After accomplishing a lifelong dream of harvesting an elk on a hunt that started out as what seemed to be an absolute dud Justin and I were on cloud 9 with excitement. We knew that the easy part was done and now the hard part was about to begin. We had tagged the cow, took our pictures, and started formulating a plan to get all the usable meat out of the woods on our backs when two fellow hunters had showed up across the creek. The two gentleman in their mid to late 20s came over to see what we had killed. I indicated that it was my first elk. They congratulated me and asked where we were from. We had told them we were from Pennsylvania. It turned out one of the guy’s worked in a neighboring town as an aerial lineman. We made small talk about hunting and they seemed to be genuinely happy for us that we killed an elk. Just before they decided to keep moving the one guy said, sort of in passing, “hey, when you shot, it was the weirdest thing. A whole herd of like 40 elk came out on the right side of that hill”. Justin and I looked at each other kind of confused and excited at the same time. “Really? Any bulls in the herd” I asked. “Yeah there were at least two 5×5’s in there. Just nothing big enough for us to be after. We’re looking for something 6 points or better” one of the guys said. We thanked them for the info and they continued up the creek bottom on their way. As soon as they were out of ear shot, I whispered to Justin “we need to hurry the hell up and get back up there”. We had practiced the “gutless method” on a few smaller game animals while in Wyoming in 2016, but nothing of this size. The methodology is the same, but the effort it takes is a lot more.

We laid a large foil emergency blanket out on the ground and immediately went to work. I don’t know if we said more than 10 words to each other once we started cutting. We decided to debone the elk in an effort to keep the weight down. The temperature was certainly cool enough that we weren’t concerned with meat spoilage and we decided it was worth the extra effort for the weight reduction. We started the whole process around 830 in the morning and had it wrapped about by about noon. It took 4 large game bags, 2 of them were heavier than the others’ but overall I estimated the weight to be about 200 pounds of deboned elk meat. Already tired from the morning’s activities we took a quick break to get some water and discuss our plan going forward. We initially talked about each taking 2 bags back to the truck then returning for the afternoon to hunt. Justin made me realize how much this didn’t make sense when we could potentially have an entire herd of elk just a few hundred feet above us on the hill. So instead we decided to find a tall tree. String the meat up in the tree, then hike a couple hundred yards up the mountain until there was a clearing to get eyes on the hill. If the hill was empty we’d hike back down retrieve the meat and hike back out. If there were elk we would hang out and see if there were any legal bulls.

After hanging the meat in the tree, we made our way up the hill. It was only about 150 yards before there was a small clearing, enough to see through the trees to the open hillside. We immediately saw a herd of elk ranging in distance from 200 to over 800 yards away. There were dozens of them feeding on the hillside. Excited we got into position to be able to glass. We needed to find a legal bull. Justin said he’d take the lower part of the herd and move up, while I took the upper part of the herd and moved down. Stopping at each one to see if they had antlers before moving to the next. There were so many it was easy to lose track of which one you had looked at already. I had already looked at about 20 and was midway down the hill. So far I had seen about 5 spikes or fork horns in the group, nothing with brow tines. There were still more elk coming out of the woods when I finally saw a bull with decent set of antlers on his head. I excitedly whispered “Bull, Bull, Bull” to Justin and pointed to the elk. He immediately brought his rifle up, attempting to get a solid rest. We were sitting on a downhill slop the elk was above us, this posed a serious problem for trying to find a solid rest. I gave him my stone point trekking pole with a shooting V on top of it. It wasn’t perfect but it steadied at least one axis for him. He got the bull in his sights when a thought popped in my head. We were hunting close to the private/public line. I stopped him “Don’t shoot yet. Give me a second to check where the line is”. I pulled up my OnX maps and realized the bull was about 100 yards on the private ground. I drew a straight line from our position to 2 tree on the map that the property line had one through. It was 425 yards from where we sat. I pulled my range finders out and ranged the only group of 2 trees on the hillside that appeared to be the same. It read 425 yards. 

