J
JREDBUCK
Guest
Attached are a couple of photos of a Mule Deer that I took in September in Nevada with my muzzleloader. We had a great hunt especially the day that I was able to anchor this one. We had seen a lot of deer but this year my wife said that I should hold out for the big one and not shoot something small that I would regret just to bring home a buck. We saw a lot of smaller 3 and 4 point bucks and my nephew John Karren shot a nice buck on what was to be his last day hunting. I then came home for about a week and before we got home we got a call from my good friend Lane Marshall saying that he and Chris Weese (a good friend from Iowa) had jumped a really big buck the evening that we left to come back to Utah. Lane?s son Shon had glassed the buck earlier and watched it bed back down but the cover was so tall and thick they could only make an educated guess exactly where it was. Lane has shot a lot of very nice deer and for him to be excited I knew this buck was something special. The area they were hunting is so overgrown as the photos show that they had a hard time even seeing the buck after it got up. I arrived back in Nevada on Friday September 26th and that evening Lane his wife Sharon and I went to try to glass the buck. We went to a high point that was about 1200 yards from where they had jumped the buck a week and a half earlier. I should note here that the buck had not been seen since that day. About a half hour before dark I glassed the buck after he got up to feed. Even with him standing all that was visible was his head and horns and that was only if he raised his head up high. The buck moved several hundred yards quite quickly moving to the other side of the valley to feed with several other deer making any kind of stalk impossible.
The next morning Lane and I were set up on this side of the valley at first light hoping he had bedded there that night. We glassed to our hearts content and never did see the big one. We did see several other bucks and does but not the one we were looking for. Lane asked me if I wanted to check out some other areas where he had seen other deer throughout the summer and I told him that since I had seen this deer that I was not interested in looking for anything else. It would be this deer or tag soup. We went back to the same side of the valley Saturday evening and Lane spotted the big one. He had returned to his original side of the valley and again it would be no stalk since there was only about 20 minutes of daylight when he got up.
On Sunday morning we returned to our original spotting location to see what we could find. Up to this point the buck had never been seen by any of us any time other than 20 minutes prior to dark. This time we were very lucky. Lane spotted him and he was only up for about 10 minutes then bedded. Again the brush is so tall that it is only a guess exactly where he was bedded. We got the best landmarks that we could and left the area hoping to return in the evening and be in a position to see him when he got up. We were joined that evening by Sharon Marshall, Shon Marshall and his one year old son Cooper and Jimmie Lynn a good friend also from Utah. Jimmie has a Nevada rifle tag and he won't admit it but I am sure he was hoping the buck would get away and still be there for his upcoming hunt. I know Sharon was hoping the buck would run her way if we jumped him since she also had a tag.
I won't get into all the details here but I will tell you that sometimes it is way better to be lucky than good. All I know is that when due to my clicking the leg on my tripod after getting into the spot to hopefully see him and the buck stood up I lost all conscious thinking and the years of shooting came instinctively and helped me get through the worst case of buck fever I have had in a long time. Also the fact the buck was looking directly into the sun helped a lot. I was able to make the very long shot (39 yards) and hit him in the neck dropping him in his tracks. You may wonder why the neck shot. Remember how tall the weeds are. All I could see was from about three inches below his jaw up. Needless to say when the smoke cleared I was still not sure if I had hit him. I was hoping so but since he had dropped into five foot tall weeds I was not sure.
Lane yelled over asking if he was down and that he thought that he had heard the bullet hit. I yelled back that I thought that he was down. We found the buck laying in the bed he had stood from and from the looks of it he had spent a lot of time in that bed throughout the year. Sorry I rambled on for so long but this was one great experience and when I get started all the emotions and feelings keep coming back!!! I could probably write a very long version with all the details and perhaps I will do that and send it into one of the great magazines that we have available. I need to thank Lane and Sharon Marshall, Shon and Cooper Marshall, Chris Weese, Jimmie Lynn and John Karren for all their help on this hunt. I need to thank my wife also even though she was not there (She was in Arizona visiting out daughter and son in law and our newest grandchild, two weeks old) for being so understanding of my ADDICTION. At least I am not addicted to a controlled substance but rather to the beauty of the outdoors. Good luck to you all on your pending hunts this year. I am pretty excited by this one and hopeful that my Manti late season bull tag and January Mexico Coues deer tag can be as much fun. With the help of my brother Mark Grace and all the time he spent scouting the Manti unit prior to his successful archery elk hunt I am sure my hunt will be great.
