For those of us who hunt, there is no better feeling than finally drawing a good tag. It starts off with phone calls to your buddies who are going with you, (followed by phone calls to your other buddies telling them that they ARE NOT going with you) and the preparation and excitement only enhances from there. Maps to order, biologists and game wardens to contact, countless hours google flying the area etc. The months leading up to the hunt are generally agonizing and by that time you have typically vaulted your expectations into the stratosphere. Now having put in all this work prior to your hunt the reality of the situation is that most of the time these high expectations will not be met. Sure, you will undoubtedly have a great time no matter the outcome, but man wouldn’t it be nice if everything came together as planned?
3 weeks prior to our scheduled arrival in Wyoming, my Dad (Scott) had flown into the area and spent 3 days in a rental jeep Cherokee traversing the unit. Trying to find wind protected camping spots and good looking country was his priority. He sent a few landscape pictures via text while he was there. Most of them said “Big Country” and “Should hold deer”. (Not exactly the kind of specific Intel I was after, but after 40 years of deer hunting the west there isn’t much left in his vocabulary to describe hunting grounds I guess). Anyways, his overall view was good and he did end up spotting a couple nice bucks.
We arrived in Wyoming 2 days before the season opener to get camp set up and do some more scouting. We split up our scouting duties into 2 parties. One group had GPS and an ONX HUNT app, the other group (mine) had standard paper maps. The GPS group did quite well, they checked all of their desired spots easily and made some good progress. The paper group…………. Well, we found ourselves “temporarily unaware” of our exact positioning at times, but the maze of roads we encountered could very well have left Columbus a little flustered. Even with detailed unit maps and BLM maps at our disposal we were at times left muttering “ if we keep heading towards the sun, eventually we will have to hit camp right?”. Anyways, both groups saw promising country that held deer so we went to sleep before the opener with a game plan solidified.
Are you nuts? That was Jon’s first question when I told him that I had a great 4x4 standing broadside 125 yards below me on opening morning and decided not to shoot. I said “it’s the first day, I am not going to shoot yet”. His second question followed quickly thereafter……. “where exactly did you see him”? I told him where we found him and on the morning of day 2, Jon and Dan found the same buck close to where we had seen him last. He was feeding on an open hillside about 1000 yards away. After some quick planning, Jon and Dan split up. Jon was able to close the distance to 325 yards until he ran out of concealment. From there he made a clean 1 shot kill on this perfectly symmetrical buck. (Dan was on an adjacent hillside and was able to capture a great video of the stalk and shot). When Jon and Dan rolled back to camp with the deer in his truck he asked if this was the same buck we had spotted on day 1. I reluctantly answered yes, but I dint think he was that that nice! This was Jon’s biggest mule deer by far and he could not have been more happy with it. (Pictures 1 and 2).With this being the first buck to take a nap, we were all excited to see what the next days would bring.
Why aren’t you shooting? That was the question that Scott had posed to Dan at the tail end of day 3. They had spotted Dan’s buck feeding out in the open with another solid 4 point. As they looked through their binoculars it was evident that this was a big deer, but he would not give them a view of how wide he was. Dan said “I’m not going to shoot until I see how wide he is”………….. (For any of you non-hunters reading this, the easiest way to see how wide a buck is, is to see him run away from you). That’s exactly what happened and that’s when Dan decided to answer Scott’s first question. Dan was able to anchor this wide 4x5 with 2 shots from his custom built 6.5mm. (Pictures 3 and 4). This was also Dan’s largest mule deer and I know he was extremely excited to put him on the ground. The local game warden came by our camp to check out the deer and aged him at 4.5 years old.
