Day 3 of our hunt had us getting up extra early. We had more miles of NFS road to travel and we knew even though it was a few less miles it would take us longer to get there so we left about 45 minutes earlier than what we had the days before. We started up the dirt road at the lower elevations and it seemed that it was going to be easy going for the most part. It as pitch black outside and the desert just blended in with the night sky. As we winded up the hillsides and switchbacks the twighlight started giving us a little bit of light to see the surrounding area as the roads became more snow covered. We had started passing camps almost immediately after turning onto the forest service road and they steadily continued on up the mountain. As we were approaching the section of the road that turned to forest we hit a small road block in the form a boulder in the middle of the road. Unbeknownst to us on the driver’s side of the truck the road had a straight drop off of about 100 feet. As we squeezed by the rock I had the drivers side window down, my head out keeping an eye on the edge of the road. Justin’s head was out the passenger side window, yelling directions over, guiding me past the rock. We made it passed and continued up the mountain. The snow continued to get deeper and deeper as we climbed. We came to the first confluence of roads on the mountain as it began to get light out. We had many more miles of road we could have taken from here, but we decided that getting out here and heading north would get us to a roadless area pretty fast. We looked further down the road and it didn’t appear that many other people ventured down it, so we felt okay about  not going any further.

We got out of the truck and began gearing up, taking not of our surroundings, looking for immediate sign or what the best direction from here would be. There was a small ATV trail heading the same direction we had wanted to go that we decided to start following. Someone else had recently had the same idea as us, there were older tracks in the snow heading the same direction. We followed them down the road for a few hundred yards until they veered off into the woods. We thought maybe these people knew something we didn’t so off we went down into the timber following the tracks. We followed them for a while through open areas and heavily forested areas until they looped back to the road we started on just a little farther down. We made the choice to cut our own fresh track down the road. We were seeing plenty of deer tracks, larger ones this times, our guess was mule deer. They crisscrossed the snow covered landscape in no discernible pattern. We couldn’t find an area open enough to really be able to get the binoculars out and start glassing for animals so we dove into the timber in hopes that it would open up on the edge of the canyon we were close to. We found one area and sat down for a while looking at a hillside 500 yards away trying to find anything living. It seemed useless after a while, looking at such a small area hoping a deer would come walking through. Even if it did, how the hell were we supposed to get over there? We talked and thought maybe we’d be better off on that open hillside looking towards where we are now, as if it would give us a better advantage.

 

We headed down into this deep canyon, it was steep and the snow was 6″-8″ deep. Rocks seemed to jump out of no where when descending in a creek bed. I was thankful to have my trekking poles. Before we made it the whole way down, I realized we’d have much further to go to get down then much further to get back up the other side. Not to mention if we saw something back where we just came from. We took a break on a hill side and talked it over. Walking through the timber in the middle of winter and expecting to see deer was kind of silly. You already have a slim chance with a good set of binoculars and open country, your chances are even slimmer with not being able to see more than 100 yards in the timber. We decided to abort mission on the higher country hunting and head back down the mountain. If we didn’t see any good spots on the way down the mountain we’d just go back to where we saw all the coues deer and settle for trying to hunt one of them. We hiked back up and out of the canyon, got on the road, and made our way back to the truck. It was about 10am and the sun was up enough to start melting some snow and thawing out the road, so again we were in four wheel drive and low gear creeping down the road. We could finally see what we missed coming in that morning. Deep canyons with what seemed like a barely widened donkey path our truck was on. I was glad I didn’t attempt coming up during the day.

As we descended from the mountain camps started popping up again. A sign to us that maybe the deer weren’t up high or low, maybe somewhere in the middle. We saw a camp with multiple wall tents, a few trucks, a couple side by side ATVs, and an enclosed trailer with a logo on it. The logo matched that of the business card we had stuck in our door from the day before. We joked that maybe we should stop and ask this guy how much he would charge to put us on a small forky buck before we had to leave in 2 more days. After creeping past their camp and looking for any little thing we could that might tell us we were in the right area, we continued down the hill. There was a blue Toyota parked on the side of the road. Road hunters are not uncommon out west, we saw them often in Wyoming, so we were just going to sneak past him and continue on our way. Once past him Justin told me he was flagging us down. I put it in reverse, thinking maybe he needed help with something. When we got beside him he asked “Are you guys with the outfitters up there?”. “No, we’re just some DIY archery hunters from out of state” I replied. “Oh, okay, well there’s some fresh cat track back the road a ways, I was going to tell you to get the outfitter to put his dogs on them if you were with those guys”. At this point I thought about just continuing on our way, but this guy seemed pretty friendly. I said to him “I have a question for you, are we even in the right area to see mule deer? We’ve been hunting for 3 days now and haven’t seen a single mule deer. Not even a doe”. Slightly shocked he said “You haven’t seen any mule deer? Pull your truck over and come back here to my tailgate”. We pulled the truck up, got out and went back to the guy’s tailgate. We introduced ourselves and told us his name was Dan. He hunts the entire OTC season as a resident every year. He was fresh off killing a mountain lion in the area about a week before and a nice 5×5 mule deer the week before that. I would have had a hard time believing success like that had he not put the truck tailgate down and dry blood covered his bed. He pulled a 4’x6′ map out of the NFS area we were in, laid in on the tailgate and started scanning it. We weren’t sure what he was going to show us or where he was going to send us. He found where we were and traced his finger down the road, made a left went about 5 miles on that road then gave us a road number. He said “when you get to the intersection of these roads park there, go up the hill directly in front of you, go down the saddle and up the next mountain. That’s where you want to be we call that “mule deer highway””. I thanked profusely for giving us any kind of tip at all. He told us about a 5×5 with stickers living up there and told us to be ready about an hour before dark because they’d be coming out. He told us he had no issues with sending people who were willing to do a little hiking after deer as long as they didn’t mess up his hunting so he was fine telling us where to go.

