HuntandFly 2022 Elk and Deer recap

[huntandfly]

One of my favorite parts about this forum is reading about other folks experiences in the woods, so I am finally getting around to doing a recap of my busy fall spent hunting with family. I spent more time in the woods this fall than ever before and learned some pretty valuable lessons. The most important one: never forget to balance your time in the field with time at home! Sorry honey I’ll do better next year

The season started with a quick trip to the Gila over Labor Day to help out for a few days on one of my uncle’s hunts. We were after a very large reclusive bull so I got a solid lesson on what it is like to hunt one particular bull in an area full of elk. It can be fun, but many times it is quite the grind to glass the same chunks of timber and burn repeatedly for hours straight hoping to catch a glimpse of something moving through the timber. I saw a decent number of elk on this trip, but didn’t see much for high quality bulls. I did get video of one decent bull the last day I was there. I left to go back to work, but my uncle eventually was successful. Didn’t get many pictures from this trip sadly, just some from a video I took of this nice younger bull.

 

[huntandfly]

Next up a couple weeks later was another trip back to New Mexico, this time for an archery elk hunt with 2 other uncles and my dad in a slightly easier to draw unit. I spent the trip doing one thing I’m usually pretty good at: forgetting to take pictures. With that in mind, I’ll do my best to give a recap of the few days I was there.

Day 1: my dad wasn’t in camp yet so my uncle and I headed out the first morning to one of our favorite glassing spots in the area. We get out of the truck and immediately are hearing elk bugles way off in the distance. We set up the glass and within about 15 minutes we have a herd spotted with what looks like a nice mature 6 point out at about a mile. We watch them for 20 minutes to determine their direction of travel and likely bedding location, then we close the distance just a touch in the truck before heading out up the canyon. The country is pretty benign, so within about 30 minutes we are in the zone and “teepee creeping” and some of you folks like to call it. We get set up and I let out a couple soft cow calls. A bull fires back a bit farther up the canyon that’s we had hoped: we guessed wrong. My uncle starts to move forward a bit, I let him get another 100 yards and cow call again. A bull rips a bugle right in front of him at 40 yards, likely a satellite. He sees the bulls legs walking but never can get a clear look as it moves off. The herd slowly filtered away and we backed out to try another day.

That evening we went down to the south a ways and checked out some new country. All we found were a bunch of mosquitos, a small 5 point 2 miles away, and a couple distant bugles. We called it for the night and headed back to camp where my dad had now showed up.

 

[huntandfly]

Day 2 starts with us driving out to glass some higher country where we have seen elk in this unit before. As we round a corner near where we were yesterday, a beautiful 6 point bull takes off from the side of the road up onto a knob. It is about 10 minutes before daylight, so we drive around the top end of the knob to get the wind right and try and get out in front of him. We climb up to where we saw him headed and let out a couple small cow calls. With no response, we slowly mosey down the ridge line a little ways and set up for a sequence. I start taking a tree just over the ridge top and bugle a few times. Still nothing. As I am walking back up to my uncle and dad (after about 10 minutes), I see the bull come trotting through the cedars from the original direction we thought he had been and put on the brakes as he hit an opening where he could see (and I suspect smell). He must have been on his way in slowly and quietly, but he only made it to 60 yards. He didn’t seem to spook, but slowly walked out and away from us. This bull would come to be called “the water bull.”

After that encounter we headed up to the higher country, and quickly glassed a very nice 6 point covering ground along the base of a mountain looking for cows. We decided we would hunt out in front of him that evening.

