Well, as forthcoming as I was about the exact location of where I hunted elk this year in New Mexico, I'm going to be the exact opposite in talking about where I hunted for mule deer. Unlike my elk hunt, there is still a chance I might be able to draw a tag for deer hunting in the same place next year and I don't want to reduce those odds of drawing any more than they already are going to be with the change in the New Mexico hunting laws next year.
After my New Mexico elk hunt went down to the last day, I didn't know if I was going to be able to spend as much time as I was planning on for my mule deer hunt. I had told myself that with the changes in the law and my drawing odds for this hunt going from about 40% to probably down to as low as 10% in future years that I needed to hunt the entire week and hold out for a monster, but I saw this guy and thought he looked big enough and decided that both the family and I would be better served with me tagged out and home instead of spending the next 5 days hunting.
I woke up at 5:30 and left out in the dark at 6:00 heading to where I shot my buck last year. I thought they had a good spot where I had jumped several deer everytime I had been there and expected the same this year. I got there right at shooting light and was surprised to only see 3 does hanging out in the sagebrush tucked in out of the wind. They are very hard to see and without scanning carefully with binoculars I would have never picked them out. I had jumped 5 deer just before shooting light on my way in but they were all does and a small forkhorn. The big groups of deer I had seen in this spot last year were somewhere else this year.
I watched for a while to see if anything else was moving, but everything seemed bedded down already and I decided to start moving. In the sandhills my hunting style is to try to get to a vantage point and see things moving at sunrise and sunset and then just keep moving the rest of the day and see if I can catch some deer bedded down out of the wind. The wind was picking up with gusts up to 30mph so it wasn't looking like a super pleasant day to be out walking the hills. As I was heading out I found a nice shed antler that was still in pretty good shape for this late in the year. It was pretty respectable, although the back tine wasn't forked where it should have been, but that is fairly common in this area.
I spotted another group of 4 does and they moved on off to the East so I followed them but tried to angle around where I would have the wind in my favor. The wind was pretty steady out of the southwest so I was trying to walk diagonally into the wind instead of having it blowing behind me.
I was up to about 6 miles on the boots by this time and trudging through some sand going to another area with a bunch of shinnery oak that looked like it might be promising. The area I was in didn't have any hills to speak of, but just a bunch of ups and downs maybe 10 to 15 feet of elevation. As I was trudging along I spotted a medium sized buck looking at me from about 50 yards away. He wasn't anything I wanted to shoot on opening morning so I didn't really try to be sneaky and pulled up my binoculars to get a really good look at him. About that time another buck stood up beside him and then another beside him and both of them were pretty good bucks and by the time I was able to pull the rifle off my shoulder and get it pointed in their direction there was about 25 deer making a bee line directly away from me. There were 2 nice bucks in the group and I couldn't figure out which was the better buck, but I was thinking either of them were probably shooters.
The group never offered a decent shot opportunity, but they weren't terribly spooked since I didn't go running after them or shoot at them so I decided to just try to keep going after them. A group of 5 does got split off from the main group and I was able to somewhat keep them in sight every 10 or 15 minutes while following them.
A mile or so later I was getting into the shinnery oak and just happen to catch a glimpse of a buck making his way to bed down in the shinnery. I put the sneak on him and got to within 25 yards before the game was up. He really didn't have a clue I was there, but I sat up a bit and let him see me while I tried to snap a couple pictures with my little point and shoot camera.
Not the best picture, but considering I was using a $100 point and shoot camera I thought it turned out pretty well and gives you a pretty good feel for how close I got to him before he decided to leave. Was a pretty fun little stalk.
I watched him go over the hill and then followed after him. I was trying to figure out if he was part of the larger group that just got separated, or just happened to be out there by himself. I then saw the group of 5 does again and thought they might be just the stragglers. I moved around some, saw the smaller buck again and then kept on walking the general direction I'd been headed the last several miles. I pulled my shooting sticks out of my backpack and was ready for some action. Just a little farther and I saw a large group of does. I didn't see the bucks with them, but this had to be the same group I had been chasing. Not sure if they saw me, but they were headed out to the south about 200 yards in front of me. The group got spread out and I saw the bucks coming down a hill a little farther away. This was the same group with the 2 large bucks in it.
I got sat down and put my rifle on my shooting sticks and got ready. They were all bunched up and there wasn't a chance for a shot and they were still moving. Last year I had carried my cow elk call with me and I had made some cow calls and gotten the deer to stop for me, but I had forgotten it this morning. I don't remember what I said, but I just screamed out a "hey", or something like that and the entire herd slowed to a stop and started looking at me. I have my rifle zeroed at 275 yards and I felt like they were pushing 300 yards away and still bunched up but I got a quick opening at the buck that I decided I wanted held right on him and pulled the trigger. Whack! It was a hit. The deer started running again, but the buck was struggling and getting left behind. He didn't go down so I chambered another round and aimed and fired again. The 2nd shot was a clean miss behind him. I hadn't compensated for the strong wind and missed him completely. I chambered another round and prepared to shoot again and he spun around and went down before I pulled the trigger. The other deer were still making their way over the next hill but he was down for the count.
