We woke up the next morning to a cold rainy morning. I figured it was just our luck that we initially had freezing temps with a few inches of snow on the ground only to finish the trip off with a rainy day. We were hoping for no weather so that the buck would be limited in where it would end up looking for water. We made the drive back down to start the search. Justin decided he was going to go higher, while I would set out to the hidden water hole lower. Unfortunately the desert terrain turns into a watery mess with even a small amount of rainfall. The drive in was probably the worst I have ever experienced. We had the truck in 4wd low and used the manual option to keep to a crawl pace going up and down the small hills.

I set out down to the watering hole, quickly realizing in the limited dusk light that a cattle rancher had put some cows into the area I was in. I was losing hope by the minute as I ran into more and more groups of cattle. Arriving at the watering hole it didn’t seem that there were any fresh tracks around. I started traveling up stream, all the water from the mountains above was being funneled into this small stream and it was flowing steadily. A desert owl flushed 20 yards in front of me and perched itself on a rock, giving me an opportunity to get some good pictures of it. I made my way upstream a couple of miles to the area where we had last blood. Hopeful that I’d find something we may have overlooked the evening before. Due to the rain the blood was obviously washed out, but fresh tracks were easier to see. I spent the entire morning searching with nothing to show for it. By noon the rain and wind had picked up dramatically. I decided to take cover under some brush and put my tarp up as a shelter to wait out the storm. I got a bar of service on my phone while sitting and decided for the after noon I’d meet up with Justin and finish the hunt out with him. He gave me a rough idea of where he was at and it was going to take me a while to get over there.

I took off in his direction hoping maybe I’d push something his way along my hike. I got to where I had thought he would be at. It was up on of a knoll over looking the valley we had hunted the first day in this area. We texted back and forth for a while, both slightly confused as to where the other one was, for about an hour. We were both getting annoyed that we couldn’t figure it out so I decided I would drop down off the hill, get to the other side and just sit until dark. It was going to put me about a half a mile from the truck with an easy walk back. I switched back down the hill to another small runoff creek. There were a few sets of small tracks in the bottom. I made my way back up the other hillside to large rock that made a nice seat for the last hour of the evening. I spotted movement down by the creek bank I had just come from. At first my brain told me it was a feral cat nosing around down there. In reality it was a small mountain lion that appeared to be smelling the scent I just laid down. The lion sat down wagging its large tail for just a few seconds before disappearing back into the brush. While I was grateful for the opportunity to see a mountain lion, it was weighing on me as the sun set that it could still be in the area. I decided to walk back to the truck with a pistol in my hand just in case I had an unfriendly encounter.


We finished our hunt with no game, but I wouldn’t classify it as unsuccessful. We learned a lot, made some mistakes, and gained invaluable experiences. A few points that we learned:

1. It appears that Mule deer and Coues deer do not inhabit the same areas. We were either seeing all Coues or all Mule deer, there didn’t seem to be a middle ground.
2. If you’re going to fly somewhere have a game plan for getting the meat back. We had saved some taxidermists and local butchers on google maps. Assuming we could call if we had game down to finalize a plan. The night I hit the deer we decided to call around in case we found him in the morning. It would have been a disaster had we found him.
3. Keep your calm and don’t make a rookie mistake like chasing a wounded animal. I let my emotions get ahead of me and should have just let the deer lay down. The hit could have been fatal had we let him lay down and not allowed his adrenaline to get spike.
4. If you see locals out and about at the trailhead or come across them while hiking be respectful and you never know they may reciprocate with some valuable intel.
5. Look up the laws on 2-way radios for the state you’re going to. They were legal in AZ and had we had a set it could have made the stalk and locating each other later much easier.