We could hardly sleep the night before, that close encounter with a nice mule deer had our excitement levels through the roof. After heading out for a bite to eat we made it back to the Airbnb and prepped everything for the next morning. Our plan was to gain our elevation before dawn and be set up on the draw that we last had seen the deer going into. We made it into our glassing spots with plenty of time to spare. As the light began to illuminate the hillside in front of us we started seeing deer sign everywhere, it was clear that this was a heavily traveled area. We glassed for a few hours until around 9:30 a.m. I could hear what sounded like a four wheeler or UTV cruising the roads below us. It sounded like it was getting closer and closer. I walked over to Justin to talk to him about it when about 100 yards away we saw a side-by-side with two guys in it driving right up the valley we were glassing. They got almost to the top of the valley then veered around the next ridge and out of sight. As I was watching them drive through everything we were just glassing for the last 2 hours I found myself pretty angry. We had no idea there was a path there and the fact that archery hunters were trying to drive up there to maybe see something off the side of the road in almost the middle of the day had me very annoyed. Justin tried calming me down, telling me maybe they’ll spook some game our way. I sat down, thinking of our next move now that this area was pretty much shot.

 

The UTV had been out of our sight for about 15 minutes and we were sitting there talking about where we wanted to go next. Maybe hike further up into the mountains even further away from the roads or head back to the truck and explore the area a little more to the south down the mountain range. As we were talking Justin interrupted with a whispered “deer, deer, deer”.  On the ridge about 500 yards away Justins’s spotting scope was zeroed in. It took me a few minutes for Justin to walk me onto them through the binos. One by one three doe crossed over the ridge slowly walking down the hillside, stopping to feed as they were moving through the trees. The buck crested the hill and we got a good look at him. He caught up with the does and they all tucked in around a clump of juniper pinyon. We had one doe visible on the edge of the trees, she was bedded down at around 400 yards, there was occasional movement through the brush telling us the rest were still there. They laid there for about an hour, at times completely relaxed, then out of no where something would set them off and they were on full alert. Eventually they got up again and moved about 50 yards further down the hillside. I was hopeful they’d travel the path they had the night before and we’d be in perfect position for a shot on one of them. We had seen the buck go into another patch of trees and bed down. He wasn’t as visible as we’d hoped for but he we could see through the bushes to know he was in there. One of the doe laid down facing our direction, we were situated right in front of a bush, more in the open than we should have been. We kept our movements to an absolute minimum. After watching them for about 2 hours we heard the side-by-side again. It was coming back through our area. The deer at this point were no more than 70 yards from the edge of the four wheeler path. I was certain they’d be jumping up and taking off never to be seen again. The no muffler UTV came creeping around the corner, we could hear the two guys shouting over the noise of the engine. We sat there silent and motionless, knowing they couldn’t see us or the deer. The small herd was already on alert, radar dish ears fully erect, waiting for the UTV to stop so they could bolt at any second. The side-by-side kept going in a constant pace right past the deer, right past us, and down the hill to the main road. It’s noise becoming quieter by the second until we couldn’t hear it anymore. Now we knew we were alone and it was time to get a game plan together.

 

 

The doe in front of us had drifted off into a deep sleep, I had never watch a deer fall asleep before. It was a lot like seeing my Labrador Retriever go down for an afternoon nap. She laid her head down on the ground and was out cold. Justin said “Now is our chance either you’re going down there to put a stalk on or I am”. I looked out the ridge line we were on to see if I had enough cover to get some distance between me and the deer then mentally mapped a path in my head down the ridge, across the ravine, and up the next hillside. Taking note of the trees on the other side and their configuration. I wanted to be high enough that I could come in above them at the right distance to be able to get a shot. I had 4 sets of eyes that i’d need to worry about in order to get a shot off. I pulled out my OnX Maps app on my phone and found the tree directly across from me that I wanted to get to in order to be in good position and marked a waypoint. Justin and I worked out a rudimentary signaling system with an orange flagging towel and hand signals before I set off.

 

I made my way a couple hundred yards down the ridge, cutting and angle to the bottom of the draw. I had to navigate quietly across the draw which was thick with brush and broken sticks. I came up the other side moving as quickly and quietly as I could. I came to a barbed wire fence that wasn’t the easiest to cross either, ripping my pants in the process, I wasn’t concerned about anything else besides getting to the next piece of cover and not making noise. I’d walk 20 yards or so stopping behind an agave bush or juniper pinyon tree to check my GPS and put the binos on Justin. He’d hold up a number of fingers telling me how far away the deer were from me and give me an up, down, or even signal telling me which direction the hill I had to go in order to be in position. I made it to the tree I had wanted to get to and looked over at Justin, he was giving me a 10 indicating I was about 100 yards from the deer. I had a wide open space about 50 yards yards between groups of trees with nothing but an agave bush between them. I figured I’d get to the bush, look at Justin and if all was good continue on my way to the next group of trees. I got to the agave bush, carefully placing each foot, as if I was on a balancing beam trying not to fall to my death. I sat down and pulled my binos out quietly looking up at Justin. He was hold his fist up indicating I needed to stop and then giving me a hard down sign meaning keep my ass where it was. I couldn’t see the deer and wasn’t hearing anything. I started thinking maybe I was further away than he thought, distances can be deceiving from that far away.

