Well I’m back from New Mexico with a nice mature mule deer. This was an interesting hunt because I really wasn’t sure what my expectations were on what kind of deer I was willing to shoot. I usually go into a hunt with an idea of what size of animal it is going to take to get me to pull the trigger, but after putting all my focus on my elk hunt this year, I really hadn’t had much time to think about my mule deer hunt.
I stayed at my friend’s farm like I did last year, but this year since I had a public land tag and they were going to be hunting there place I decided to hunt on the neighbor’s state land instead of hunting on their place. I logged a lot of miles on my gps and saw lots of deer, but no real monsters. There should be some pretty good hunting for several years to come based on the number of good young bucks that I saw though.
Opening day was Saturday and I spent most of it walking. I hadn’t scouted out the area I was going to hunt and based on my interpretation of the hunting regulations I’m not sure I really could scout that area because it is state leased lands, so I slept in until 6:00 AM and started walking just a few minutes before shooting light. I was a little worried about my feet because of the blisters from the elk hunt, but I bought some new inserts for my boots that seem like they are really going to help and I had the bottom of my feet nearly covered in moleskin and they held up really well. It really was amazing how much easier it was to hike at 4,000 feet elevation instead of 8,000 feet and on some nice up and down sand hills instead of loose steep mountains. I put in more miles that day than any day on my elk hunt and I never felt out of breath or like I needed to stop and rest to keep from having a heart attack! I ended up putting in 16 miles in 2 days per my gps, but it wasn't anything compared to the elk hunt last week.
Saw one nice shooter buck on Saturday, but didn't get the deal closed on him. Saw 30+ does and fawns that morning along with 12 bucks and saw 13 does and fawns and 2 bucks in a different area that evening. A couple of the bucks were tempting in the 150" maybe 160" class that I could have shot, but they were pretty easy to pass on opening day. The buck I wanted to shoot, but couldn't close the deal on was probably pushing 180" as a clean mainframe 5x5 with good deep forks and around 28" wide. Not super tall, but a real nice deer.
The daughter of the people who are letting me park my travel trailer on their farm killed a crazy looking buck with a massive spike on one side that measured 9" circumference at the base today. I helped them quarter it up and get it iced down in a cooler. I'm going to use my beetles to clean the skull for her so she can do a European mount on it.
On Sunday I decided that I needed to leave out earlier so I could have the sun come up to my back instead of hunting into the sun so I set my alarm for 5:00 AM which was 4:00 AM with the daylight savings change. I was out walking in the dark at about 4:30 and got a little over 2 miles in before it started getting close to shooting light. I got to the top of the nearest sandhill and watched for a while. I saw some bucks about 600 yards off and a couple of them were fighting pretty good, not just your normal sparring match. I decided to move in on them and get a closer look. A few route changes here and there and I was less than 200 yards and watching them. Turned out they were the same 3 bucks that I had seen the day before in almost the same location. One of them was a really nice 5x5 that was tall, but not very wide yet. He will be a really nice buck next year if he makes it. The other two were wider but one was a 3x4 and the other was a 3x3. I watched them for a while and decided to try my luck elsewhere.
Since those bucks were in the same spot as the day before I decided to go back where I had seen the shooter buck the day before. I saw a few does on the way and another nice 5x5 that needed another year. I happened to watch him going into some brush to bed down and even though I saw him go in there it took me a while to find him again once he bedded down. I was around 100 yards away from him and he ended up bedding down with his back to me and his face into the wind which I thought was odd.
I altered my route to go around where he was bedded so I didn’t blow him out and spook anything else and instead blew out 5 does that were on the other side of the hill. Some of the does and fawns seem to just stop and stare at you from 50 yards away and then slowly move off, but these didn’t like something and one blew pretty hard even though I was downwind from them. They moved off 400 yards or so and stopped then slowly moved off. As I was watching them I saw a nice buck with deep forks. I backed up to the other side of the hill and started moving around it. I had to go closer to the buck that had bedded down, but if I blew him out he would go away from where the nice buck I saw was. He stayed put and I moved around and found that there wasn’t just one buck where the does had gone by, but two. Both looked pretty good.
