J_Poiencot
Member
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2020
- Messages
- 38
It all started when talking to a guy I work with. I was telling him how much I wanted to hunt and kill a mule deer. He began to tell me about some public land in Texas he hunted when he was younger and lived there. He said if you want to we can work around our work schedule and try to get up there during the 2 week long season. The only dates we could get up there was the Friday and Saturday of the last weekend. So we made a plan to make the trip.
I dove into the computer and onx to learn as much as I could about the area, elevation changes, boundaries, anything I could possibly think would help to make this a successful hunt. I had no idea really what I was looking for being that all I have ever hunted was whitetail. I used some of those tactics and did my best.
The Thursday before our trip was here and we were packed and ready. We both worked that day and got off around 3. We got in the truck and started the 12 and half hour drive to the spot we were going to hunt Friday morning. We pulled up to the area I wanted to hunt around 3:30am. We jumped out of the truck and stretched in the 33degree north Texas air. There was some moon light, so we could make out the peaks of the mountains (I call them mountains because they are the biggest things I've ever seen or climbed Haha) and we picked the tallest one and said that's where we are gonna go. We hopped back in the truck until around 5am. Even though I was tired from working and driving all day and night, I was to excited to sleep. When the alarm went off at 5, I jumped out the truck and said lets get it.
It was a little over a mile to the mountain top we were heading to. When we got to the top and found a flat spot to lay down. We had around an hour until the sun was going to come up. While I'm laying there looking up at the clearest, darkest sky, watching the stars in all its beauty, shooting stars start going everywhere. The sun starts to creep up over the horizon and I finally begin to make out this beautiful country. I have a huge canyon in front of my and this is my first time laying eyes on country like this. As it began to get brighter, my binos were flying over the terrain trying to find a deer. In my excitement I know I was over glassing and not picking it apart slow enough to spot anything. So I told my buddy, you glass this side and I will ease around and glass the other canyon behind us.
I make my was around the top and set up under some rim rock looking out over gorgeous country. I settle down and start picking apart areas trying to find that first deer. After a few minutes my phone vibrates and it is a text from my buddy that says "I see a doe". I sent back "Man that is awesome! Nothing here, but working on changing that!". It wasn't 30 seconds later and I get this text, "BUCK!!". I grab my rifle, let everything else and took off around the top. I got behind him and the rock he was up against and crawled to his location. He told me I'm pretty sure I just saw a good buck over there, but not sure. Where he was talking about was a flat top at the top of a mountain 700 yards across the big canyon. We start glassing that area trying to get eyes on the buck he thought he saw. I am seeing some does and I see a small 2 point. Then all of a sudden I see a real white face tucked back in the mesquite trees, then its gone. We continue glassing and seeing the does and they start filtering into the trees and all kind of disappear. From where we were watching them they are about 200 yards from private through the trees, so we figure they had gone to private.
I tell my buddy I'm going to go back to the other side where all my gear is and keep glassing that canyon and as I turn around, topping the ridge from where my gear is, a 2 point comes over walking right toward us. In my excitement I turn and pretty muck yell in a whisper "HEY"!
My buddy turns around to see me pulling off my scope cover and setting up on this 2 point. At this point he is like 60 yards. My buddy laughs and whispers back "don't shoot, we have only been hunting 30 minutes. We might see bigger". So I listen and don't shoot. I just lay there watching him in my crosshairs. He eats for about 10 minutes then works back over the ridge where he came from.
So over the next hour or so, we start going from ridge to ridge, top to top checking draws and canyons looking for deer. Around 8:30, an hour and 15 minutes since daylight, we were standing up on a ridge and my buddy was talking like he was wanting to head back to the truck and go try somewhere else. As he is saying this, his back is to the area where we glassed the deer earlier this morning. I am looking at it over his shoulder as he's talking, and all of a sudden a doe steps out of the trees and is glistening in the sun. I said deer and he turns and looks and I told him I think they are still in there man.
