to find they'd completely fogged up in the constant rain and being next to my hot, sweaty body. Thankfully my range-finder was clear. But, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't make it grow an extra point on one side. So I let it walk away. I saw 22 deer. It was a great hunt. Until next time, Good Fishing!