We’ve come this far right? Around mid morning of day number five we were glassing a huge basin that had been holding several bucks. This area seemed to be one of the few spots where new deer seemed to be moving in and out of daily. After only a few minutes of glassing, Scott found 2 solid bucks heading over toward a small group of bedded does and fawns. Now here was the problem with that….. Up until day 5 the winds had been mild by Wyoming standards. We had experienced a sustained 10mph pretty much every day. On this morning however the winds were here. On Dan’s handheld “gust o meter” or (Kestrel 2500 if you want to get technical), the winds were gusting up to 48mph with a sustained 30mph out of the SW. The bottom-line was at 1500 yards+ away we couldn’t steady our spotting scope or binos well enough to determine what these 2 bucks were. Every couple of minutes the wind would let up for a nano second and we could get steady enough behind the glass to catch a glimpse of the frame size. We knew they had big bodies and horns, but that was about it. We watched the 2 bucks nervously bed down a few times for 10-15 minutes each time, but ultimately the wind had them spooked and they would get up and move again. Finally the pair decided to split up and they settled in to their beds for the day. After they got comfortable my dad and I decided we needed to get a closer look at (1) of the bucks. He was bedded in a small draw, tucked down very tight to the bottom. (Picture 5). Scott and I took off with a plan to close the distance on the buck and see if we could get a better look. After reaching our first designated vantage point of about 500 yards away, we both got a good enough look at him to determine he was a shooter. With the high winds we decided that we needed to get much closer and make it over to a knob maybe 150 yards away from him. As we crested another hill on our way over to him, my Dad and I looked at each other abruptly with similar looks of confusion on our faces, $#@%! “where is he now”? Having changed our vantage point a full 180 degrees from our original approach, we now couldn’t tell which draw he was bedded in. Everything looked different. We were too low in the terrain to see him anymore, and our markers we had been using for the previous 2 hours getting to this point did not look familiar. That’s when my Dad says, “what the heck, we have made it this far lets head straight at where we think he is”. With the wind in our face and out of concealment options, we committed to exposing ourselves for the last stretch between the buck and us. Well we crest that infamous knob we had been angling towards and wouldn’t you know it, we were wrong. This was not good. We could tell that we were below the bucks hiding spot. We had misjudged our approach and what we had anticipated in seeing once we broke the plane of the hill was defiantly not this….. My Dad decides to split us up at this point. He is going to make a low sweep across the draw in front of us and push back towards the top of the draw. I was to stay on the side we were on. Funny thing about this plan was that we never communicated verbally. He simply walks away from me while we are standing there processing the terrain in front of us. No words or hand signals. He just headed off. The awesome thing about spending the last 30 years either following my dad around or hunting alongside him; is that I knew exactly what he was going to do and I knew what I should do. (In hindsight, he was ultimately ensuring that if this buck turns up, I would be in the best position to have a shot). He makes it across the draw and throws his binoculars up to his face. I am anticipating a deer to bust loose at full speed at any minute, my heart is racing knowing that we are close. He pulls his binos down and makes a sweeping/pointing gesture towards me followed by his fingers calling out “2” “ 5” “ 0” . As I release my binos from his position with the message in my head, I clearly notice a familiar small pocket about 250 yards directly up the draw from me. This all fits now. The markers come back to view and I know the bucks hiding spot is right above us. Scott continues his wide containment route as I head straight at the bucks last position. 225 yards, 200 yards, still nothing. As I get to about 150 yards I see the buck staring a hole straight through me. How could I not have seen him earlier? He is staring straight at me standing up with his horns tucked into a burnt tree. As soon as we make eye contact he bolts straight up the hill. After I gave him (1) fair warning shot to let him know I was serious, I calmly sat down, put my crosshairs onto his now quickly moving body and squeezed the trigger. He stumbles immediately and changes his rapid north bound direction to a clumsy south bound direction. I prepare to shoot a 3rd time , but as I send the last shot towards him he has already hit the dirt and is sliding lifeless towards me. I collect my thoughts and look to my right. My dad is looking at me from a seated shooting position with his rifle now resting on his lap. He gives me the thumbs up sign. We make our way over to him and say nothing when we get there. He slaps me on the back and sets his rifle down. We just sit there in silence for a few minutes playing back what just happened. I pick his head up out of the grass and turn towards my Dad. He says “that was a great shot, good thing you hit him with your second, because you probably wouldn’t’ have had a chance to shoot your 3rd”………………… (Pictures 6 and 7).
The whole group made their way over to us and we took some pictures and enjoyed the moment together. During this time one of the guys mentions “he does look like a Chuck”. (For those of you who have read these stories in the past you may remember that my kids decide to name my deer prior to every hunt as well as send along good luck charms to help the mission). I couldn’t believe that I had not thought of that yet! Chuck is my biggest mule deer to date and will be a memory I will relive in my mind forever. Being able to get him with my Dad right there with me made it all the sweeter.