 

[huntandfly]

That evening, my dad set up on the glassing location from day one to try and turn up some more elk. I took my uncle up the mountain to try and rustle up the big bull from the AM. As we got up onto the benches below the mountain, I let out a location bugle. It was immediately met by a bull about 400 yards ahead of us. We quickly closed the distance about 150 yards and got setup, although not ideally. I let out another bugle and the bull fired back quickly closing on us. At this time, another big bugle comes from across the canyon to our left. As I’m watching up the hill, I see the closer bull running straight at us. He is about a 320 class 6 point. He goes behind a cedar at 80 yards and screams at us, because he knows we ought to be right here. I slowly start to move off and call the opposite direction but it’s too late as my bugles are now met with bark-chuckles and this guy is fully onto us. Not helping the situation is another hunter that traverses at least 3/4 of a mile from our right to join in the party, thinking it will be just him. As the first bull moves off, the second bull to the left is getting more agitated. We are chatting with the other hunter about our plan when the bull on the left suddenly screams from the bottom of the draw right below us. I immediately run back and start making a fuss like a herd of elk and hit him with a challenge bugle. He comes straight up the hill to my uncle at 25 yards, where he proceeds to stand behind 2 trees and rake and bugle, providing no shot. It’s at this point that my uncle and I realize we are just not that good at archery setups here yet. It’s funny how I feel like I learn that lesson every year. The bull eventually gets tired of not seeing anything and walks away still bugling, never giving a clean look in some seriously thick cover. This bull was bigger than the first, and is the big bull we had spotted that morning on the mountainside. We slide out of there with plans to try again the next day.

 

[huntandfly]

Day 3 I take my dad and uncle both back up the same ridge to the benches, and like clockwork at daylight I have one of those same 2 bulls fire right back at my first bugle. This time we get the setup mostly right, and I back off quite a ways. Within 3 minutes the bull is once again closing on us, and the tag holders both see him sprinting down the hill to me. It’s the first bull from the previous night, but the 2nd bull has whipped up on him and he is now missing his right side from the 3rd up. As the bull slows and goes behind a cedar at 7 yards, my uncle draws. The bull stomps on the brakes and stares at him through a half dollar sized hole in the tree for 30 seconds before wheeling and leaving the country. In the battle of lucky vs. good we have been neither up to this point. Did I mention this is some seriously thick stuff?

That evening we head back down to look for “the water bull” in the lower country, and after having no luck where we though he would be, we run across him on the drive back to camp with only 10 minutes of daylight remaining. The bull is asking for it and holds up on a bank above the creek broadside in the open long enough for my uncle to range. He holds for 40 and shoots. The arrow sails just below the elks chest and buries in the dirt, the bull trots off unharmed. Later analysis seems to lead us to believe that in the lower light and intensity of the moment, my uncle may have ranged short/some brush just below the bull that was closer than he thought.

 

[huntandfly]

Day 4: The next morning I’m able to go out for one last hunt before hopping in the car back to Vegas. Dad heads to the low country and we saw the water bull going to water at a similar location as the previous day and he hopes to catch him on that pattern. The bull is a no show though, as one might expect from a bull that has recently escaped with his life. My uncle and I decide to give it one last go up on the mountainside looking for bulls but the action has slowed and we get no responses. I head back in to camp and sadly have to pack up for home.

My dad and uncle have an amazing rest of the hunt with multiple additional bulls called in and one more shot that hits a bull in no man’s land just below the spine (they find the bull later alive and well). We learned a ton on this trip as we always do.

My other uncle who drew in the outfitter pool killed a decent 6 point about half way through the hunt with his guide after being in elk many days and with many close calls.

 

[huntandfly]

Next on the list a week and a half later was the big ticket item for me: it was finally my time to hunt a Wyoming type 1 tag in a unit that we have been lucky enough as a family to hunt a couple of times, including last year. I have been looking forward to finally getting the opportunity to do this hunt with my dad and it turned out to be one of my best ever. My plan was to scout a few days in late September, bow hunt the last 4 days of season and roll right into rifle season for 7-8 days if necessary. Those plans got sunk in the late spring when one of my close friends sent me a wedding invite for October 1st. I immediately phoned him up and said “do you know what you are doing to me here?” I couldn’t miss it, so I bought tickets out of Salt Lake for 30 September to fly back 2 October, which would have me miss the rifle opener. I was bummed but I know this unit sometimes got better as the elk got pressured from other areas so I want overly worried about it.

