LAST EDITED ON Feb-24-13 AT 09:54AM (MST)[p]On Friday, I hiked back to where I saw the 10, hoping the crows would lead me to the one that my buddy wounded. All I saw were deer, and some nice ones at that (I wonder where those boys were hanging out when I was deer hunting in there last Oct and seeing a bunch of barbs but no shootable bucks). Never found the wounded ram.
The next day (yesterday) I hiked in to where I saw zero two weeks ago and immediately glassed up three ewes on the opposite slope, bedded in the shade of some junipers. Started hiking up my slope to try to get above them when I glassed about a mile further up the canyon and saw my first big rams of the season, three in all. I dropped off my side of the ridge to keep it between me and them and immediately saw another group of five on the same ridge as me that had a 20-21" ram with them. I had him at 360 yards for 45 minutes, and I was tempted because it was my last day to hunt and he would have been relatively easy to pack out. But in the end, visions of those big rams on the hill behind me were too much, and I passed on the shot.
I snuck back over to the other side of the ridge to see if I could spot the big rams again, and the three were now six, every one at least as big as my biggest (25") and a couple that looked like they were pushing 30". The problem for me was that it looked like the closest I could get on my ridge would still be at least 800 yards (twice my shooting ability). The other problem was the wind was blowing from me to them, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they would bust me.
So I decided to hike back down and around to get down wind of them. That's a lot of hiking for a 50-year old fat man. I was coming up inside of 400 yards of where I last saw them when I jumped four @#$#ing does and fawns, and sure enough they stampeded right through where the rams had been. I couldn't see through the junipers and yuccas, but what initially sounded like four deer thumping increased to a dozen or more animals running. What's more, it sounded like they all ran straight toward the private land, and a few minutes later three shots rang out from the first canyon on that side of the line.
That's the second time in my barbary hunting life I was closing in on some super nice rams only to have it all blow up from spooking deer directly into them.
But all is not lost--I still have the month of March where my tag is valid for any of the over-the-counter units.
Hunting in New Mexico is good.