We were now knew the bull had to go about 100 yards in the direction he was slowly headed in before Justin could even think about shooting. We impatiently watched the bull, still glassing the hillside in case something else had presented itself on the public ground. I noticed way up top there were two cows feeding with a 3rd elk behind them. I couldn’t see the 3rd elk’s head to know what it was so I kept an eye on them. Finally that elk in the back lifted it’s head. A massive rack towered all three of them. Once again I excitedly whispered “Bull, bull, bull” to Justin. He saw the big one too. At 650 yards and behind two cows there was no shot to be had. The bigger bull was already well into the public ground though while we were still waiting on another 50 yards for the smaller 4×4. Justin looked at me and said “I am not greedy, I just want a legal bull. If the bigger one steps out closer into the opening I’ll take him. If the smaller one crosses onto the public before that then I am fine with shooting him too”. It was another few minutes that felt like hours before the smaller of the two bulls made his way through the two trees intersecting the private and public land. Justin let him get about 50 yards onto the public before he doubled checked with me. “Are you sure he’s on public” he asked. “I am 100% sure he is. If you want him, take him” I replied. He steadied his gun, I was behind him about 15 yards watching through the binoculars, he fired a shot. I saw blood running down the bulls front shoulder, a perfect shot. The bull collapsed in his tracks. He looked back at me in disbelief. A lifelong goal of killing an elk on a DIY hunt had just been accomplished. We were high-fiving, hugging, just amazed that it actually happened, that everything unfolded in the way it did. Then I looked up. The bull was standing again, wobbly, but standing. I quickly told Justin, put another round in him. He took a 2nd shot, less than 3 inches from the first, right behind the shoulder. The elk didn’t move. He began to stumble forward. Justin took 2 more shots at the elk. At this point the excitement was getting the best of him. Both missed. It didn’t matter though, the elk was beginning to go down. His previous two shots were definitely fatal. We were just scared that it would make it’s way back to the private land. The elk expired less than 20 yards from where Justin initially shot.

The bull was finally down for good. The adrenaline was still high. We made our way down the mountain, back to the creek bottom, and up the other side. It’s difficult to look at a hillside then be able to accurately identify anything once you’ve made it to the area. I was busy trying to look at my GPS as Justin excitedly made his way up the hill. He had thought the elk was much higher than it actually was. I found the two tree’s and made my way over to where I thought the shot had taken place. After the elk had gone down, just like the cow, it had rolled a considerable distance. I knew if I found blood I could just go down hill from there. I found the two trees and quickly found blood. By that time, Justin had actually made it a few hundred yards above me in search of his bull. I called out for him to get down to me, I had found the bull. He was a very respectable bull with an odd but just cool character set of antler. His one brow tine was just abnormally long. Justin decided he was going to skull mount the elk so he got to work removing the antler after we had taken a number of pictures on the steep hillside. We were concerned that they may break while trying to get him off the hill. We rolled him down the hill to a flatter part of the creek bottom, only about 100 yards below where I had left the meat from my elk. It was around 2 P.M. and we had two elk down on the same day.

The rest of the evening would prove to be the most difficult of the journey. Justin and I, already rehearsed from the first part of the day went to work on his bull. Again we decided to debone the carcass where it was in an effort to minimize the weight of bringing the meat out. It took us about 4 hours to complete the deboning and butchering process bringing us to about 15 minutes until dark. We knew we had a hell of a hike in front of us but neither of us were too concerned. We decided to move his Elk’s meat up to my elk. The thought was there would be a carcass above and below the meat bags. If any wolves or grizzlies would make their way into the area, it would most likely be via the creek bed above or below the meat and they would stop at the carcasses first. We loaded as much weight as we could in the darkness onto our backs. We had a total of 8 bags to remove and a head. We each took one of the large bag of meat, leaving the antlers for the next day. In total it took 3 trips into the woods and back to retrieve all of our meat. On the last day we were able to hike in and leap frog the remainder of the meat to within about a mile and a half of the Truck on the first trip. After that first trip we ran back to the cabin dropped the meat off in the yeti coolers, had a hot meal in town, then finished the day off after lunch getting the rest of the meat. 

The 6th day of the hunt we had narrowed down a herd of 13 elk, with at least one bull, which we were unsure if it was legal or not. We knew it would be a long hike from the truck. We had about 3.5 miles to hike to get where we wanted to go with 3 ravines in our way. The satellite map showed a small rock outcrop with an opening across from the steep meadow hillside we had seen the elk on. We got out of the truck and took off with a sense of purpose. There were two other trucks in the parking lot when we got there and I was positive I had seen 2 people in orange just outside the range of the headlights when we pulled in. It was one of the first times in the 15 years of hunting with Justin that he told me to slow down a little bit. The excitement level was running high. That was, until we hit that first hill taking us into the first of 2 ravines. I knew it was going to be tough, especially in the pitch black with red lights on. We tackled the first hill, side-hilled around the ravine tackled the second hill. At this point I was running out of gas and we were running out of time. The sun was starting to come up, I was sure a gunshot would ring out any minute now and our hopes of harvesting an elk would be dashed. We were at the top of the 2nd ravine making our way across a game trail to the top of the 3rd hill where the rock outcrop was. Justin was ahead of me at this point by about 50 yards, me outpacing him didn’t last long. As he was walking he slipped a little bit and his trekking poles saved him from eating it, one didn’t survive though. I heard a loud snap! In front of me, only to look up and see his brand new Leupold carbon trekking pole snapped in half. We were close enough now that I thought we may have blown it. He threw the pole to the ground in annoyance, we stopped to talk about a plan of approaching the peak of the hill.