I watched for a while and ranged them and they were 286 yards off. The first one I had seen had nice deep forks and was a very pretty 5x5. A few of his tines almost looked like they were webbed together at the bottom of the forks. He was right at his ears on his inside spread and overall a pretty nice buck. Probably right at 160”. The other buck was noticeably bigger and older and looked crazy tall. His fronts weren’t much, and I never did get to see him turn his head enough to get an idea of his spread, but I was going to struggle to decide which of these bucks deserved a bullet.
After watching a while I decided that I could back out and get closer to them. I went back around the hill and ended up walking within 30 yards of where the first buck was bedded down. I kept expecting him to bust out of there like a freight train, but he never did. The brush he was bedded in was really thick and I never did actually see him in the brush as I walked by, but I sure never saw him leave and am pretty sure he was in there the entire time.
I ended up on another hill and this time I was right at 200 yards away from the 2 bucks. I probably watched them for 15 minutes this time and still had no clue which one I wanted to shoot. The younger 5x5 was dozing hard and his head would droop down as he dozed off into la la land. One thing I thought was interested was how close together they were bedded. They couldn’t have been more than a couple feet apart from each other using the same piece of sagebrush for shade. I debated on blowing a cow call or something to see if I could get them to stand up for a shot and ended up deciding that I was going to try to move in closer. They were bedded down for the duration and weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I backed out and went around the side of the hill and started moving in on them. When I was up on the hill I made sure I had the spot they were at identified so I would be able to get about 100 yards away and decide what I wanted to do once I was there, but as I moved over toward them, the sandhill ridges started looking all alike. I started to second guess myself and which ridge they should be on when the younger 5x5 stood up about 25 yards away from me. After a split second, he turned and ran straight away and then the older buck stood and ran all in one smooth motion without offering me a shot when he first stood up. Somewhere in there I decided I wanted to shoot the older buck even if he wasn’t going to score as well as the younger one.
They were both running almost dead away from me, but then they angled just a little bit to the left and I thought I had an opening to squeeze a shot in. It was about a 100 yard shot and I took the shot offhand. I recovered from the shot and cycled the bolt and looked down a split second for my brass, and when I looked up I didn’t see him. The younger buck was still out ahead and I cow called with my diaphragm and he stopped and turned broadside at 150 yards and stared at me. I kept scanning for the older buck, but he had disappeared. After what seemed like a minute the younger buck started off again and I headed after them. I saw a white patch in the sagebrush, but it didn’t look like a deer so I was still thinking I must have missed and the older buck must have cleared on out before the younger one somehow. As I got closer, the white spot looked like a deer’s nose and sure enough, it was the older buck, piled up in the sagebrush. He was down for the count.
The bullet had entered his left side just in front of his hindquarter. I looked for an exit in his front but couldn’t find one. When I caped him out I found my bullet right under the skin in front of his right shoulder. It turned out to be a perfect (lucky) shot and he must have dropped so fast that I never saw it happen. You could see that he had plowed up some sagebrush as he fell, and actually ended up almost on his back with his nose up in the air and his antler caught in one last clump of sage.
I wasn’t disappointed when I got to him. He was for sure a mature buck and although he wasn’t going to score very well, I was happy with him. His backs go almost straight up and look even taller than they really are. His is missing an eye guard and a fork on his right side, but I can live with that. I’m curious to pull his jawbone and see what it looks like. I’m guessing he is a 5 ½ year old or older.
Here are the glory pics. I learned my lesson last year on the self timed pictures and actually made sure the camera was focusing on the deer and not on a clump of grass in front of the camera this time.
Here he is by himself.
I stayed at my friend’s farm like I did last year, but this year since I had a public land tag and they were going to be hunting there place I decided to hunt on the neighbor’s state land instead of hunting on their place. I logged a lot of miles on my gps and saw lots of deer, but no real monsters. There should be some pretty good hunting for several years to come based on the number of good young bucks that I saw though.