Days 6,7,8 pass by us without any stalks or shots fired. We had probably located 5-10 good looking bucks per day that we ultimately knew would not pass Scott’s litmus test. “Not wide enough”, “weak fronts” and “kind of spindly” seemed to be the most common responses we heard from Scott after presenting him with a good view of each buck. Scott was the only one left with a tag now, and he had assured us that he would not be shooting unless it was a “no doubter”. (In deer speak that means when you first see him, you shoot. No scoring, no analyzing , just shooting). We all knew he was serious as he had already passed equivalent or bigger bucks than we all had taken.
Day 9 is here and it’s our departure day. Jon and Kenny have been gone for a few days, and Dan and myself have reached our limit on staying. Scott is committed to stay another 5 days solo and see if he can’t turn up a good one. We begrudgingly pack up and start our 20 hour trek back to San Diego. It’s always tough to leave, but knowing that Scott was still hunting made it even worse.
Days 9 and 10 ended with similar texts to me from my dad. “Saw 25 bucks today, still no shooters”. Now back at home with my family, my 7 year old daughter Taylor is growing increasingly impatient. She keeps saying “why doesn’t Papa Scott just shoot one”? I said why don’t you call and ask him. She does. He explains as best as he can to her about the situation and his plan. She wants nothing to do with this. She ends the phone call with this “Don’t worry Papa Scott, you will shoot one tomorrow”.
“Taylor was right”. This was the text I received early Sunday morning on Day 11 . No picture just words. 20 minutes later another text chirps through with a picture attached. (Picture 8) It reads “no time to score him, only time to shoot”. I call him and surprisingly he answers. I said that’s a great buck, what happened? He tells me the abbreviated story of getting a glimpse of a big bodied deer the previous night, and decided to come back in on his location that morning. That morning the same group of deer were where he left them the night before, but he could not see the big bodied deer. He slipped down and around the draw to get a better vantage point. He popped over the crest of the hill and in his words “ I saw horns running away, so I shot him”. He was able to get the quad down close to him and get him loaded up. (Picture 9)
I think back on the excitement of the trip right now and countless memories immediately pop into my head. We had great weather for the most part, we saw a ton of mature deer, we bounced over countless un-named two tracks and we saw country that very few people will ever have the privilege of viewing. (Pictures 10 and 11). Despite all of these thoughts I am constantly trying to summarize the essence of what drives us to seek these experiences, what keeps up hyper focused on cresting the next ridge? Well I think the answer is quite simple. We all seek the exact second when your brain tells you to sit down and shoot. (Picture 12).
3 weeks prior to our scheduled arrival in Wyoming, my Dad (Scott) had flown into the area and spent 3 days in a rental jeep Cherokee traversing the unit. Trying to find wind protected camping spots and good looking country was his priority. He sent a few landscape pictures via text while he was there. Most of them said “Big Country” and “Should hold deer”. (Not exactly the kind of specific Intel I was after, but after 40 years of deer hunting the west there isn’t much left in his vocabulary to describe hunting grounds I guess). Anyways, his overall view was good and he did end up spotting a couple nice bucks.
We arrived in Wyoming 2 days before the season opener to get camp set up and do some more scouting. We split up our scouting duties into 2 parties. One group had GPS and an ONX HUNT app, the other group (mine) had standard paper maps. The GPS group did quite well, they checked all of their desired spots easily and made some good progress. The paper group…………. Well, we found ourselves “temporarily unaware” of our exact positioning at times, but the maze of roads we encountered could very well have left Columbus a little flustered. Even with detailed unit maps and BLM maps at our disposal we were at times left muttering “ if we keep heading towards the sun, eventually we will have to hit camp right?”. Anyways, both groups saw promising country that held deer so we went to sleep before the opener with a game plan solidified.
Are you nuts? That was Jon’s first question when I told him that I had a great 4x4 standing broadside 125 yards below me on opening morning and decided not to shoot. I said “it’s the first day, I am not going to shoot yet”. His second question followed quickly thereafter……. “where exactly did you see him”? I told him where we found him and on the morning of day 2, Jon and Dan found the same buck close to where we had seen him last. He was feeding on an open hillside about 1000 yards away. After some quick planning, Jon and Dan split up. Jon was able to close the distance to 325 yards until he ran out of concealment. From there he made a clean 1 shot kill on this perfectly symmetrical buck. (Dan was on an adjacent hillside and was able to capture a great video of the stalk and shot). When Jon and Dan rolled back to camp with the deer in his truck he asked if this was the same buck we had spotted on day 1. I reluctantly answered yes, but I dint think he was that that nice! This was Jon’s biggest mule deer by far and he could not have been more happy with it. (Pictures 1 and 2).With this being the first buck to take a nap, we were all excited to see what the next days would bring.
