For mule deer I hunted a few spots that I remembered as a kid and was amazed at how many young bucks there were. The first day out I saw 7 bucks and all of them were fork horns. The 2nd day out I saw 12 bucks, one of them was a decent 3x4 and there were 2 very small 4x4's and the rest were fork horns. I saw plenty of deer each day but nothing even close to what I was looking for. I even thought about taking the decent 3x4 that I saw because the rest of the bucks I had seen were all so young. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to shoot a doe or a fork horn on the last day of the hunt just to fill my tag.
On the 3rd day out I didn't see near as many deer as the previous 2 days. There were fewer hunters out so maybe they weren't moving around as much from the pressure but by 10:00 AM I had only seen 6 does. I watched the does for a while to see what they did (I thought they might lead me to some bedding areas) and after a while I stood up to start walking back to the pickup and I saw horns in the ravine below me! I quickly sat back down and moved around to get some cover between us and checked it out. This was by far the largest deer I had seen so far and I knew if I could get in position to take the shot I was going to try. I had already checked the yardage to the bottom of that ravine and it was 175 yards so definetly within range already. I just had to get setup where I had a clear shot at him. I moved farther down on the hill and laid down on the hill with my rifle resting on my thigh. It made a pretty steady rest and about that time he presented me with a perfect broadside shot and I squeezed the trigger. He immediately whirled and started running away down the ravine. I couldn't believe that I'd missed!! I had already chambered another round and aimed my rifle to where he would have to cross an open spot in the ravine about 75 yards further down. I was trying to steady myself and get ready for what was going to be a difficult shot when I heard him falling down to the bottom of the ravine kicking up some rocks and shale. After that it got quiet. He didn't ever come into the open spot so I moved down to where he had run. He was lying in some brush, I had hit him perfectly behind the shoulder with a double lung shot. The exit wound was barely the size of a quarter with 175 grain Federal Core Lokt ammo so it must have not even hit a rib. When I boned him out I had barely hit the offside shoulder muscle but I don't think the bullet hit any bones.
I checked my gps and it was right at 3/4 of a mile back to the truck with a 400' elevation change. Uphill of course! I boned him out into some plastic garbage bags and hauled them 1 at a time up to the truck in my backpack. 3 miles of roundtrips back and forth to the pickup and my hunting was done.
One other interesting thing was that the deer had warts. Some were larger than a golf ball. I took it to the fish and game department and they said that the meat would be fine and that it was ugly but other than that everything should be fine. The deer had quite a bit of fat on it and the meat looked good so I'm going to go ahead and eat it.
It wasn't a trophy buck by some peoples standards, but it was the largest that I've ever shot so I was pretty happy. It was a little over 21" wide (inside spread) and a little over 21" tall on the rear main beams. I'm definetly going to do a european style mount on it, I don't think anyone would want to look at those warts on a daily basis!
Overally I was very happy with the week of hunting. Both the Deer and the Antelope were larger than any that I had shot as a kid growing up in the area hunting for 6 years, but we never really hunted for horns back then, we were hunting to put meat on the table.
I'm not sure if it takes a good hunter to cash in on a mature animal on public land or if it is just luck, or persistence, especially when you can't really scout the area beforehand to know where the big ones live. I put in 10+ miles of walking each day with some of it on some pretty rough terrain and I think that is what helped me this time. It is amazing the number of hunters that were out there just driving back and forth on the trails hoping a deer would cross in front of them. On one day I was within 75 yards of 2 guys hunting on horseback and I was walking a pretty steady pace and they never even saw me with my flourescent orange on!
But when it all comes down to it I think a lot of it still comes down to luck. I was happy to be lucky on this trip!
That's my report. Nathan
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