I have great
friends. That's the first thing I have to say about this because without them, a lot of my hunting stories wouldn't have ever happened. There's also those things they won't let you forget, or the things I would remember if it wasn't for them too, so I'm very thankful for that.
So yesterday, I took work off early with the hopes of a big whitetail walking in front of the tree stand I always sit in. I was heading back to the old whitetail grazing grounds that I've hunted all year after getting some nice bucks on my trail cams this year and it turned out someone else was hunting there. After sayin "
aaaah shoot dang" knowing I couldn't hunt there, I thought I should call up an old friend to see if I could access the public land his ranch butts up next to. There's usually a couple mule deer over there and I figured it was worth a shot. When I showed up at the
ranch, I saw that not only were there some mule deer around, but they were all on his private part instead of the public hills and mountains behind it. I glassed there area for a while and saw this big ol' guy sitting right near the bottom of the hills just watching as 40 or so other mule deer fed in the pasture. In that moment, I thought he was
massive of course, and my Stalk and Spook skills took over as I nearly rushed into the field to get a better look. Luckily, I had a friend with me that told me not to be an S+S'n idiot and go slowly through some cover to try and get closer to take a look at him. I made a lot of stupid mistakes on my journey towards this buck like making myself visible through the trees to these deer multiple times, caught myself up on barbwire (again), slipped and fell over in a creek (soaked) and fogged up my scope way before I got within shooting range. These deer hadn't hardly been hunted this year, so my clumsiness and impatience didn't spook them too bad. A few deer here and there were scoping me out, but then I sank below the hills and into the river bottom where they couldn't see me. I had about 200 yards of walking through a 1-2 foot high creek to get to where I knew I could get a shot off on this guy. After walking that distance, and belly crawling back up the hill, I set up beneath a wheel line and with my
scope and bino's and watched this guy from the distance. I really wanted to take a deer and an elk with my bow this year, and still sad I couldn't, but I've always wanted to get a double forked mule deer buck and there ain't nothin wrong with doing a little rifle hunting. I sat and watched this buck for about another 20 minutes, and as soon as he stood up, I knew the time was right. This is where everyone says "I was calm and just lightly pulled back on that trigger as I kept the
crosshairs right behind his shoulder" but that's not exactly what happened with me. For whatever reason, when I switched that safety off, my heart started racing
ridiculously, I was sweating, and I had to sit back and take some normal breaths just to relax because I fogged my scope up again breathing hard on it. (Fogged scope syndrome can be dangerous) Then I talked myself through the shot and remembered to slowly pull back the trigger like they taught me in my hunters' education class I took online 2 weeks ago (Don't need hunters ed in Montana if u are old as me but I went the extra mile!). I hit him right behind the shoulder and took out a lung from around 250 yards. For whatever reason, it wasn't a double but it did the trick and I had my first mule deer buck. It couldn't have done it without Mr. Shawn T. Norris and his parents generously letting me
scare all the other mule deer off their land because after the
.270 WSM went off, it was loud!
I felt very blessed to take this animal, but also it meant a lot to me that they were willing to let me go out on their property and take this nice, big bodied mature mule deer buck that smelled like urine and was heavy as a sumbitch! Oh, and as most you know...that was the easy part. I think I almost started crying when I was gutting this guy because:
A. I didn't sharpen my
knife after I used it on my elk
and
B. I didn't sharpen my other
knife after using it on my elk.
It took me forever and when I was finally finished I looked at my wrist like I had a watch on and said "Aaaaaaaaaaand TIME!" Shawn laughed and told me it was a record (he was a little annoyed how long it was taking). I'm glad he made me do it all by myself as it is one skill that I can always improve on, especially with sharper knives. Buuut it was my record time gutting a mule deer buck...I'm guessing upwards of 30-40 minutes, but hopefully if there's a next time it'll be a lot quicker. We hung it over night and the next day, had it off to the meat shop via the VW Jetta or as I call it, the Diesel Stalk and Spook Meat Hauler. And of course this hunt was possible because I was wearing
Stalk and Spook Gear!
(
Also notice new colors / sizes in the shirts on the tab on the right!---> that way but up a little)