He asked if I was thinking of going check it out and I told him oh ya, I'm gonna make a play on them. So we start checking terrain and figuring out a plan on getting to them. He said he was going to head back up to the rock where he had glassed them from and watch. From where we are its roughly 1100-1200 walk to get in on the deer. so as he takes off back to our glassing point, I bail off the ridge and start heading down into the canyon. I cross the canyon and work up a draw on the side the deer are on. As I get up to the top I don't like my angle on them or where I am, so I back down and come in a different draw that puts me up in a better location.
I get up to the top and start slowly making my way towards the thicker trees. As I'm easing in, I take out my phone and text my buddy to see how far I am from where we were watching the deer. He texts back 200-250 yards. I put my phone back in my pocket and take maybe three steps and a deer jumps out of its bed in the tall grass 20 yards in front of me and bounds straight away. I hit my belly almost immediately and the deer doesn't know what I was and didn't smell me since I had like a 20mph wind in my face. I guess he just heard me. I am laying there watching him through the tall grass and he starts walking back towards me to figure out what he heard. He gets to 7 feet before he sees me and still isn't sure what I am, but knows something isn't right. At this point I am pretty nervous because I don't know how muleys are. Is he going to stomp and blow like a whitetail and blow everything out of here. But he just turned and hopped away and over the edge down into the canyon. As he does this, I jump up and hurry and get into the trees.
So I'm slightly crouched over, slowly walking a trail through the waist high grass and trees, stopping and glassing every 10 steps or so. After about 3 glasses I see a doe working from my right to left eating on brush. I watch her until she is out of sight, then begin my walk again. after 15-20 yards I catch movement to my right. there is a decent little 2 point walking in my direction but slightly angled in front of me. If he stays on the path he is walking, he is going to hit the trail I'm on around 30 yards in front of me. He has his head kind of down with his ears laid back, not really paying attention, just walking. I'm getting nervous again, thinking when he gets to the trail he's going to look both ways like a kid crossing the street and he is going to see me and its all over. That didn't happen, he hit my trail, never missed a beat and just headed away from me on the trail I'm walking. So with such a hard wind in my face, blowing from him to me, I decide to stay low and as quiet as I can and just follow him.
This worked out to my advantage, and sealed the deal on this hunt more than I could of imagined. So as I'm following him through these thick trees, he is playing like my decoy and hunting dog, he is stopping and looking at these deer and in turn allowing me to find them and use more caution. There are deer walking to him and they are touching noses, he pointed out 10 deer to me in these trees at this point. Then all of a sudden he stops and perks his ears up and is looking directly in front of him at what is deer #11. My buck stands up 10 yards in front of him, 40-50 yards in front of me, slightly quartering away. I raised my binos and as soon as I saw horns like that, I dropped them, raised my rifle, shot, and he dropped!!!
I couldn't hold in my emotion as I let out a loud hoop and holler! I turned and ran out of the trees to the canyon where I could see my buddy with both hands in the air!!! I had just checked off my number one bucket list animal, 2 hours into my first ever muley hunt, on grounds I had only seen on the computer. To say I got lucky is an understatement. My buddy calls me and asks if I got him and I tell him I shot a monster! Unknown to me, he watched a small 2 point walk in behind me on the trail I was walking. He thought I couldn't resist it and shot him. So he thought I was messing with him. But I told him, no man, he's huge, I'm serious!! He laughs and says ok, ill head your way.
I wanted us to walk in together and lay eyes and hands on him at the same time. so I sat there and waited as he made the long trek over. I made phone calls to let my wife and dad know what I had done. I was overwhelmed with excitement and knew I was truly blessed! Once my buddy got to me I was ready to go see my deer, so we started in. As we were walking up on him we both went crazy, hooping, hugs, and high fives were flying. not only did I kill my first mule deer, but I killed a 4x4 with huge eye guards on public land, 2 hours into our first morning! My buddy said he had never seen, killed or knew anyone who had killed a buck like this on that public up there.