We got into position over “mule deer highway” about 11:30 in the morning. It wasn’t a bad hike and the temperature was nice outside. We nestled into a rocky area that had plenty of cover. We didn’t realize until we got to where we wanted to be but we were kind of surrounded on all sides by dirt roads. Below us was a hidden watering hole, a plus for hunting skiddish deer, it was tucked down in a valley not visible from the road. We sat there through lunch until about 2 pm. We weren’t expecting to see deer dotting the landscape in the middle of the day, but it would have been nice to see a passing small buck or roaming doe. We were getting bored, and there was miles of road less country just ahead of us. Justin pointed to the mountain across the road and said he thought that might be a better spot to be in. The hill seemed to level out for quite a distance before climbing another hill. I told him I was thinking the exact same thing, I just didn’t want to mention it, because I knew that meant we’d be packing up and hiking again. We got our packs on and took off down the hill to the road.

The terrain was rocky and patches of snow covered the hillsides. We made it down to the road and found what appeared to be the easiest route up the hill. From our previous vantage point it looked as though once you got passed the initial climb up the hill that the grade mellowed out and it would be an easier hike from there. It was mid day now around 1 O’clock in the afternoon. The temperature had rose to mid 40 degrees and at this point I had shed most of my layers off just to keep cool while hiking. We got to the top of the hill and had took a breather. looking over the new landscape we had just came up on. We still had plenty of walking to do so the break was short lived. I was following Justin along a cattle fence that seemed to keep us in good cover and would give us a good reference point for when we wanted to leave that evening.

We were approaching a more open area where there was a gate in the fence when Justin disappeared in front of me. He stopped and dropped to a knee in some cover and quickly started whispering “buck, buck, buck”. My heart started pounding. I started scanning the landscape, it didn’t take long until I saw two radar dish ears popping up behind a juniper pinyon bush. I quickly saw a second, then a third, all doe the best I could tell. That morning I stupidly forgot my bino harness inside the house, along with my rangefinders. I had been borrowing Justin’s binoculars while he used the spotting scope when we were set up glassing. So I was trying to look these deer over with the naked eye at around 125 yards. Justin was anxious and wanted to put a stalk on if we could keep cover. I knew we were made. The doe were staring right at us, ears erect, and they weren’t moving. I slowly pulled out my wind indicator and checked the wind. It was a light wind directly at our backs moving to the deer. We were kind of trapped. Justin had not seen the doe from his vantage point yet so I was quietly trying to point out to him that there were more deer there than the buck and that we had 8 sets of eyes on us at that point. The buck was hidden behind a tree from my view but I could make out movement at times. We were probably checking the wind every 10 seconds at this point. At times the powder would exit the bottle and sit there, dead wind. Other times it would come out and be in our faces, or it would swirl. What people had told us about the wind in the west was dead on, it can be unpredictable. We watched the deer for what seemed like a long time, when in reality it was probably about 10 minutes. They didn’t take off running, one of the doe took off along the hillside headed toward the road we had just came from. Then she shot up the hillside and seemed to cut back up the next draw that we were headed to. The buck followed closely behind her, his neck swollen and nose to the ground. It was clear he was in full rut mode.

Justin and I waited for the other doe to clear the area and we quickly decided we could head up the hill and over the ridge in front of us. Hopefully we’d get there in time to cut them off and get a shot on the buck. We took off moving as fast as we could without being loud. We went from exposed rock to exposed rock trying not to step on the snow covered ground as we moved. We took turns reminding each other to be patient and not rush up to scare them, our blood was pumping and the adrenaline was high. We crested the hill expecting the vegetation to be as sparse on the hillside as it was where he had just came from. The juniper pinyon bushes were everywhere, making visibility almost impossible. We saw plenty of deer sign but nothing fresh, the tracks went in every direction, not giving us much hope to be able to track the buck down. We finished the evening out glassing the draw and down to the road until dark. Our plan was to find this buck the next day.