The cape is at the Taxidermist!!!

Well, the cape is at the taxidermist!

Hunted hard on opening day in New Mexico, ended up putting 9 miles on my boots according to my gps. I was mainly hunting 2 sections of land that were between some crop circles to the south and a couple circles to the north. This area is generally referred to as the sand hills and it pretty much lives up to it's name. Plenty of sand and plenty of hills! I never did think to just take a picture of the terrain I was hunting in, but it really was some neat country.

I was worried going into the hunt that it would be more of a "shoot" than a "hunt". I had visions of going over there and getting out by a crop circle of alfalfa or peppers and using my spotting scope to pick out the best buck and then moving in on it and closing the deal with my 7mm Remington Magnum. That was not the case at all!

I pulled our travel trailer over there and spent the night so I could be ready to go early in the morning on opening day. I set my alarm for 5:00am and was at a spot that I had picked out when I visited the weekend before at 5:30 waiting for shooting light. The deer clear out of the crop fields long before daylight so the idea is to pick a spot between the fields and their bedding areas and catch them heading back to their beds in the morning. The prime time for deer movement is early in the morning until about a half hour after sunrise. I did see some deer, but only 5 does and one small buck, but nothing even close to what I was looking for.

Around 8:30am I started walking to see if I could find any promising spots to be sitting the next morning and 5 miles later I was back at the truck. I moved to a different spot on the east side of the property around lunchtime and found a nice tall hill that gave me a good view of the surrounding area. I bumped 3 does near the hill and thought it might be a good place to eat lunch and see if I could see anything moving. I ate lunch and got restless, so I put my backpack back on and started walking, looking for sign and thinking I might bump some more deer out of their beds, maybe even a good buck. No such luck, but I put another 3 miles on my boots according to my gps. Between the sand and the hills, I was getting pretty tired by the time I made it back to the truck this time and decided that my evening hunt wasn't going to involve as much walking!

I went up to the north edge of the property thinking I might catch some deer moving into the alfalfa fields before it got too dark. I sat down around 2:00pm and sunset wasn't until 4:50 so I brought a book along to read to pass the time. Around 4:30 things started looking interesting, but I didn't see anything moving. At sunset I wasn't very optimistic, and I got distracted by the sunset and took some pictures with my camera. I'm not a good enough photographer to really do it much justice (and I was using a little cannon point and shoot camera), but it really was a beautiful sunset.

After taking several pictures (I did disable the flash), I looked around and thought I saw a deer standing there looking at me a couple hundred yards away. I carefully picked my binoculars up and sure enough, it was a deer, and it was a buck! We had a stare off contest for what seemed like forever but was probably only 3 or 4 minutes, and then he started coming my way. I was tucked up under a bush and in full camo except for my hat so I guess he couldn't see me very well. It was pushing legal shooting light, and I could see that he was a decent buck, his antlers were as wide as his ears (generally considered 24" for a muley) and pretty tall, but they weren't very heavy and I could only count 3 tines on one side so I ended up passing on him. He moved off to my west toward the alfalfa field and I waited 10 or 15 minutes until it was pretty dark and then stumbled back through the sand hills to the alfalfa field and then back to the truck. The gps showed a measly 1 mile on my boots on that trip for a total of 9 miles for the day. I was tired!

I was in bed by 8:00pm and set my alarm for 4:30am the next morning. I was going to go back to the big hill on the east side of the property and see if I could catch some deer moving through back to their bedding areas. It was overcast and foggy and I couldn't see much past 200 yards for the first hour or so, but it started to clear up a little and I had pretty good visibility around sunrise at 6:15. After 2 hours on the hill I still hadn't seen a thing. It was quiet and things just seemed dead. I was second guessing myself on passing that buck the night before, and I was really starting to think I should have taken him. Coulda, shoulda, woulda...

