220yotekiller
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2017
- Messages
- 768
So my fall's hunting plans went all kinds of crazy between work, covid and looking for a house so I was reduced to after work afternoons and Sundays. I went out 4 evenings and kept finding big groups of does and yearling bucks. I wanted to get out of the "spoon and crockpot club" and was holding out for a older buck. I am a meat hunter but I like antlers too! We got a big snowstorm in so I went out the first day that it cleared up.
I jumped a bunch of does and a young buck on the hike in, it was tough to be quiet because you were either crunching through 3" of snow or slogging through knee deep drifts so I had to take a longer than usual route to where I was wanting to glass from.
When I got to the edge of a pretty steep canyon I peeked over and found myself staring at 3 bedded mule deer bucks. I got dropped to my knees and got my pack off and crawled to some sage brush and tried to get a prone shot (I had my short bipod on) the bucks had enough of watching me squirming around and decided to head out. When they stared moving off I moved down to a pile of rocks where I could get a supported rest. The bucks had moved out to 225 yards and the biggest buck turned broadside for me. I put the crosshair behind the bucks shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The buck dropped in his tracks (thankfully, because if he hadn't the pack out would have been a hundred times worse). I got down to him and quartered him out. Sorry, no field pictures, I forgot my phone in my truck.
I didn't want to make that hike a second time so I took him all out in 1 trip. It took me about 45 minutes to get back to my truck. I am seriously going to look into a set of trekking poles. I took a couple of nasty spills and landed pretty hard.
I was using my 7mm Rem mag with 160 grain Nosler Accubonds, I couldn't be happier with the bullet and rifle combo.
I jumped a bunch of does and a young buck on the hike in, it was tough to be quiet because you were either crunching through 3" of snow or slogging through knee deep drifts so I had to take a longer than usual route to where I was wanting to glass from.
When I got to the edge of a pretty steep canyon I peeked over and found myself staring at 3 bedded mule deer bucks. I got dropped to my knees and got my pack off and crawled to some sage brush and tried to get a prone shot (I had my short bipod on) the bucks had enough of watching me squirming around and decided to head out. When they stared moving off I moved down to a pile of rocks where I could get a supported rest. The bucks had moved out to 225 yards and the biggest buck turned broadside for me. I put the crosshair behind the bucks shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The buck dropped in his tracks (thankfully, because if he hadn't the pack out would have been a hundred times worse). I got down to him and quartered him out. Sorry, no field pictures, I forgot my phone in my truck.
I didn't want to make that hike a second time so I took him all out in 1 trip. It took me about 45 minutes to get back to my truck. I am seriously going to look into a set of trekking poles. I took a couple of nasty spills and landed pretty hard.
I was using my 7mm Rem mag with 160 grain Nosler Accubonds, I couldn't be happier with the bullet and rifle combo.