We decided it would be best to just sneak our way up to the rock and keep as low as possible using what little brush and trees as cover. As we approached the rocks there was a small ledge about 2 feet high that gave us plenty of cover. Justin set himself up in an area and immediately started glassing the elk on the hillside. I moved 20 yards below him and did the same. I ranged the closest elk in the heard from our spot, she was at around 500 yards, a shot we had practiced many times over the summer. We found the small bull mixed in with the herd. It had only been legal shooting light for a few minutes, so the sun still wasn’t quite up yet enough to tell exactly if the bull was legal or not. Justin had first shooting rights since I had first shooting rights in Arizona. So it was up to him weather he wanted to shoot or pass on a legal animal. As the sun began to show itself it became clear that the bull was just a small fork-horn (2×2) with no brow tines. Now we were left with 12 legal cows to shoot, and they were moving towards the woods. Justin had decided that he did not want to shoot a cow. I, on the other hand, did not care. I had 2nd shot opportunity and we were on the 2nd to last day of the hunt. I whispered over to him “are you going to shoot a cow?”. “No, but just wait” he answered. I knew what he was thinking. A big bull was hanging out with the herd, hiding himself in the brush until the last minute. I was less optimistic. Seeing the herd 2 days in a row with no bull indicated to me that if there was a bull with the herd he had already been harvested.

I ranged the elk, now at a little over 600 yards and only 7 were in the open now, the rest had disappeared into the woods. I clicked the CDS dial on my Leupold VX-6 to 625 yards. A shot farther than I had ever taken with a rifle. The elk seemed like such big targets through the 18x scope. I steadied my rifle on the top of my Mystery Ranch frame and imagined squeezing a round off. The rest was solid and I felt confident in my ability to take the shot. A good 30 minutes has elapsed since we first settled in to our spots to watch the elk. No big bull had appeared yet and I was beginning to think we’d lose our opportunity at an elk if one of us didn’t take a shot. I pressed Justin one more time “Do you want to take a cow or not? Because if you don’t I am shooting”. He looked at me, I could tell he was disappointed that a bull didn’t come out yet, but he relented, “go ahead if you want to shoot, shoot”. I turned back to the elk took one last range reading, a deep breath, steadied the cross hairs on the biggest one’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The suppressed 300 PRC had done it’s job beautifully. She immediately fell to the ground and began rolling. From our vantage point the hill did not appear that steep, we would shortly find out exactly how steep it was. She tumbled and tumbled for what seemed like half the distance of the hill where she finally came to a halt. My shot placement was deadly, but slightly high, she had not expired yet. When she came to a stop I centered the crosshairs on her chest again and squeezed a second round off. The rock behind her erupted from the ground. Unbeknownst to me at the time I had forgotten my scope was still set at 625 yards. It startled her enough to push off of her position and continue her roll down the hill. Annoyed at myself for allowing a wounded animal to suffer I took another shot as she was descending the hill and again missed high. She finally came to a stop behind a tree at about 200 yards from where we were sitting. I took a 4th and final shot, again missing high. In the excitement the CDS dial had completely escaped my mind. The whole ordeal was probably less than 45 seconds but it was weighing on me. I wanted to put the cow down as quickly and humanely as possible. My gun was now empty and I was rifling through my bag trying to find another round, the CDS had now entered my mind and I zeroed my scope to the 150 yard sight-in distance. I yelled to Justin “Put one in her to put her down” his 300 PRC barked just once and the job was done. The cow let out one last groan and again began to roll until she reached a dense patch of trees.

We made our way down the steep hill to a creek bottom. We joked that this must’ve been where our friend the other day had been talking about. There were a number of old elk carcasses and bones throughout the bottom. We started up the hill to where we had last seen the elk fall. The trek up was farther than I had anticipated she was wedged behind a tree on a hill impossibly steep to butcher an animal. Our only option was to get her out from behind the tree and roll her the rest of the way down the hill to flatter ground. We tied some 550 cord to her back feet and together we hefted her around the tree. Letting go before we could be dragged down the mountain with her. She landed at the bottom on a nice flat area where butchering would be easy. We decided to take our time, tag the elk, drink some water, and get some pictures before starting the butchering. As we were sitting there getting some pictures we saw two other hunters approach from across the creek.