I got my gear together and started over to where I saw him go down. I probably should have waited a while, but I had my rifle ready just in case he tried to get up. I got over to where he was and after looking for a minute or so I found him in some brush. He was still breathing, but I really didn't have a clean shot in the brush so I debated on what to do. He didn't seem to be suffering, but I didn't know where I had hit him so I decided I needed to put him down for good with a heart shot. I was less than 10 yards from him and had been watching him for a couple minutes and even saw him blink a few times, but as I moved around to get in front of him he saw me and jumped to his feet, turned around and started running directly away from me all in one quick movement. I pulled my rifle up to shoot him, but I had left my scope on maximum power and couldn't get him located quickly. He was obviously shot very far back as his left hind leg was broken. I hadn't compensated for the wind on the first shot either and it had pushed the bullet much farther back than where I was aiming.
He wasn't moving very fast and I didn't want to shoot him from behind again so I let him go. I looked where he had been laying down and was surprised to see very little blood. He ran about 100 yards up to a fenceline and laid back down. I snuck over to him again and this time was ready. I had my scope backed off to it's lowest setting and I got up on my knees about 25 yards away from him and when he stood up I shot him just behind the shoulder and he went down hard. I watched him and he was really struggling to breath. He was having a hard time holding his head up, but he just didn't want to die. I went ahead and chambered another round and shot him again, this time a little closer to the shoulder and a heart shot instead of a lung shot. He died right away on that shot.
That was the first time in a long time that the animal didn't die right away before I got close to them and it was pretty tough watching him from that close as he struggled to live. I'm not sure what I should have done differently, probably the big thing would have been to put my scope on the lowest power as I walked closer right at the start. Also I should have compensated for the wind better, it was a fairly long shot and the wind was blowing pretty hard, I didn't even think of it as I pulled the trigger and that resulted in a poorly placed shot right from the start.
Anyway, he was down and recovered and I was happy with the end result. As I started looking him over I realized that his left antler was a very close match to the shed that I had found earlier in the day. I put it up next to his antler and the resemblance was very strong. I would put about 95% odds that it was his shed antler from the year before. The first decent shed in 3 years that I found in the sandhills and it turns out to more than likely to be a match for the deer I end up shooting. Pretty cool.
Here's a few of the best pictures. It's always tough taking timed pictures off your backpack, but the wind had actually picked up and was now gusting over 40 mph. It actually blew the camera off the backpack several times before it was all said and done. I think the pictures still turned out decent though.
Here's a couple more pictures.
I scored him out and he looks a lot better than he actually scores. He lost a couple inches because his inside spread was more than his main beam, and loses 6 or 7 inches because he is missing his G3. Oh well, he looked good so I shot him. He was running with a buck that was shorter and narrower, but he had all his tines and would have probably scored better but I'm a sucker for the big tall frames. His G2's were both over 15".
The wind was miserable getting him cut up and ready to pack out. I hadn't done a good job sharpening my knifes after the elk hunt so that wasn't helping things either. The sand started blowing and it ended up close to a full blown sand storm before it was all said and done. Sand was blowing in my eyes, small sand dunes started building up around where I had set my pack, and worst of all it was blowing onto the meat while I was getting the deer quartered up. There was sand everywhere and sand burrs too. Ended up taking me a full hour to get him quartered up and I didn't end up saving the cape because I was just ready to get it done and get out of there.
According to the GPS it was 4 miles back to the truck but only 2 miles to a county road farther east so I talked my friend who was letting me park my trailer at their farm into driving over to pick me up. The only drawback was that what would have been a 6 mile walk was about a 20 mile drive so it didn't save a lot of time but it was going to save me 4 miles carrying out the deer. I loaded 1/2 the meat in my pack along with everything I already had in there and headed out to the road. My friend met me and we went back to get ice and the coolers out of my truck and walk back to get the last load.
Here's a picture of me carrying out the last load. It was half the meat plus the head. I really like my Eberlestock pack, it has now hauled out parts of 4 elk and 2 full deer in the last 2 years and done a great job.
When it was all said and done I ended up with 13 miles on the boots for the day according to the GPS. Kind of surprising was that it said I had 1,800' of elevation gain for the day as well. The graph looked like a heart monitor with constant the up down, up down, up down, of the sandhills. It seemed like a pretty easy day compared with most of the days that we were elk hunting though.
I think that about covers it. Not sure when or if I'll be able to spend much time hunting whitetails down on my property in Fisher county, but I'm hoping to get a couple days in at least. Season goes through the first week of January so maybe I'll get a few chances at it.
That's it for now. Nathan
1 comment:
Very nice.
Thanks for the RRA PP article
David Branson
Tucson
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