 

A few minutes had passed and I was getting my gear ready and range finding near by trees, I already had an arrow nocked and my release had been on since I had left the glassing spot. I heard what sounded like someone farting to my right, the direction the deer were in. I turned my as slowly as I could to see a doe standing broadside at about 45 yards laying some droppings on the ground and licking her hind quarters. That feeling I am all to familiar with had came over me, a mix of adrenaline, excitement, and fear. I couldn’t believe this actually worked, that I was within bow range of a mule deer. Albeit it was a doe, I was hopeful the buck wouldn’t be far behind her. She stood there for a few minutes disappearing into the brush below her. I kept my eyes on the bush waiting to see what would come next. Then I saw movement coming back up through the bush, I had assumed it was the doe coming back up when I saw him standing there at 55 yards. He was only still for a few seconds moving up to the bushes above to feed. I turned my body and got to a knee, ready to get a shot when it would present itself. After a few seconds he had moved further out but came back down to the group of trees directly in front of me. His head was completely covered by the trees, exposing his entire body from the very front of his front should to his hind quarter. It was a perfect window of opportunity. I ranged him, 67 yards. I had practiced all summer and fall at 70 yards, getting my groups down to within 6 inches consistently. I felt like this was what all the work I had put into this hunt had came down to. This one shot. I adjusted my 3 pin black gold verdict sight down to exactly 67 yards. Clipped my release to the D-loop, took a deep breath and slowly drew back. One my deer breath, steadied myself and let the pin fall right to the vitals. I pulled the trigger on the release and it felt as if time had stopped. I saw him flinch forward almost jumping down the hill. The arrow sunk into his hind quarter slightly front of center. I turned to look at Justin, excited yet disappointed in the shot. I immediately nocked another arrow. I was shaking uncontrollably and just tried to focus my breathing, hoping I had hit the main femoral artery and he would go down quickly.

I was watching Justin after the shot. His hands extended up right like a football referee after an extra point made it through the uprights. I thought maybe it was a solid hit, maybe I hadn’t seen what I had seen. Was he down? Did he go lay under a tree and it’s all good? Then Justin yelled from across the hill “run down and put another arrow in him, he’s going down”. I took off running to the last place I saw him, a doe came face to face with me from above where I had shot the buck she was at about 5 yards, she was froze and didn’t know what to do. I stopped and stared at her for a split second before making a shoeing motion with my hands to get her out of my way. I turned the corner to see deer running in every direction. They were all doe, there was about 6 of them scattering all over the place. Every time I saw movement I was looking for the buck. I looked down to see a swath of blood about 8 inches wide, saturating the snow covered ground.  I followed the blood trail with my eyes leading to two trees with an opening at the bottom. The buck’s back end was sagging and it looked as though he was attempting to lay down. I was out in the open exposed, deer running all around me, I drew back to get a second shot off. I realized I was probably only 40 yards away and my float pin was on almost 70 yards. I decided to let down and zero my pin back to 40. He looked back and within a split second the adrenaline had taken over, he was gone. I watched him cross a dry creek bed and up over a pile of rocks, the arrow still sticking out of his hind quarter.

I walked back up the four wheeler path to Justin, he was jumping with excitement, sure that we were going to find this deer after we let him go for a little while. We decided to eat lunch and give it an hour before setting out to track blood. I took Justin down to the tree where I had last seen him and the blood trail was good, large drops that took us up a small pile of rocks, then down a snow covered hill. We left a ravine and started heading up hill, not a good sign that the deer was mortally wounded. The trail started to trickle to nothing. We were finding small drops every few feet, which turned then turned to yards. We hit one spot where we had last blood. It looked like an intersection for deer tracks going every which way and it was a sandy silty mud, not good for finding blood. We started our circles, first 10 yards, then 20, widening out to 50 and 100 yards. Nothing. No trace of the wounded deer. Around three hours and 600 yards had elapsed since we had started out on the trail and it was not looking good, our moods had changed from the most excited we had ever been on a hunt to probably the most disappointed. Our last ditch effort was for one of us to go out the ridge towards the 2 watering holes we knew were in the area to look for blood while glassing the hillsides. While the other one continued on in the direction the deer was headed with hopes that maybe he laid down and expired or would jump back up and we could watch him bed down again. The sun was starting to sink and I was trekking around the first watering hole and looking for tracks along the road hoping to see a fresh set heading towards the other watering hole. Justin eventually met up with me on the road just as dusk was setting in. We decided to head back to the truck and we’d come back in the morning and just walk the whole area.

On our way back to the truck we saw a vehicle coming up the road, we got off to the side to let them pass when we realized it was our buddy Dan that we had met the day previous. He was doing his last rounds going through “mule deer highway” trying to spot bucks before last light. He pulled over and we told him what had happened, he told us not to worry that the buck would be at that hidden water hole tomorrow first thing. we should get in there and just glass for the first few hours then walk down and around the water hole. He offered us a ride back to the truck and gratefully accepted. He turned the truck around and we loaded up. Almost immediately he stopped the truck and pointed out his left window “Mule deer doe, two of them”. Justin and I were staring right where he was pointing and weren’t seeing a thing. We both pulled our binos up and were scanning, finally Justin saw them, then I saw them. Dan was clearly acclimated to seeing these animals as we were not. He stopped 2 more times as we were heading out the road and spotted a few more deer each time, he wasn’t wrong, this was mule deer highway. They seemed to dot the hillsides as soon as the sun crept over the horizon. He got on his 2 way radio and called his son to come back down to the parking lot where we’d meet him. We got back to the parking lot and saw this figure running down the road at a steady jog, his 15 year old sun ran up to the truck excited. He told his dad about the 2 bucks he just saw before dark on top of a hill, down in a hidden bowl that you can’t see from the road. We asked if they were nice, he said “One was a 3×3 and the other a 5×5 they’re not bad looking bucks. If you had two guys you could easily get one if you came at them from opposite sides”. Justin and I looked at each other in amazement that there were that many deer in this area. We thanked Dan for the ride, told him we’d be back in the morning and that we appreciated his help on getting to a good spot. We headed back to the house disappointed that we were heading back empty handed but hopeful that we may find this buck in the morning.