We were right under 2 miles from the truck, so I cleaned him and we packed him out. It is a hunt I will always remember and it is just the beginning of my obsession with hunting mule deer.
I dove into the computer and onx to learn as much as I could about the area, elevation changes, boundaries, anything I could possibly think would help to make this a successful hunt. I had no idea really what I was looking for being that all I have ever hunted was whitetail. I used some of those tactics and did my best.
The Thursday before our trip was here and we were packed and ready. We both worked that day and got off around 3. We got in the truck and started the 12 and half hour drive to the spot we were going to hunt Friday morning. We pulled up to the area I wanted to hunt around 3:30am. We jumped out of the truck and stretched in the 33degree north Texas air. There was some moon light, so we could make out the peaks of the mountains (I call them mountains because they are the biggest things I've ever seen or climbed Haha) and we picked the tallest one and said that's where we are gonna go. We hopped back in the truck until around 5am. Even though I was tired from working and driving all day and night, I was to excited to sleep. When the alarm went off at 5, I jumped out the truck and said lets get it.
It was a little over a mile to the mountain top we were heading to. When we got to the top and found a flat spot to lay down. We had around an hour until the sun was going to come up. While I'm laying there looking up at the clearest, darkest sky, watching the stars in all its beauty, shooting stars start going everywhere. The sun starts to creep up over the horizon and I finally begin to make out this beautiful country. I have a huge canyon in front of my and this is my first time laying eyes on country like this. As it began to get brighter, my binos were flying over the terrain trying to find a deer. In my excitement I know I was over glassing and not picking it apart slow enough to spot anything. So I told my buddy, you glass this side and I will ease around and glass the other canyon behind us.
I make my was around the top and set up under some rim rock looking out over gorgeous country. I settle down and start picking apart areas trying to find that first deer. After a few minutes my phone vibrates and it is a text from my buddy that says "I see a doe". I sent back "Man that is awesome! Nothing here, but working on changing that!". It wasn't 30 seconds later and I get this text, "BUCK!!". I grab my rifle, let everything else and took off around the top. I got behind him and the rock he was up against and crawled to his location. He told me I'm pretty sure I just saw a good buck over there, but not sure. Where he was talking about was a flat top at the top of a mountain 700 yards across the big canyon. We start glassing that area trying to get eyes on the buck he thought he saw. I am seeing some does and I see a small 2 point. Then all of a sudden I see a real white face tucked back in the mesquite trees, then its gone. We continue glassing and seeing the does and they start filtering into the trees and all kind of disappear. From where we were watching them they are about 200 yards from private through the trees, so we figure they had gone to private.
I tell my buddy I'm going to go back to the other side where all my gear is and keep glassing that canyon and as I turn around, topping the ridge from where my gear is, a 2 point comes over walking right toward us. In my excitement I turn and pretty muck yell in a whisper "HEY"!
My buddy turns around to see me pulling off my scope cover and setting up on this 2 point. At this point he is like 60 yards. My buddy laughs and whispers back "don't shoot, we have only been hunting 30 minutes. We might see bigger". So I listen and don't shoot. I just lay there watching him in my crosshairs. He eats for about 10 minutes then works back over the ridge where he came from.
So over the next hour or so, we start going from ridge to ridge, top to top checking draws and canyons looking for deer. Around 8:30, an hour and 15 minutes since daylight, we were standing up on a ridge and my buddy was talking like he was wanting to head back to the truck and go try somewhere else. As he is saying this, his back is to the area where we glassed the deer earlier this morning. I am looking at it over his shoulder as he's talking, and all of a sudden a doe steps out of the trees and is glistening in the sun. I said deer and he turns and looks and I told him I think they are still in there man.