Why aren’t you shooting? That was the question that Scott had posed to Dan at the tail end of day 3. They had spotted Dan’s buck feeding out in the open with another solid 4 point. As they looked through their binoculars it was evident that this was a big deer, but he would not give them a view of how wide he was. Dan said “I’m not going to shoot until I see how wide he is”………….. (For any of you non-hunters reading this, the easiest way to see how wide a buck is, is to see him run away from you). That’s exactly what happened and that’s when Dan decided to answer Scott’s first question. Dan was able to anchor this wide 4x5 with 2 shots from his custom built 6.5mm. (Pictures 3 and 4). This was also Dan’s largest mule deer and I know he was extremely excited to put him on the ground. The local game warden came by our camp to check out the deer and aged him at 4.5 years old.
We’ve come this far right? Around mid morning of day number five we were glassing a huge basin that had been holding several bucks. This area seemed to be one of the few spots where new deer seemed to be moving in and out of daily. After only a few minutes of glassing, Scott found 2 solid bucks heading over toward a small group of bedded does and fawns. Now here was the problem with that….. Up until day 5 the winds had been mild by Wyoming standards. We had experienced a sustained 10mph pretty much every day. On this morning however the winds were here. On Dan’s handheld “gust o meter” or (Kestrel 2500 if you want to get technical), the winds were gusting up to 48mph with a sustained 30mph out of the SW. The bottom-line was at 1500 yards+ away we couldn’t steady our spotting scope or binos well enough to determine what these 2 bucks were. Every couple of minutes the wind would let up for a nano second and we could get steady enough behind the glass to catch a glimpse of the frame size. We knew they had big bodies and horns, but that was about it. We watched the 2 bucks nervously bed down a few times for 10-15 minutes each time, but ultimately the wind had them spooked and they would get up and move again. Finally the pair decided to split up and they settled in to their beds for the day. After they got comfortable my dad and I decided we needed to get a closer look at (1) of the bucks. He was bedded in a small draw, tucked down very tight to the bottom. (Picture 5). Scott and I took off with a plan to close the distance on the buck and see if we could get a better look. After reaching our first designated vantage point of about 500 yards away, we both got a good enough look at him to determine he was a shooter. With the high winds we decided that we needed to get much closer and make it over to a knob maybe 150 yards away from him. As we crested another hill on our way over to him, my Dad and I looked at each other abruptly with similar looks of confusion on our faces, $#@%! “where is he now”? Having changed our vantage point a full 180 degrees from our original approach, we now couldn’t tell which draw he was bedded in. Everything looked different. We were too low in the terrain to see him anymore, and our markers we had been using for the previous 2 hours getting to this point did not look familiar. That’s when my Dad says, “what the heck, we have made it this far lets head straight at where we think he is”. With the wind in our face and out of concealment options, we committed to exposing ourselves for the last stretch between the buck and us. Well we crest that infamous knob we had been angling towards and wouldn’t you know it, we were wrong. This was not good. We could tell that we were below the bucks hiding spot. We had misjudged our approach and what we had anticipated in seeing once we broke the plane of the hill was defiantly not this….. My Dad decides to split us up at this point. He is going to make a low sweep across the draw in front of us and push back towards the top of the draw. I was to stay on the side we were on. Funny thing about this plan was that we never communicated verbally. He simply walks away from me while we are standing there processing the terrain in front of us. No words or hand signals. He just headed off. The awesome thing about spending the last 30 years either following my dad around or hunting alongside him; is that I knew exactly what he was going to do and I knew what I should do. (In hindsight, he was ultimately ensuring that if this buck turns up, I would be in the best position to have a shot). He makes it across the draw and throws his binoculars up to his face. I am anticipating a deer to bust loose at full speed at any minute, my heart is racing knowing that we are close. He pulls his binos down and makes a sweeping/pointing gesture towards me followed by his fingers calling out “2” “ 5” “ 0” . As I release my binos from his position with the message in my head, I clearly notice a familiar small pocket about 250 yards directly up the draw from me. This all fits now. The markers come back to view and I know the bucks hiding spot is right above us. Scott continues his wide containment route as I head straight at the bucks last position. 