After quite a few years of building points, my brother Ben and I decided to pull the trigger on a DIY Mule Deer hunt in Wyoming. I’d hunted this area as a resident years before, but had yet to return to chase mule deer again. Growing up, and hunting behind my Dad and brother typically was more focused on elk hunting. We’d had some decent success, but moving to Utah, where elk tags were scarce for branch antlered bulls seemed to focus my efforts on mule deer. A side effect was that Mule Deer became my obsession. Hunting the general season in Utah proved to be a very valuable learning period for me as I sunk my teeth into online research, scouting, networking, and started to do some of my first pre-season scouting.
I finally connected on a great buck on Utah’s general Muzzleloader season. This was a buck that my buddy John has scouted; he showed me footage of and had hunted the area during the archery hunt, along with my brother. It turned out that their intel proved instrumental to our success as the big buck ran right into me late opening morning as we still hunted some timber.
After killing that buck, I became much more focused and determined to duplicate my success, but had found myself passing on deer for several years. I hoped this Wyoming tag as a chance for redemption and Ben and I planned our first scouting trip for early August. I scoured Google earth, and pinpointed an out of the way basin that I knew would hold deer, and hopefully would be overlooked by other hunters.
That morning we left my house early. A long drive in the dark and a 4.5 mile hike suddenly became very exciting as we glassed up our first buck. An extremely massive and tall typical, but our fortune continued as we tiptoed through a high saddle, a massive old legend fed on the skyline. This buck was incredible. His only weakness was short(ish) g2’s but he made up for it with extra mass, and crazy g4 length. I was lucky enough to get the camera on him for a few seconds before he sensed our presence and dove off the other side of the hill.
A few minutes later our luck continued, as we found another high country buck feeding in a basin nearby. He had great length, and was a prototypical buck that was built to score — with stacked cheaters on one side and a single cheater on the other.
Overall we saw nearly 40 bucks that morning and knew we had to return during the archery hunt.
Archery Hunt
One of the hardest things to predict when hunting new areas is what hunting pressure will look like once the season opens. The area was overrun with hunters. We saw 13 archers over the first couple of days of season, with 5 camps. One hunter had camped in the saddle where we saw the old buck, and another had walked on the trails the cheater buck frequented during the prior weeks. Needless to say, we didn’t find either buck that trip, but did have a great time chasing a few new deer — almost sealing the deal on a great typical that we glassed up a few miles away one afternoon.
Rifle Hunt
The rifle hunt started and Ben wasn’t able to make it up. He didn’t miss much, as about 5 minutes into the hunt, a storm front moved in, destroying any visibility and stayed for 4 days. A few days into the hunt, Ben met up with a friend, Randy the morning it broke and they both tagged out on nice high country bucks. I came into the area later that day, helped pack some meat and then hunted solo that afternoon. I only saw smaller bucks, but continued to return to the area. Hoping the big old buck would show himself. As the end of the season approached, I’d spent my entire season hunting him. I was wore out mentally and decided that a change of scenery might be good. So I planned a solo backpack trip for the last 3 days of the season into a fresh area that I hadn’t visited in over 15 years.
I left the trail-head about a half hour before daylight as it was a new access route and I wanted to hunt my way in. I would stop and glass every few hundred yards, and finally spotted the first deer about 3 miles in. It was a doe; she was feeding on a finger ridge on the north side of the canyon. I continued to hike, and when I was directly below the doe I looked up to see if she was still feeding. I saw another big bodied deer with her. I looked through my binos and could see his dark, heavy antlers. I knew I needed a closer look. I quickly set up my spotting scope to look him over. He was a big framed buck with deep back forks and solid eye guards, but he was missing his front forks. Regardless, this buck looked awesome. He wouldn’t meet my score goal, but he trumped that with his size.
He was directly uphill, and the underbrush made it so I couldn’t lay prone. At 350 yards I didn’t want to try an offhand shot so I looked around, finally finding a tree limb I could rest over to make the shot. At the shot the buck ran up the hill, so I dropped my pack and scurried up the hill.
As I reached where he was standing I could see the doe and hear another deer moving above her. The buck didn’t want to go uphill and it sounded like he was moving across the side hill. I ran up to the top of the next finger ridge to the east and immediately spotted him standing on the adjacent ridge. I dropped and shot, he humped up and was going to enter the pines, so I shot again, hitting very close to the first shot. He made it 2 steps and dropped, then started to roll – the last I saw him, he was rolling end over end through a rockslide – down the hill. I quickly made it over to him; he’d rolled up against an old pine tree after blowing through some deadfall. I thought his antlers would be broken; they were indeed scratched, but still intact. I was overwhelmed as I stood over this old buck. It has been a long season, but ended perfectly with a giant bodied old mountain mule deer.
