Now for my rifle buck. I had actually first spotted this buck last year on the archery hunt. His antlers looked almost identical to this year's only a bit smaller and without the extra point on the G-4. My older brother Travis had made a stalk on him but was unable to connect. While scouting for the archery hunt this year I again spotted him running with 4 other bucks. I saw about 28 bucks that day and many were bigger than him so I didn't give him a second thought.
I hiked the 11,000 foot peak maybe 3-4 times before the archery hunt and a few times after the muzzleloader hunt and saw some nice bucks but never saw him again. As you Utah hunters are aware we received a ton of snow the week before the seaaon and since this was my first time rifle hunting this area I had no idea where the deer would go.
My brother Steve and I made plans to drive to our spot on Friday and then hike to the top of the peak and camp in the snow. We had about 6-8 inches of snow at the truck but still thought we were invinsible and could hike the peak. We put on our frame packs and started hiking. After hiking for maybe 2 hours straight uphill and only covering a mile or so I looked down and realized that the snow was already up to my crotch and only geeting deeper. We kept going. I'm 6'5" and thought I could handle some deep snow. We went a little higher and finally threw in the towel. We hiked back to the truck and decided to spend the night in the comforts of a Toyota's bucket seats. We glassed 7 small bucks that night from the truck and noticed that a lot of deer were coming off the mountain. We made our plan that in the morning I would hike back up the mountain to where we stopped the night before and then side-hill the peak. Steve would stay at the truck with his bino's and let me know where all the other hunters were as we expected plenty of them in the morning. While hiking the mountain at 5:00am, I counted 23 trucks drive by where we were parked and many more that pulled off the road before they got to us.
As the sun came up I immediately started seeing deer. I saw maybe 6-7 smaller bucks and two 3-points that were fighting right below me. I noticed that not one other hunter got out of his truck or off his 4-wheeler. I spotted one buck that looked to be about 20 inches wide two canyons over so I radioed Steve and told him I was going to check him out. Steve radioed back that he thought he saw a buck way up on the mountain above me but that he wasn't sure. I didn't have anything to lose so I started hiking straight up again. I hiked for maybe an hour or so when I looked 300 yards ahead of me and saw this buck come out and start bounding down through the snow. I dropped in the snow and fired two quick shots before the buck disappeared behind a small clump of pine trees. I knew that if I had missed and then started hiking towards the deer odds were he would escape undetected. So I sat there in the snow and radioed Steve and had him hike up the other side of the canyon to see if he could push the buck out. About 3 1/2 hours later Steve made it to the clump of pine trees and confirmed that the buck was dead--both shots hit right in the front shoulder.
He's a nice 4x5 with a 24 inch spread. His body was the biggest I had ever seen and weighed over 350 pounds field dressed. Luckily the deep snow made the downhill drag a lot easier. While gutting my buck, we watched 3 more bucks lay down not 100 yards from the road and saw numerous 4-wheelers and trucks drive right by them. With a 5 trucks to 1 buck ratio, I feel pretty good about the bucks I saw and the one I got.
