In 2004 my brother and I bushwacked it back into a steep, nasty canyon on the Wasatch. We had our bows and were clueless but managed to find a bachelor herd that we chased around for a few days. There was one buck in there that was crabby in the front but had a small cheater off his g2. In velvet he looked huge and I thought about him all fall.
A year later we hit the same basin with our muzzleloaders and the bucks were in the same cut feeding as they were a year before. There was 5 or 6 low to mid 20s bucks feeding along at about 150 yds. We popped over a cliff edge and as we scanned over them for a shooter, my buddy tapped me and motioned uphill--about 50 yards above us in the granite was the cheater buck. His horns were freshly rubbed and blood red. He was taller and heavier and had matching stickers on both sides. Hed busted us and before I knew it I blew a shot and watched him bounce across the basin and out of sight.
2006, muzzleloader my brother and I were up there, early on the opener again. The bucks werent in their cut this year and we glassed all freakin day and only turned up does and young bucks. Note the cut these deer frequented was at about 10,000 feet. Our base camp was at about 8500.
At about 4:00 we worked across the basin and down a big rocky spine. We popped over every fifty yards to glass the adjoining canyon. As we neared the last 1/3 of the rocks I peeped down and there was a heavy, almost webbed back-forked 4x4 sleeping with his head cocked backwards towards his butt. He looked dead and without the binos you couldnt really discern how he was laid out. He was exactly 99 yds straight below us. My brother wanted him so we set up and he let it rip. The buck jerked his head back and his front leg started twitching and I thought he'd spined him. I shouted (I always get emotional) and the buck jumped out of his bed and stumbled straight away from us down through the thick oak brush. I completely blew it. We realized he was gut shot and pushed him too hard.
(His buck was bedded in the snow completely hidden from any angle but straight above him)
After 45 minutes, we split up and started working downhill on opposite fingers looking for blood or the deer. It was that chest-high, thick buckbrush and it was hopeless. We were yelling back and forth hoping to get him up.
After an hour or so, we were maybe 0.5 miles above our camp and had pretty much given up as we worked our way back. I glanced across the draw and 10 yards below my brother on the finger he was on I saw the left antler of a buck portruding out of the brush. As stupid as this sounds, I yelled to him that his deer was right below him and to get ready. It was so steep and thick that he couldnt see any part of the bedded deer. I threw my binos up and about puked when I saw a heavy back fork with two cheaters coming off the g2! The sun was shining off his early coat and he looked like a shiny rock laying there. Again, I yelled to my brother to get ready and that it was a different buck. I was so excited that I didnt even think of being sneaky and/or whispering. There was zero wind and that buck had no clue we were there.
I layed down, ranged him at 114 yards. As I looked thru my 1x scope, the sun was right in line with the buck and everything was washed out. I was frantically trying to find him when all of the sudden he stood up! I found him, pulled down into the white crosshairs and estimated where his back would be and pulled the trigger. The puff of smoke covered my view of the deer and he had disappeared completely! My brother still hadnt even seen him and he was literally right above this buck. My dad radioed me and asked what I had killed. I responded I wasnt sure if I had killed anything, but that I may have missed the biggest buck of my life. He laughed so loud I could hear him from camp. He said whatever you shot at is dead--the "thwap" was so loud after your shot that he knew we'd just whacked one.
I shouted at my brother to work to where the bed was and within 30 seconds or so he casually bent down and held the buck up to show him off.
Id hit him right in the spine and rolled him so quick we never saw him fall back down. He was the cheater buck that Id missed for three years. Added mass, and an extra cheater made him all the better. He doesnt score jack because his beams and fronts are so crabby but for a general public land deer he was a trophy for me and my best to date.
We looked for my brothers deer the entire next day and never turned him up. He kept trying to convince me that my buck was actually the same one hed wounded earlier but we both knew they werent the same deer!
I guess the story is "weird" because the last thing I would ever have expected was to the that kind of deer, bedded so close to camp and that our yelling and noise making hadnt even caught his attention! It just proves so much of hunting is luck1
"You skin grizz?"