 

[huntandfly]

Scouting days: for 3 days I covered as much ground as I possibly could in the unit. As luck would have it, one of my recently acquired hunting buddies got a tag for the unit directly adjacent and shared camp with us, along with my uncle (from my mom’s side this time, I have a lot of uncles as you can tell by now). My dad and uncle from the previous hunt would soon join to help as well. We scoured every area we had been before and a number of new ones as well. I was happy with the number of elk we were seeing, but this year the top end age class we were finding seemed to be significantly lower than previous hunts. I don’t believe it was a drought issue as the area has pretty good moisture all year, I just kept seeing young bulls running large herds of cows everywhere. I did run into a gentleman tracking a bull he had hit the night previous who knew the units very well and said he was not seeing the size/age he was used to either. He recovered his bull shortly after, about a 315” 6 point, and said it was the second biggest bull he had seen in a month. Based on my previous experience in the unit I found that somewhat discouraging. I had my bow with me the whole time, but the first few days were spent mostly just glassing and looking over what the unit had to offer. Here are a pile of pictures from that time

 

[huntandfly]

More scouting/archery:

 

[huntandfly]

I don’t have much to write about as far as hunting goes for those first few days. I was mainly just in scouting mode and didn’t really go on any major stalks.

The morning of September 29th we went back out looking for a herd that had one of the older bulls we had seen in it. From the pictures above, it is the 6 point that has the wide 3rds that lay outside his main frame. We found the herd that morning, but they had crossed the unit boundary and were in a place where now we could only watch. As I studied that bull, along with the very pretty 6 point satellite that was with them, I just didn’t see them being the class of bull I wanted to take just yet anyway. We headed back to camp for some lunch/town run before going for an evening hunt. My uncle had been looking in one of our favorite honey holes (don’t worry, I know you aren’t looking) and saw a good bull that he hadn’t had time to properly judge. We had also heard from the gentlemen who killed the nice 6 point that the biggest bull he had seen had been a 330 type 6 point down in that same area. That evening I went out to set up above that ridge and glass down in there. I had no sooner crested the top and looked down the into the sage/juniper cut and lo and behold I see what appears to be a really nice 6 point who has me pegged at about 900 yards. I grab some video/pics real quick and excitedly hustle back to camp as the wind was completely wrong and I was by myself.

 

[huntandfly]

At this point, I am relatively certain this is the 330 type 6 point that I have heard tell of and have gotten excited enough to go after him. My dad is back at camp in jeans and Romeo’s as I race back in and tell him “I need a caller.” My dad had just called in his first elk the week prior for my uncle, so he isn’t overly experienced. I tell him not to worry, we are going to sneak right into this bull’s bedroom and bring him right over. Dad throws on some binos and hops on a quad and we rip out of camp towards the bottom of the canyon that the bull is in. We get down into the sage wash below the ridge and park a solid half mile below and out of sight of where I have seen the bull. We start picking our way up the wash and eventually start sidehilling up the extremely steep, though not overly tall ridge. As we crest the top, the wind hits me hard in the face and I know we are in the chips. We start deer hunting our way south towards the knob below which I had last seen him. As we approach the knob, now within a suspected 200 yards of the bull, he voluntarily bugles exactly where we hoped he would. With the PJ being open/grassy on the ridge top, I tell my dad to hold up as we didn’t dare move too much closer. He buries into a juniper on the ridge line and I crawl up about 60 yards to sink in next to a 3 foot juniper that provides me lots of shooting lanes. I range all my shot windows, look over at dad, and give him the the sign to give this bull the goods.