Opening day was Saturday and I spent most of it walking. I hadn’t scouted out the area I was going to hunt and based on my interpretation of the hunting regulations I’m not sure I really could scout that area because it is state leased lands, so I slept in until 6:00 AM and started walking just a few minutes before shooting light. I was a little worried about my feet because of the blisters from the elk hunt, but I bought some new inserts for my boots that seem like they are really going to help and I had the bottom of my feet nearly covered in moleskin and they held up really well. It really was amazing how much easier it was to hike at 4,000 feet elevation instead of 8,000 feet and on some nice up and down sand hills instead of loose steep mountains. I put in more miles that day than any day on my elk hunt and I never felt out of breath or like I needed to stop and rest to keep from having a heart attack! I ended up putting in 16 miles in 2 days per my gps, but it wasn't anything compared to the elk hunt last week.
Saw one nice shooter buck on Saturday, but didn't get the deal closed on him. Saw 30+ does and fawns that morning along with 12 bucks and saw 13 does and fawns and 2 bucks in a different area that evening. A couple of the bucks were tempting in the 150" maybe 160" class that I could have shot, but they were pretty easy to pass on opening day. The buck I wanted to shoot, but couldn't close the deal on was probably pushing 180" as a clean mainframe 5x5 with good deep forks and around 28" wide. Not super tall, but a real nice deer.
The daughter of the people who are letting me park my travel trailer on their farm killed a crazy looking buck with a massive spike on one side that measured 9" circumference at the base today. I helped them quarter it up and get it iced down in a cooler. I'm going to use my beetles to clean the skull for her so she can do a European mount on it.
On Sunday I decided that I needed to leave out earlier so I could have the sun come up to my back instead of hunting into the sun so I set my alarm for 5:00 AM which was 4:00 AM with the daylight savings change. I was out walking in the dark at about 4:30 and got a little over 2 miles in before it started getting close to shooting light. I got to the top of the nearest sandhill and watched for a while. I saw some bucks about 600 yards off and a couple of them were fighting pretty good, not just your normal sparring match. I decided to move in on them and get a closer look. A few route changes here and there and I was less than 200 yards and watching them. Turned out they were the same 3 bucks that I had seen the day before in almost the same location. One of them was a really nice 5x5 that was tall, but not very wide yet. He will be a really nice buck next year if he makes it. The other two were wider but one was a 3x4 and the other was a 3x3. I watched them for a while and decided to try my luck elsewhere.
Since those bucks were in the same spot as the day before I decided to go back where I had seen the shooter buck the day before. I saw a few does on the way and another nice 5x5 that needed another year. I happened to watch him going into some brush to bed down and even though I saw him go in there it took me a while to find him again once he bedded down. I was around 100 yards away from him and he ended up bedding down with his back to me and his face into the wind which I thought was odd.
I altered my route to go around where he was bedded so I didn’t blow him out and spook anything else and instead blew out 5 does that were on the other side of the hill. Some of the does and fawns seem to just stop and stare at you from 50 yards away and then slowly move off, but these didn’t like something and one blew pretty hard even though I was downwind from them. They moved off 400 yards or so and stopped then slowly moved off. As I was watching them I saw a nice buck with deep forks. I backed up to the other side of the hill and started moving around it. I had to go closer to the buck that had bedded down, but if I blew him out he would go away from where the nice buck I saw was. He stayed put and I moved around and found that there wasn’t just one buck where the does had gone by, but two. Both looked pretty good.
I watched for a while and ranged them and they were 286 yards off. The first one I had seen had nice deep forks and was a very pretty 5x5. A few of his tines almost looked like they were webbed together at the bottom of the forks. He was right at his ears on his inside spread and overall a pretty nice buck. Probably right at 160”. The other buck was noticeably bigger and older and looked crazy tall. His fronts weren’t much, and I never did get to see him turn his head enough to get an idea of his spread, but I was going to struggle to decide which of these bucks deserved a bullet.
After watching a while I decided that I could back out and get closer to them. I went back around the hill and ended up walking within 30 yards of where the first buck was bedded down. I kept expecting him to bust out of there like a freight train, but he never did. The brush he was bedded in was really thick and I never did actually see him in the brush as I walked by, but I sure never saw him leave and am pretty sure he was in there the entire time.