This hunt took place in the fall of 2019. Up until this hunt we had never hunted in Montana. While driving through the western part of the state two years prior it quickly came to the top of our list for hunting. I had done my usual research, attempting to find the unit with the highest harvest rates, while maintaining a lower number of hunters. I had settled on a couple of general units to the south along the Idaho border. The harvest rates seemed good, the terrain seemed feasible, and there was plenty of public land. We had settled on staying at an AirBnB in the town of Dillon. It was a minimum of an hour drive to get to the edge of the unit from there, but the options for lodging were quite limited with not having access to the area prior. We arrived in Dillon on the first day at around 2 a.m., exhausted from the 36 hour drive. We quickly unpacked, decided we’d leave at sunrise so that we could the unit in the daylight. After a little over an hour drive with 2 four wheels on the back of the truck we made our way down a public road heading into the mountains. There was a small BLM plot that crossed the a road a few miles in with a turnaround/parking lot. We parked the trucks, unloaded the four wheelers, and headed out up the trail. It was another 30 minute ride up in the mountains to be able to hunt.

We spent the next 3 days hiking over 10 miles a day in the unit, hearing a few gunshots sporadically throughout the day. We ran into many other hunters throughout the three days of hunting. Each day we’d go further in, or further up, trying to get away from other hunters, only to get to a spot and see relatively fresh boot tracks with no sign of game. On third day Justin and I decided ride the four wheeler to the highest point in the area. A road we thought was closed that we ended up seeing atv after atv on ended up taking you up to about 9,400 feet. At that elevation, in late November, there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground with drifts easily being over 2 feet. We parked the four wheeler and headed on a trail that would take us a couple of miles back to a big bowl with a creek bottom that would take us 6 miles down to another road. We got to the top of the bowl in a good glassing spot as the sun was cresting the mountains ahead of us. We spent the entire morning watching the hillsides all around us for any sign of life. Our plan was to wait until about 2 hours after daylight then head down the creek in an attempt to either track elk in the snow or push some game out of the dense forest.

We headed down the steep hillside toward the bottom. Temperatures were in the 20s and cold weather gear wasn’t doing it’s job to keep me warm so I was ready to move. As we got to the bottom we spread out about 100 to 150 yards apart. A patch of trees was between Justin and I as we walked. I looked downhill to spot some orange ahead. At first I had thought it was Justin coming up the hill towards me to tell me something. As I looked closer I realized it was another hunter headed our way. Discouraged and annoyed that we had traveled so far out of the way in an attempt to get away from people, I noticed Justin had seen the man and was headed to talk to him so I dropped downhill to catch up with them. The man was in his 60s, dressed in Army fatigues with a Marine Corps boonie cap. He was carrying a cheap backpack and had an old Ruger rifle slung over his shoulder, duct tape was wrapped around the muzzle to the forend of the stock. The conversation started pleasant enough. He had told us that he started out at day break 6 miles below where we were headed, and walked the whole creek bottom up to us. He hadn’t seen a single fresh track in the fresh coating of snow on the ground. He told us that he was a native Montanan and had hunted in this spot his entire life. I sensed a bit of animosity in his tone as he was telling us that this was his hunting spot. He had asked us where we were from and we told him we drove over 2000 miles from Pennsylvania to hunt elk. I think he took some pity on us and asked if we were in shape to hike. We had told him if he gives us a line on some elk we’ll hike no matter how far it is. So he told us of a spot he used to go to that was quite the hike from the road and that he just couldn’t do it anymore in his old age.

We finished the that day off hiking around the top of the mountain looking for fresh sign, only to see the occasional old track where some snow had melted off, or single deer track. The next day we headed out excited about the new spot we had been told about. It was closer to the cabin and didn’t require the use of the four wheelers. We started hiking in while it was still dark out. We had about 3 to 4 thousand feet of elevation gain if we were to make it to the top of the mountains so the plan was to just pace ourselves and stop frequently to glass. Our first spot took us about an hour and a half to get to a good glassing spot. Right off the bat we saw a group of 3 guys who were camped about a mile down the road from us hiking in adjacent to us. They were on the opposite border of the public land than we were. As we were getting ready to tackle the next section of mountain Justin looked to the north and spotted what he thought was a herd of elk. We got the spotting scope out and tripod for my binos. It was a herd of 12 cows, according to the OnX they were about a mile and a quarter away at the edge of a clearing in the woods. We were excited to finally see game, it was even better that they were elk. We watched them for a half hour and decided that getting over to where they were was going to take hours and we didn’t want to risk travelling all that way only for them to be gone. We chose to continue up the mountain. We didn’t follow rule 1. “Never leave elk to find elk”.