Pic 1: where dad was
Pic 2: where I was

 

[huntandfly]

Like greased lightning dad whips out his Hoochie Mama (no I’m not kidding). I blew my diaphragm call softly once directly away from the bull and signaled him to slowly and softly let out a few calf calls. Immediately the bull bugles 100 yards below me and I hear elk moving our way. Sure enough, leading the way is the cow which he is currently tending, and she is on the search for this lost calf. Dad pauses calling, then let’s put a couple more and here they both come. The cow leads the bull behind a pinyon at 40 yards and I get my chance to draw. She steps out into my opening at 35 just as I am completing my draw, looking towards dad not me. The bull let’s out a real snarling bugle and at this point I’m having so much freaking fun that I am not thinking about judging this bull before shooting, I am sure that this is right. The cow steps forward and the bull steps out, slightly quartering too. He stops perfectly open for me, I hug the pin tight to the shoulder with the 30 pin just a hair high and I let it go. The arrow flies perfectly and buries nearly to the fletchings right behind the should mid body. The bull wheels and I can see the head of the arrow sticking out the far side, farther back than I would like indicating a possible single lung due to more quartering than I had assessed.

I throw my hands up in the air fist pumping and quietly signal to dad that I believe I hammered him. He comes over and I tell him what I saw. We decide we are going to wait until about 20 minutes prior to dark to pick up the blood, giving the bull nearly an hour. At this time, I am not correctly processing the likelihood that this is a single lung hit so in the moment I think I am giving the bull enough time.

Where the bull stopped and gave me a shot:

 

[huntandfly]

With just under a half hour until dark, we pick up the blood trail. It’s sparse at first then gets pretty good within 50 yards. Soon I can track it easily at a walk. We go about 150 yards down the hill, and as I crest a small rise my dad hisses at me as the bull is bedded 40 yards in front of me alive. The bull does not see me, and is bedded facing directly away, making the only shot available one to the ribs with the spine mostly covering vitals. I hate the look of the shot so in the moment I decide not to take it. I now believe that I probably could have taken that shot as I had tons of time and the bull was hit very hard already. I opted to try and back out to give the bull plenty of extra time. Now as I slink backwards, somehow the bull becomes aware of our presence. I don’t believe it could have been the wind as it was perfect and we were very quiet so I still don’t know how he figured it out. As he got up and left, I thought I saw the arrow again, and at that angle, I convinced myself that the hit was not nearly as good as I thought. The bull only went 80 yards before we heard him bed down again breathing labored. At this point I send my dad back up to the ridge top to make sure he didn’t make it out of the sagebrush bottom as I believe I need to get another shot to finish the bull. This is another point where my inexperience as an archery hunter led me to a questionable decision. Luckily I can hear the bull close, and I begin painstakingly slowly working my way to the edge of the small bench I’m on. As I reach the edge, I expect him to be about 30 yards below me in his bed. I sneak out from a juniper and catch movement out of the corner of my eye and find that the bull is actually bedded on my bench, facing away at 6 yards. He slowly turns his head a bit away from me. I draw and put the second arrow directly into the vitals at near point blank range. A wave of relief washes over me as the bull only struggles a few seconds before expiring.

 

[huntandfly]

This is only my second bull with archery equipment, and the first one was a much simpler situation than this one. I am lucky that I recovered this bull while also having the opportunity to learn a few lessons that could have easily cost me that outcome in this situation.

The bull wasn’t as big as I thought (I have a tendency to do that) but I quickly realized that it didn’t really matter to me. The most rewarding part of this hunt was having my dad call him to me on a string and be a part of this entire experience. It is a memory we will share forever.

 

[huntandfly]

More to come on helping with Nevada deer hunt, my New Mexico deer hunt and my Montana (sure to be popular) deer hunt here soon when I have some more time.

 

[Corn king 60]

Congrats
great read.

 

[huntandfly]

In Mid October I headed up to help out on my aunt and uncle’s deer hunt in Nevada. The season had been open for a bit and the outfitter that we were working with had helped a few folks harvest some really nice bucks already this year so we were excited at the prospects.