225 yards, 200 yards, still nothing. As I get to about 150 yards I see the buck staring a hole straight through me. How could I not have seen him earlier? He is staring straight at me standing up with his horns tucked into a burnt tree. As soon as we make eye contact he bolts straight up the hill. After I gave him (1) fair warning shot to let him know I was serious, I calmly sat down, put my crosshairs onto his now quickly moving body and squeezed the trigger. He stumbles immediately and changes his rapid north bound direction to a clumsy south bound direction. I prepare to shoot a 3rd time , but as I send the last shot towards him he has already hit the dirt and is sliding lifeless towards me. I collect my thoughts and look to my right. My dad is looking at me from a seated shooting position with his rifle now resting on his lap. He gives me the thumbs up sign. We make our way over to him and say nothing when we get there. He slaps me on the back and sets his rifle down. We just sit there in silence for a few minutes playing back what just happened. I pick his head up out of the grass and turn towards my Dad. He says “that was a great shot, good thing you hit him with your second, because you probably wouldn’t’ have had a chance to shoot your 3rd”………………… (Pictures 6 and 7).
The whole group made their way over to us and we took some pictures and enjoyed the moment together. During this time one of the guys mentions “he does look like a Chuck”. (For those of you who have read these stories in the past you may remember that my kids decide to name my deer prior to every hunt as well as send along good luck charms to help the mission). I couldn’t believe that I had not thought of that yet! Chuck is my biggest mule deer to date and will be a memory I will relive in my mind forever. Being able to get him with my Dad right there with me made it all the sweeter.
Days 6,7,8 pass by us without any stalks or shots fired. We had probably located 5-10 good looking bucks per day that we ultimately knew would not pass Scott’s litmus test. “Not wide enough”, “weak fronts” and “kind of spindly” seemed to be the most common responses we heard from Scott after presenting him with a good view of each buck. Scott was the only one left with a tag now, and he had assured us that he would not be shooting unless it was a “no doubter”. (In deer speak that means when you first see him, you shoot. No scoring, no analyzing , just shooting). We all knew he was serious as he had already passed equivalent or bigger bucks than we all had taken.
Day 9 is here and it’s our departure day. Jon and Kenny have been gone for a few days, and Dan and myself have reached our limit on staying. Scott is committed to stay another 5 days solo and see if he can’t turn up a good one. We begrudgingly pack up and start our 20 hour trek back to San Diego. It’s always tough to leave, but knowing that Scott was still hunting made it even worse.
Days 9 and 10 ended with similar texts to me from my dad. “Saw 25 bucks today, still no shooters”. Now back at home with my family, my 7 year old daughter Taylor is growing increasingly impatient. She keeps saying “why doesn’t Papa Scott just shoot one”? I said why don’t you call and ask him. She does. He explains as best as he can to her about the situation and his plan. She wants nothing to do with this. She ends the phone call with this “Don’t worry Papa Scott, you will shoot one tomorrow”.
“Taylor was right”. This was the text I received early Sunday morning on Day 11 . No picture just words. 20 minutes later another text chirps through with a picture attached. (Picture 8) It reads “no time to score him, only time to shoot”. I call him and surprisingly he answers. I said that’s a great buck, what happened? He tells me the abbreviated story of getting a glimpse of a big bodied deer the previous night, and decided to come back in on his location that morning. That morning the same group of deer were where he left them the night before, but he could not see the big bodied deer. He slipped down and around the draw to get a better vantage point. He popped over the crest of the hill and in his words “ I saw horns running away, so I shot him”. He was able to get the quad down close to him and get him loaded up. (Picture 9)
I think back on the excitement of the trip right now and countless memories immediately pop into my head. We had great weather for the most part, we saw a ton of mature deer, we bounced over countless un-named two tracks and we saw country that very few people will ever have the privilege of viewing. (Pictures 10 and 11). Despite all of these thoughts I am constantly trying to summarize the essence of what drives us to seek these experiences, what keeps up hyper focused on cresting the next ridge? Well I think the answer is quite simple. We all seek the exact second when your brain tells you to sit down and shoot. (Picture 12).