We spent the day on top of the mountain overlooking a convergence of two ravines. There were some avalanche shoots, pockets of dense forest, and some meadows to watch. The wind had picked up that afternoon to 30 mph gusts and the glassing was pretty miserable. Justin was convinced now that elk were in the area and he sat exposed to the wind, zeroed in on a good meadow waiting for elk to emerge. About an hour before dark the idea that those elk would be out again at last light was eating at me. We talked about leaving a the spot a little early so that we could be in position to check out the hillside a little better. This time we would be positioned about a quarter to a half mile closer to hopefully be able to identify any bulls in the herd. We got up to leave and spotted a cow moose at around 400 yards in the meadow we were watching the entire day, along with 2 large Mule deer doe just below us at 100 yards. With game on the move we decided to sneak our way back down the mountain. We had about 10 minutes of daylight left and spotted the herd out in the same meadow. There were 13 elk now that we could see. One had a small set of antlers, but we couldn’t tell if it had the required brow tines to be legal in that unit. We knew exactly where we wanted to be the next day. 

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.

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.

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.

On day 3 we decided to head down the mountain range another 15 miles and to get a little farther away from the main roads. Having never been in Arizona before, we didn’t know what to expect as far as the conditions of the roads. We headed back the dirt road after traveling about an hour from the house. The road seemed smooth for the first 3 miles, until we started gaining some elevation. We hit some pretty sharp switchbacks, and snow packed sections of the road. I felt like we were probably going to have some issues getting back out the road if the temperature were to rise and melt some of the snow, thawing out the roads a little. We made it back to the trail head parking lot almost 7 miles off the main road and at about 3800 feet elevation. There was a truck already parked back there with three guys loading up to head out on foot. I jumped out of the truck greeted them and asked if they were from around the area. The one guy motioned to the driver and said “he;s from around here”  The driver let us know sternly he was an outfitter, he didn’t seem to thrilled we were back there. He asked us how we found the area and if we knew anyone from the area. We told him it was just a lucky guess doing some digging online. We asked if they had any luck seeing rutting bucks, since we had not so much as seen a mule deer doe or an antler on any of the deer we had seen. He told us the name of the mountain they were hunting around the day before and that they had seen some Mule deer over there rutting with some does. We jokingly told the outfitter that if they had some success that day we might be giving him a call to find us some mule deer. They headed south on a marked trail and we headed north on to some ridge tops.

We walked the road about a half a mile down to a dry creek bottom to cross over to a hill side. We climbed for a while to get to the top of a hill that seemed to have a long ridge line and branched off to a couple other ridge lines so we wouldn’t have to drop down and back up ridges all day. We kicked a coues doe out on the way up the hill so we were excited about this spot. When we got to the ridge line we made it about 100 yards before I saw another doe on a hillside staring at us. We held tight for a few moments glassing that doe, and scanning the surrounding area to see if there were any other deer within sight. We quickly saw 2 more doe feeding on the hillside, they took off over a ridge and down into what looked like a bowl on the map. In front of us about 150 yards was a doe feeding on the hillside, she was directly in the path we wanted to take. We didn’t want to completely run her out of the area, but we didn’t have another way around her that we could see. After watching her for a few minutes and realizing she didn’t want to move on her own we started slowly heading toward her. Justin took this moment to put on a practice stalk. He slowly moved closer to her, first up to 80 yards before stopping, then 55 then up to 37 yards. He stopped on the hillside and just sat there watching her, she didn’t seem to care at all that we were in the area. Eventually I think the wind swirled and she got our scent and took off.

