Thanks for posting the pictures for me and the nice comments.
I took this buck in NM unit 21 on the first day of the second deer hunt. I used to giude hunters in this area for coues about 10 years ago and finally made it back to take one for myself. I hunted alone and packed in about 4 miles from the end of the road. There was lots of water this year and the grass was so high it nearly hid the deer! I saw lot's of deer and had to talk myself out of shooting a nice mule deer opening morning! I made myself hold off, mainly because a coues is hard enough to pack out alone when it's >4 miles to the truck and I really wanted to take a decent coues for myself. I saw nice buck about 1 1/2 miles away and made a stalk to within about 600 yards of where I last saw him. He looked really good and was at least as wide as his ears! I was glassing a hill side to pick my next route up to where this larger buck was and I found this deer. He was nice enough for me, and I figured "one in the hand is worth two in the bush" so I took him at 319 yards. It was an excellent day!!
I made it back to camp about an hour before dark and took a bath in the stream and waited for it to get dark. The hardest part of camping alone is passing the time. I found myself waiting to cook supper (freeze dried) until dark and fifteen minutes later I was finished. It is really hard to go to sleep at 6:30 in the evening.
I passed the time staring into the fire and compairing my day to those of other hunters in the same country hundreds and thousands of years ago. I had a sattelite phone, GPS and a down sleeping bag... they had stone points and animal hides, but we both share the same determination and love of the hunt. Most importantly we both shared a warm fire on a cool evening......
Fire is the one technology that can't be improved on!
CJW