Just returned from our northern NM mule deer hunt last week. Myself, my brother, and my neighbor got lucky in the 2020 draw, so we had three tags and two of us were hunting mule deer for the first time.
Short version: we had a great trip, met some awesome people, endured some weather, didn't get the truck stuck, ate good food, didn't think about politics or COVID (or take a shower) for 9-10 days, and got a little bit lucky.
We overnighted in middle-of-nowhere CO on the way out...
...then had a couple days to scout the unit before the opener....
....wound up spending most of our time hunting the mesa country.
After a couple days of beautiful weather for scouting, the forecast for the opener was for driving rain and 40-mph wind gusts, to be followed by snow with overnight lows in the teens and highs in the low 30s. We'd heard the roads in the unit become almost impassable when wet (definitely true) so we found a spot to set up base camp where we'd have a canyon or two to hike into to hunt even if we couldn't move the truck for 3-4 days.
As we scouted we noted there was very little water as expected, and while we had Sawyer squeeze etc. but it looked like we'd have a hard time finding enough to even filter....we were going to have to burn at least a half day if we needed to get to town and back for water.
Part of the highlight of our trip was we met a super nice oil rig worker that actually went well out of his way to deliver 15 gallons of drinking water to our camp. Gave us a sense of hope in humanity with all the crazy stuff going on in this world that a local would be so kind to out-of-state hunters.
...salvation in a bottle(s)...
With camp set and fully stocked with water for the week, we took some time to check the zero on our rifles prior to opening day....
Short version: we had a great trip, met some awesome people, endured some weather, didn't get the truck stuck, ate good food, didn't think about politics or COVID (or take a shower) for 9-10 days, and got a little bit lucky.
We overnighted in middle-of-nowhere CO on the way out...
...then had a couple days to scout the unit before the opener....
....wound up spending most of our time hunting the mesa country.
After a couple days of beautiful weather for scouting, the forecast for the opener was for driving rain and 40-mph wind gusts, to be followed by snow with overnight lows in the teens and highs in the low 30s. We'd heard the roads in the unit become almost impassable when wet (definitely true) so we found a spot to set up base camp where we'd have a canyon or two to hike into to hunt even if we couldn't move the truck for 3-4 days.
As we scouted we noted there was very little water as expected, and while we had Sawyer squeeze etc. but it looked like we'd have a hard time finding enough to even filter....we were going to have to burn at least a half day if we needed to get to town and back for water.
Part of the highlight of our trip was we met a super nice oil rig worker that actually went well out of his way to deliver 15 gallons of drinking water to our camp. Gave us a sense of hope in humanity with all the crazy stuff going on in this world that a local would be so kind to out-of-state hunters.
...salvation in a bottle(s)...
With camp set and fully stocked with water for the week, we took some time to check the zero on our rifles prior to opening day....
