While Kaitie's gotten pretty good at killing river bottom whitetail, she told me before the season started that she was wanting a change of scenery this year, and wanted to have to work hard for a mule deer. I couldn't argue with her feelings on that at all, so it was a nice mule deer or bust.
We've been planning a long weekend trip to Eastern MT, but I figured it'd be worth a look in one of my local spots yesterday, that I haven't hunted in three years. The spot holds a ton of deer, but finding a worthwhile buck is a real chore.
We were up at three and made the two mile hike in before daylight. Much to my surprise, the second deer we saw as the sun was creeping over the ridge was one of the best bucks I've ever seen in this area. Kaitie made good like she always does, and before I knew it, what I thought was going to be a long season of looking for a mule deer was over.
Not a monster by any means, but a beautiful, mature deer that more then met our hopes and expectations.
We had an awesome morning, and took our time watching the sun come up, taking pictures and butchering the deer.
I haven't been in on many mule deer kills, and the ones I have were 3-4 year old deer. The body size on this thing was kind of mind blowing to me. I have no idea what it weighed, but it put the whitetail I'm used to killing look like fawns. We each took our share of the meat and started back to the pickup. We had to climb a long steep ridge to get back on the main gated road we came in on, and it was definitely not easy. Nevertheless Kaitie made her way up without a single complaint. I'm pretty impressed with just how tough this girl is. A lot of guys I know would've wussed out of bringing him out of that hole.
All in all it was about as good of a day as a guy could ask for. Proud and fortunate would be an accurate description of how I feel today.
We've been planning a long weekend trip to Eastern MT, but I figured it'd be worth a look in one of my local spots yesterday, that I haven't hunted in three years. The spot holds a ton of deer, but finding a worthwhile buck is a real chore.
We were up at three and made the two mile hike in before daylight. Much to my surprise, the second deer we saw as the sun was creeping over the ridge was one of the best bucks I've ever seen in this area. Kaitie made good like she always does, and before I knew it, what I thought was going to be a long season of looking for a mule deer was over.
Not a monster by any means, but a beautiful, mature deer that more then met our hopes and expectations.
We had an awesome morning, and took our time watching the sun come up, taking pictures and butchering the deer.
I haven't been in on many mule deer kills, and the ones I have were 3-4 year old deer. The body size on this thing was kind of mind blowing to me. I have no idea what it weighed, but it put the whitetail I'm used to killing look like fawns. We each took our share of the meat and started back to the pickup. We had to climb a long steep ridge to get back on the main gated road we came in on, and it was definitely not easy. Nevertheless Kaitie made her way up without a single complaint. I'm pretty impressed with just how tough this girl is. A lot of guys I know would've wussed out of bringing him out of that hole.
All in all it was about as good of a day as a guy could ask for. Proud and fortunate would be an accurate description of how I feel today.
