Late Season

ironhead

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Tyson Gray killed this heavy late season buck.

2022 Mule Deer 18.jpg
 
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The narrative does not do any justice to what an awesome buck this is!
I will give some background and description of the hunt.

I did not kill this buck but was a part of the hunt.

Tyson drew the Mule Deer Raffle Tag for Washington. In this area of Eastern Washington there are only 2. The tag is good for GMUs open to mule deer hunting in Washington for any additional buck from Sept-1 to Dec-31. He spent 60.00 on 10 tickets and drew the tag on his first try.

Tyson and I came in contact on Nov.7. Ty went over what he wanted out of the tag, how much time he had and said," that he was looking for a heavy mountain buck".

Nov.9 We met up, Ty was camped only a couple miles from my house on the same road I live on. He stopped in that afternoon and picked me up. He had been struggling a bit with all the snow by himself. I think having someone else with him gave him a little confidence to hit some harder to reach areas.

Soon we were looking at plenty of Bucks' we had an early Snow Storm and the Rut was starting to kick. A pretty good recipe for Mule Deer hunting.

We looked at over 1300 bucks in the next 30 or so days. A couple of them were worthy of the tag but, with no pressure we were confident those bucks would stay put and we continued to look for other mature bucks knowing we could go back and kill one of the others any time.

Fast forward to Dec.15th. I had to take care of some business that morning and texted Ty and had him pick me up about 1:00 PM. We had talked the day before about looking into some other areas as the units we had been looking into were not getting any new bucks in them for the most part. I felt like we had seen the better bucks in each area.

We went into a new unit and up over the top of a big ridge to look down into some broken country that had always held Deer in the past. As we broke the top of the ridge the country, we wanted to look at was engulfed in fog. We had to make achange of plans. We decide to check out along the top of the ridge and look into the trees. About 1/2 way down the old 2 track, I looked and saw a buck. I looked at Ty and said "buck, big buck". He started to get out and I said, "you better grab the rifle this time".

He looked through his binoculars as did I. I counted points and judged his width and mass very quickly as the buck was very close to the top of the ridge and could take 3 steps and be gone. "Shoot that buck" I said, I saw the look in his Ty's eye as he found a rest for his rifle and new it was about to happen. I watched through my glass as Ty hit the buck hard on the 1st shot. He staggered towards us but didnt go down. A quick follow up shot dropped him in his tracks. We looked at each other like, did that stuff really just happen like that?

We were pretty amped up and jumping around with big ol smiles. As Ty walked up on the buck the mass got bigger and bigger all the way up. We were pumped and super happy with the buck. We had both discussed not shooting until we looked a buck over really well but, this one wasn't going to give us that chance.

Passing on all those bucks paid off and Ty got his heavy mountain buck.
 
I have been looking for that Buck, how did he end up in Washington. Congratulations and thanks for sharing.
 

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