He asked if I was thinking of going check it out and I told him oh ya, I'm gonna make a play on them. So we start checking terrain and figuring out a plan on getting to them. He said he was going to head back up to the rock where he had glassed them from and watch. From where we are its roughly 1100-1200 walk to get in on the deer. so as he takes off back to our glassing point, I bail off the ridge and start heading down into the canyon. I cross the canyon and work up a draw on the side the deer are on. As I get up to the top I don't like my angle on them or where I am, so I back down and come in a different draw that puts me up in a better location.
I get up to the top and start slowly making my way towards the thicker trees. As I'm easing in, I take out my phone and text my buddy to see how far I am from where we were watching the deer. He texts back 200-250 yards. I put my phone back in my pocket and take maybe three steps and a deer jumps out of its bed in the tall grass 20 yards in front of me and bounds straight away. I hit my belly almost immediately and the deer doesn't know what I was and didn't smell me since I had like a 20mph wind in my face. I guess he just heard me. I am laying there watching him through the tall grass and he starts walking back towards me to figure out what he heard. He gets to 7 feet before he sees me and still isn't sure what I am, but knows something isn't right. At this point I am pretty nervous because I don't know how muleys are. Is he going to stomp and blow like a whitetail and blow everything out of here. But he just turned and hopped away and over the edge down into the canyon. As he does this, I jump up and hurry and get into the trees.
So I'm slightly crouched over, slowly walking a trail through the waist high grass and trees, stopping and glassing every 10 steps or so. After about 3 glasses I see a doe working from my right to left eating on brush. I watch her until she is out of sight, then begin my walk again. after 15-20 yards I catch movement to my right. there is a decent little 2 point walking in my direction but slightly angled in front of me. If he stays on the path he is walking, he is going to hit the trail I'm on around 30 yards in front of me. He has his head kind of down with his ears laid back, not really paying attention, just walking. I'm getting nervous again, thinking when he gets to the trail he's going to look both ways like a kid crossing the street and he is going to see me and its all over. That didn't happen, he hit my trail, never missed a beat and just headed away from me on the trail I'm walking. So with such a hard wind in my face, blowing from him to me, I decide to stay low and as quiet as I can and just follow him.
This worked out to my advantage, and sealed the deal on this hunt more than I could of imagined. So as I'm following him through these thick trees, he is playing like my decoy and hunting dog, he is stopping and looking at these deer and in turn allowing me to find them and use more caution. There are deer walking to him and they are touching noses, he pointed out 10 deer to me in these trees at this point. Then all of a sudden he stops and perks his ears up and is looking directly in front of him at what is deer #11. My buck stands up 10 yards in front of him, 40-50 yards in front of me, slightly quartering away. I raised my binos and as soon as I saw horns like that, I dropped them, raised my rifle, shot, and he dropped!!!
I couldn't hold in my emotion as I let out a loud hoop and holler! I turned and ran out of the trees to the canyon where I could see my buddy with both hands in the air!!! I had just checked off my number one bucket list animal, 2 hours into my first ever muley hunt, on grounds I had only seen on the computer. To say I got lucky is an understatement. My buddy calls me and asks if I got him and I tell him I shot a monster! Unknown to me, he watched a small 2 point walk in behind me on the trail I was walking. He thought I couldn't resist it and shot him. So he thought I was messing with him. But I told him, no man, he's huge, I'm serious!! He laughs and says ok, ill head your way.
I wanted us to walk in together and lay eyes and hands on him at the same time. so I sat there and waited as he made the long trek over. I made phone calls to let my wife and dad know what I had done. I was overwhelmed with excitement and knew I was truly blessed! Once my buddy got to me I was ready to go see my deer, so we started in. As we were walking up on him we both went crazy, hooping, hugs, and high fives were flying. not only did I kill my first mule deer, but I killed a 4x4 with huge eye guards on public land, 2 hours into our first morning! My buddy said he had never seen, killed or knew anyone who had killed a buck like this on that public up there.
We were right under 2 miles from the truck, so I cleaned him and we packed him out. It is a hunt I will always remember and it is just the beginning of my obsession with hunting mule deer.
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