I ended up on another hill and this time I was right at 200 yards away from the 2 bucks. I probably watched them for 15 minutes this time and still had no clue which one I wanted to shoot. The younger 5x5 was dozing hard and his head would droop down as he dozed off into la la land. One thing I thought was interested was how close together they were bedded. They couldn’t have been more than a couple feet apart from each other using the same piece of sagebrush for shade. I debated on blowing a cow call or something to see if I could get them to stand up for a shot and ended up deciding that I was going to try to move in closer. They were bedded down for the duration and weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I backed out and went around the side of the hill and started moving in on them. When I was up on the hill I made sure I had the spot they were at identified so I would be able to get about 100 yards away and decide what I wanted to do once I was there, but as I moved over toward them, the sandhill ridges started looking all alike. I started to second guess myself and which ridge they should be on when the younger 5x5 stood up about 25 yards away from me. After a split second, he turned and ran straight away and then the older buck stood and ran all in one smooth motion without offering me a shot when he first stood up. Somewhere in there I decided I wanted to shoot the older buck even if he wasn’t going to score as well as the younger one.
They were both running almost dead away from me, but then they angled just a little bit to the left and I thought I had an opening to squeeze a shot in. It was about a 100 yard shot and I took the shot offhand. I recovered from the shot and cycled the bolt and looked down a split second for my brass, and when I looked up I didn’t see him. The younger buck was still out ahead and I cow called with my diaphragm and he stopped and turned broadside at 150 yards and stared at me. I kept scanning for the older buck, but he had disappeared. After what seemed like a minute the younger buck started off again and I headed after them. I saw a white patch in the sagebrush, but it didn’t look like a deer so I was still thinking I must have missed and the older buck must have cleared on out before the younger one somehow. As I got closer, the white spot looked like a deer’s nose and sure enough, it was the older buck, piled up in the sagebrush. He was down for the count.
The bullet had entered his left side just in front of his hindquarter. I looked for an exit in his front but couldn’t find one. When I caped him out I found my bullet right under the skin in front of his right shoulder. It turned out to be a perfect (lucky) shot and he must have dropped so fast that I never saw it happen. You could see that he had plowed up some sagebrush as he fell, and actually ended up almost on his back with his nose up in the air and his antler caught in one last clump of sage.
I wasn’t disappointed when I got to him. He was for sure a mature buck and although he wasn’t going to score very well, I was happy with him. His backs go almost straight up and look even taller than they really are. His is missing an eye guard and a fork on his right side, but I can live with that. I’m curious to pull his jawbone and see what it looks like. I’m guessing he is a 5 ½ year old or older.
Here are the glory pics. I learned my lesson last year on the self timed pictures and actually made sure the camera was focusing on the deer and not on a clump of grass in front of the camera this time.
Here he is by himself.
And a timed shot using my backpack as a tripod.
I caped him out and am going to give the cape to my taxidermist and do a european mount on him myself. The deer in that area are the fattest game animals I’ve ever seen. This guy had about 2” of fat on his back and you basically had to skin the fat off to get to his backstraps to cut them out. They are big bodied animals as well. I’m guessing this guy was pushing 250lbs live weight.I had right at 1 ¼ miles to pack him out and instead of killing myself I went ahead and did it in 2 loads. First load was ½ the meat plus my gun and everything I had in my pack (including a spotting scope), and then on the second trip I emptied out my pack and carried out the head and the other ½ of the meat. My friend came with me on the 2nd trip and although she didn’t help carry anything she was there for moral support and took some pictures of my packing out.
Here's a farther off shot showing some of the terrain.
That country doesn’t look like much, but it sure is packed with deer.Here’s a tailgate shot with the results of the weekend. The buck on the right is the crazy buck that the daughter of my friend shot on the first day. I nicknamed him “Igor”. The one on the left was shot by my friend’s brother. Real nice mainframe 5x5 with a kicker coming off his right G3. It scored right at 164”. My buck is in the middle and rough scored only 144”, but you can see that he looks to be the biggest of the bunch at first glance. I’m happy with him and I guess that’s the important thing.
This morning we took our traditional glory shots at the house with Eli. He thought it was a big one. I can’t wait for the days when he can go out with me on these hunts!
I was going to dress him in jeans this morning to take the pictures, but he was adamant that he wanted to be in all camo.
Overall a very successful hunt in my opinion. If I can close the deal on a nice whitetail on my hunting property here in Texas it will be pretty hard to top this year’s hunting season even with striking out on antelope.That's it for now. Nathan
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