Well, this seems appropriate for the FF thread. This buck finally came back home to me last week after ~25 years away. I think I have posted a few pics of him over the years here but now he’s home again.
In the late 90’s my uncle put me in for the J12 hunt, and somehow, I drew it (10 total tags). Looking back on it now, we didn’t really know what we were doing. He had done a lot of hunting in his life but mostly waterfowl and upland hunting. We didn’t have tripods or rangefinders or fancy European glass, and I hunted with a pump action Remington 760 chambered in .270 (I still have it!). He had me shoot a couple rounds, offhand, at a piece of cardboard and that was the extent of my training. Neither of us had any concept of score or put any thought into age class or anything like that. But the deer herd was in good shape back then and we pretty quickly got an idea of what a “big” buck was. I remember driving around Round Valley in his old jeep and seeing big bucks all over the place. The hunt is in December and the mountains had already received snowfall that year and all the deer were down low. I can still see in my mind the image of two big bucks walking through the low brush and yellow grass as we drove around in the days before the hunt.
On opening morning we found this buck pretty quickly and both agreed he was worthy of the tag. I’m not real proud of how it all came together but as a 13 or 14 year old… I just didn’t know any better. I was told to shoot offhand, and I broke his leg. Amazingly, I was able to stay with the buck as he lead us through the rolling low country and eventually he turned around and headed all the way back to the dirt road we were parked on and bedded in the creek where I ended it with a neck shot. It was a real rodeo with another group shooting at the deer after I had shot it and while we were close behind. It all ended well though and the buck died mere yards from the road so it was pretty straightforward getting him in the back of the jeep. As we drove back towards the pavement other parties wanted to see the deer which lead to the above Polaroid, I have no idea who that little girl is but she wanted to be in the picture.
We took the buck to the Meat House, which is still there. The owner is an avid hunter. He fairly critiqued my shooting but was very kind and processed the deer for pickup the following day. I remember reading an article he was quoted in about the hunting up there in more recent years, maybe in Game and Fish?
Fast forward a few years and I was in high school chasing girls. My uncle had built a little cabin on a 99 year lease of a little parcel he got on Rancho El Topo in Mexico in the mountains southeast of La Rumarosa. He wanted to put the deer up in his cabin and it was, perhaps, not the most popular thing with the girls…. So I let him take it on the condition that I could have it back whenever I wanted. Well, as things go in life, you get busy, time marches on and all of a sudden it’s been a couple of decades. He died in 2017, and we actually went down there for a little memorial weekend at the ranch after he died. At that time it didn’t feel right taking it from the cabin. We still had access to it and we were talking about going down there regularly. But again — dogs, hobbies, work, kids…. Time continued to pass and we weren’t making trips there. There were also some safety concerns from time to time with cartel activity and robberies out on the remote roads we used to get to the ranch.
A family friend was making regular trips down there though and he stayed in touch with the family that owned Ranch El Topo. I see him regularly because he lives on my street. I got a call from him last week and he told me he had “a deer friend” that I would want to see. I knew exactly what he meant and I thanked him profusely and told him I would pick it up the following day. When I saw him he told me that he had gotten a call from the family that owned the ranch and they had told him they were locking the gates and that no one would have access to the ranch anymore. He hooked up his trailer the next day and drove down there and got all of his stuff and he swung by my uncle’s cabin and grabbed my deer and a few other things. We had talked about the deer a few times but I never asked him to get it for me because he has global entry and he didn’t want to risk losing it. But he knew how important it was to me and in this rushed situation he grabbed it for me knowing this was likely the last chance. I didn’t even know all of this was going on or I would have gone with him. He knew he was going to get flagged for secondary with a trailer and he declared it immediately. It was not an issue being that the deer has been dead for nearly 30 years and it’s finished taxidermy. The guy in secondary even wanted to take pictures with it. I thanked him profusely for doing that and offered him help on his remodel. I would have been pretty heartbroken to know it was gone forever.
So that’s the story of my first buck and how I got him back after a 25 year vacation in old Mexico. Lots of good, old memories brought back to the surface. He’s a great buck for California. If his right side matched his left… well it doesn’t so it doesn’t matter.
Here’s some closeups:
The mount is obviously aged and a little funky. I’m sure products in the taxidermy world have changed quite a bit since then. I’m on the fence of whether to keep it as is for nostalgia or give it new life with a modern form. What would you all do?
These two are likely distant relatives:
Anyone know if this guy is still around or know him from the past? Based out of Bishop in the late 90’s:
Getting crowded, I need a bigger house:
