Colorado 3rd Season Success

wallhanger

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-11-15 AT 12:24PM (MST)[p]I always enjoy seeing pictures and hearing the stories from everyone's adventures here on monstermuleys, so I wanted to share the story and a couple of photos from our Colorado deer hunt to return the favor.

LATE START:

My youngest son only loves one thing more than deer hunting, and that's trick or treating. And because Colorado's 3rd season opened on halloween this year, I had a bit of a conflict. Well, not really, because I wouldn't even consider not having him along for that one week each year where I don't have to compete with cartoons, football practice and iPods for his undivided attention. That said, me, my youngest and my longtime friend and hunting buddy left North Texas for Colorado Saturday night about 8 o'clock. My buddy and I traded turns napping and driving through the night and ended up in camp about noon on Sunday?just a tad delirious.

After hastily setting up our tent and organizing a few things, we decided to head out for the afternoon hunt more with the intention of learning the new area than killing a buck. But as it turned out, we spotted some deer bedded in a canyon that had a nice 3x3 buck with them. My buddy had never taken a muley before, and had set his goal at a solid 3x3, so the stalk was on. My youngest and I decided to sneak up into the rimrock and get a bird's eye view of the whole thing. As we watched Joey make the stalk, Cade and I started spotting even more deer, some of them smaller bucks, and we worried that Joey was going to shoot the wrong buck.

But, after sneaking to within about 225 yards in some pretty open country, the deer started to realize something was up, and the 3x3 stood up. Joey took a kneeling position with his gun up, and we knew he was about to take the shot. I fixed my bios on the buck, and suddenly saw the buck jump and hunch over, then heard the shot. That's always a surreal experience when you see the impact before you hear it. But the shot was good, and 3 hours into it, we had a pretty successful start to our 2015 hunt.
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Joey's buck loaded up for the pack out.

Over the next couple of days, we saw lots of deer, including several more decent bucks, but just not the one I was hoping to find. On Wednesday afternoon, Cade and I decided to try a little different area on the North side of our hunting area to see what we could turn up.

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Cade and I on the rimrock.

Sure enough, about 3:45 we spotted a buck 3/4 of a mile off in a deep bowl at the mouth of a canyon. We couldn't tell exactly what he was, only that he was better than any other buck we'd seen, so we decided to take a closer look. We drove around the knob separating us from the bowl the buck was in and parked at the top of the canyon. We hiked a quarter mile or so and started glassing for the feeding buck. After about 20 minutes, he stepped out from behind some high sage and picked his head up, and I immediately looked at Cade. His eyes got real big and he grinned from ear to ear. I told him that's the one we're going to try to take. At this point, we were exposed on a sage-covered hillside, and we knew we had to drop down into a draw to approach undetected. If all worked to plan, we'd have about an 80 yard shot at him just below us. Of course, it didn't.

We made it to the cedar on the ridge we'd marked and eased over the top to find that the buck had vanished. The farther we went, the more we realized that the canyon he was in was deeper than we thought. knowing that he couldn't have gone to up the hill to our right without us seeing him, we eased down the canyon. suddenly, after about 15 minutes of inching along the edge, we saw antlers. Lots of antlers. 3 more 4x4s were bounding down the canyon, and then our buck was bringing up the rear. I watched the first buck cross a little rise in the wash they were in, and figured the rest would follow. I ran up hill about 25 yards, found a piece of sage to rest my gun on and racked in a shell, hoping our buck would come through that window. Sure enough, the second buck, then the third, then ours showed up in the window on the rise. Luckily, they hadn't seen us, I just think they sensed something was up. So they hadn't completely blown out. They were now slowing down, and our buck happened to pause just long enough for me to settle the crosshairs behind his shoulder and send a 140 grain Accubond his way from my 270 WSM. I heard the thwack and watched him hunch over as deer and antlers took off in 10 directions. Still trying to catch my breath, I looked at Cade and told him I thought it was a good hit.

After waiting just a few minutes to see if he would try to sneak out the other side, we went to look for blood where he was standing when he shot. Pretty Quickly, Cade found some, and we tracked him about 50 yards to where he piled up way down in the bottom of the wash. All that said, here he is.
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I was very pleased to take him, and really appreciated getting to share the experience with my son.

WH
 
Sorry guys- I realize that's a really long read with no pics. I have an email into the help page here to figure out how to get the pictures up.
WH
 
Nice job man. Good friends and family make for very fun hunting... Taking good animals is a bonus. :)

"Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion!" 2 Ne. 28: 24
 
Awesome! Thanks for sharing the story and the pics! Glad to hear you kid was there to witness it. Great memories I am sure he will remember forever.
 
Thanks for all the nice comments, guys! You're so right. Having your son with you makes it so much more enjoyable. We head for his youth hunt in NM Monday, so I'll post again when we're back. Wish us luck!

WH
 

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