Day 1: we headed out to a nice burn scar where the first buck pictured below had been hanging in the summer. Spent the whole morning glassing and only turned up 2 smaller bucks, a bunch of elk and a couple does. Meanwhile in the southern portion of the unit my aunt and her guide turned up a really nice mature buck in some nasty country. We came back to camp for some Salisbury steak made of the elk burger I had just harvested a couple weeks prior and a nap. This was a seriously hardcore hunt.

In the afternoon we went up a bit higher to try and find a different buck (second buck pictured below) that the guide had spotted a few days earlier and that we wanted to get a closer look at. We spent the evening glassing some huge country but only turned up 1 small buck and does again. I have hunted deer in mid October and it’s always a good reminder of how difficult it is to hunt big mule deer when they have no reason to be moving.

 

[huntandfly]

Day 2: We went back up higher in the unit again looking for those same deer while my aunt went back after the nice buck they spotted the day prior. This morning was especially dead for deer movement in the higher country, although we were treated with some elk still bugling in some of the canyons around us. We glasses until we couldn’t take it anymore (about 3 hours) then decided to work our way back to camp to see how the others were doing. As we got back to camp, we got the message that my aunt was set up on the nice buck she was after just waiting for a shot. We hopped in a truck and headed that direction to help with the pack out if necessary.

This was my aunt’s first big game hunt, though she had proven she could shoot a rifle very well. She laid on the ridge top waiting for the buck to present a shot for quite a while, and when the time came and the buck got up, she absolutely 10-ringed him at 350 yards. We got the call that she had been successful so we were pretty amped to get down there. Right up until we parked and saw the nasty canyon that they had gone up to get on the deer. It was a pretty good jaunt up through some classic Nevada rocky desert stuff to get up there, but I think everyone was surprised at how big the buck actually was. We got some good pictures and loaded up the packs and hiked out.

As a family we do a mix of mostly DIY hunts along with a few guided hunts some years, and I would be remiss if I didn’t credit Taylor Price and his whole crew for being great guides and even better people to us on this hunt.

 

[huntandfly]

Day 3 pushed in a great cold front, but sadly we weren’t able to turn up the mature bucks we were looking for. It did provide some amazing views for us though.

I had to pack up and head home and back to work. My uncle kept hunting the rest of the season and had some great encounters but just couldn’t quite get on the couple of bigger bucks they were after. They ended up killing a nice buck on the last day.

 

[huntandfly]

Next up was the hunt I had anticipated and planned for maybe more than any hunt ever. In my second year of applying for deer in New Mexico, I was lucky enough to draw an unguided tag in one of the better units in the state. Let me be clear that this is not usually my luck, but in the past few years I have found the more you play the game, the better chance you have of creating some luck. In my research I found that the unit has started to struggle as far as age class goes the last 5-10 years, but that there could still be good hunts there depending on deer movement patterns.



So the first week of November I struck out for NM for the third time this year with high hopes of having a good time. With this opportunity, I decided early on that I wasn’t going to settle for a buck that I couldn’t be confident in being 4.5 or older. I would be happy to take an old heavy buck really no matter what the score (2 points and 3 points need love too). I had planned to tent camp near where I wanted to hunt, but being solo and with my personal set up not cut out for the nasty weather that rolled in 2 days before the hunt, I called for backup and got in touch with a friend of ours that knew of a place I could stay close by to the area. The camp was an amazing spot and the people that were also there utilizing a local outfitter.



I spent a day and a half before the season scouting some places that I had researched the past summer, but found that with the terrible weather it was extremely difficult to move around the unit. I opted to stay closer to the hard top roads in my scouting so as not to risk getting stuck before the hunt even started. I had chains and a shovel but being by myself in new country, I wasn’t interested in the goat rope of digging my pickup out of the mud.