I decided to start walking instead of just sitting there, and about 300 yards to the west I bumped 3 does out of their beds. The predominate wind is from the southwest and pretty much all the deer I had bumped from their beds were on hillsides facing north. I checked out a spot that I had seen from the hill that looked promising, but didn't see much sign there. Went over the ridge and saw a spot on a north facing hillside that looked pretty deery. Some good brush at just about the right spot. Started walking toward it and about 100 yards away from the brush, HE popped up out of some grass. He was only about 50 yards away and it was pretty easy to tell right away he was a shooter.

He was looking straight at me, but I didn't want to wait for a better angle, because once an older buck like this one starts moving, they generally don't stop until they are long gone. I just dropped to a knee, pulled up and shot. He just stood there. I automatically chamber another round every time I fire, so I shot again and hit him solid. He struggled for a few seconds and then went down. I was surprised that I missed from 50 yards, but chalked it up to nerves. I called my wife and told her I had a big buck down, but I didn't know how big.

It all happened so fast I didn't have a chance to take my backpack off or anything. It's kind of funny that I've been collecting all these gadgets (range finder, gps, removable bi-pod, spotting scope, etc.) and when it comes down to actually shooting something it seems like I rarely if ever end up using them. This was just a bam, bam transaction. From the time the deer stood up to the time he was on the ground was probably only 10 to 15 seconds. When I caped him out it turns out I didn't miss with the first shot, but it might as well have been a miss. It was a through and through flesh wound on his right shoulder that would have hurt for a while, but almost certainly wouldn't have been a fatal wound. Hard to believe that I made a bad shot from that distance, and even harder to believe that he didn't even flinch or jump or run when I hit him with that first shot, but I'm sure glad he stuck around and let me get that second shot off!

5 minutes later I walked over to him and he was BIG! 6x6! He definitely is an older deer and his antlers have great character.Tailgate tape job has him at 181 7/8! Biggest deer I've ever killed by far. (My 2007 Muley was 145") I caped him out and quartered him on the spot, and his quarters, backstraps and some neck meat wouldn't all fit in one cooler! He was easily over 250lbs on the hoof. He's at the taxidermist now, but he said he would let me have the antlers back and his jawbones until he gets the cape back from the tannery. I'll score him again when I get the antlers back now that my hands aren't shaking and I'll send the lower incisors off to the lab to get a solid age on him. My gut feel has him at about 6 or 7 years old.

The only negative was that since I was hunting by myself, I was using my backpack for a tripod and my camera on a timer. I've used the timer before and the pictures turned out fine in the past. On the viewfinder the pictures looked okay, but it turns out that the camera was focusing on some blades of grass right in front of the camera and not on me and the deer. You can get a general idea from the pictures, but I sure wish they turned out better. I know to clear the area in front of the camera better in the future.

The focus on this one is better, my head is just chopped off!

I stopped by the house to unhitch the travel trailer before heading into town to meet the taxidermist to drop him off, so we took the opportunity to get a picture with Eli. He thought it was pretty neat! He doesn't refer to it as shooting a deer, he calls it "booming" a deer. So according to him, I "boomed a big deer"!

I did recover the bullet and was pretty impressed that it had lived up to it's advertising. I was shooting Winchester E-tips and they advertise 90% weight retention and good expansion. I found the bullet just inside the skin right next to the right hindquarter when I was quartering it out. The bullet had traveled about 3 feet to get where it was at and looked just like the ones in the advertisements. The rifling marks from the barrel were very distinct on the black bullet.

Well, that's about it for this novel. Overall I would have to say it was a VERY successful hunt.

When I took it into the taxidermist he said that was a deer of a lifetime and it is true so far for me. I don't think I'll quit hunting though!

I'm actually planning on going hunting on my own property toward the end of this week. I don't think there are any deer close to that size on my property, but there are a few on my hit list that I would like to see in person. A 150" whitetail would be about the equivalent to a 180" mule deer and I have a couple bucks that might be pushing that mark. Having a buck like this at the taxidermist will make it easier to pass up that 130" 3 1/2 year old if I see him though!

That's it for now. Nathan