We pushed up the hill further to an area where multiple drainage’s converged into one semi open area, with a dry creek bed that seemed to extend the whole way down to the hard road. We dropped down to a good glassing spot and set up our binos and spotting scope on tripods and got into a comfortable position so we could glass for the morning. The sun was just coming up over the mountains across the valley from us so we had a few hours ahead of us to glass. We started seeing does right away, darting in and out of the brush then disappearing. The desert whitetail has a way of just appearing and disappearing without trace on the landscape. After about 30 minutes of sitting, Justin spotted our first buck. A nice coues buck at 350 yards was headed towards the creek bottom. Looking through the spotting scope he appeared to be an 8 point buck, we both agreed he looked to be a nice buck. He didn’t stop in the open at all, he just kept moving through the thick brush. At one point we thought he was going to come our way, the wind wasn’t good so if he kept moving we were going to have to back out and get in better position. He changed course and walked down to the creek. We lost him in the brush. Justin assumed he bedded down in some thick stuff, but we just couldn’t tell.

About 5 minutes after we last saw the buck Justin made the suggestion that one of us stay in the glassing spot and one of us attempt to stalk up to where the buck was last seen. I lost the deer well before he did and while he walked me in to where he last saw him, I wasn’t 100% where the exact spot was that he saw him go into. I passed up the chance he offered and told him to go ahead and make the stalk if he felt like he could get into position to get a shot on the deer. We quickly discussed a quick hand signal code out between the two of us. I bought an orange shooter towel, about the size of a wash cloth, before we headed out west. I’d use the towel to flag him down if I needed to relay a message to him.  If he looked up and didn’t see a towel being waved, that mean all was good and he was to continue on with the stalk. I waited for about 45 minutes to an hour before he got to a place where I could see him after he descended the ridge we were on. It was apparently more difficult than he had anticipated. I watched as he slowly approached the area that the deer was last seen going into, he got to within about 100 yards. The brush thick, it was over his head and at times he would disappear into it then reappear again as if he was mimicking the coues deer. After a half hour of him trying to get different angles on this one particular area so that he could close the distance to less than 100 yards, I finally saw him throw his hands up in defeat and make his way back to the ridge line.

 

 

 

 

By the time Justin got back up to the glassing position it was now approaching 11 a.m. the deer activity had dropped off drastically. We had 2 groups of does we were watching that were close to a mile away. They would appear and disappear at times, but were always fairly close to the same area. We decided to eat lunch then maybe take a walk to a higher ridge to see if we could get on any other deer. It seemed for the moment we had a good handle on what was in the valley we were looking at and we wouldn’t be far away if we wanted to head back down to there. So we ate, then took off back the ridge and down another finger connecting us to another ridge. We flushed a covey of quail out, to me it sounded like a helicopter taking off and scared me half to death. There were probably 20 birds in all and they were awesome to see. We went about a mile and traveled a couple hundred feet in elevation to get to the next spot. We were now looking higher up the same drainage we were just glassing. We had some better vantage points on what looked to be better habitat. It also looked much more difficult to get to if we did end up seeing a deer we wanted to go after. We stuck around there for another hour or two until we decided that this wasn’t mule deer country. Maybe they were lower down closer to the main roads. So we started our trek back to the truck.

When we returned to the truck we found a business card stuck in the door from the outfitter we had met that morning. We kind of laughed about it and wondered if they had success or if they just got tired of not seeing anything and took off. At this time of the day temperature had gotten up to about 45 degrees and the road looked to be a slushy mess. We put the truck in four wheel drive and in low gear to back track a few miles on the road until we got to better road conditions. The saguaro cactus started popping up more and more as we went lower and lower. The snow covered ground dissipated from the south facing slopes and we were closer to the high way. We pulled off the road and got our gear together. We had a few hours of daylight left and I looked at the topo map and saw a hill that had a few hundred feet of elevation gain to get us to a long ridge line that had plenty of ravines we could glass down. We started out strong, about halfway up I was loosing steam, the hill was steeper than I anticipated. I got to a bench about 3/4 of the way up the hill and was starting to really feel the affects of a days worth of hiking hills. I took a seat to rest and get some water while Justin continued on up the hill. After a 10 minute breather I met up with him, having a second wind I was ready to see if we could find some Mule deer. There was deer sign everywhere, judging from the size of the tracks they looked like there was more coues in the area. We finished the evening out on a ridge overlooking the entire valley. It was surreal watching the shadows casting longer and longer as the sun dropped behind the mountains.

We headed back down to the truck, tired, a little cold, and feeling defeated from not seeing any mule deer. We got back to the house and decided to look up the mountain the outfitter had mentioned that morning. It was a little closer than where we had been hunting and was across the valley from where we were hunting. The mountain itself was at a much higher elevation from what we had been hunting. It got us thinking maybe we were in the completely wrong area from where we should have been. So we quickly mapped out a rout to get up to that area and decided that’s where we would be headed on day 3.