(30 YEARS OF HUNTING BIG MULE DEER YIELD THE AUTHOR A MULTITUDE OF LESSONS AND LATELY A FEW NICE BUCKS)

Looking back, I marvel at my first 25 years of hunting big mule deer. I combed through most of the mountain ranges of the west like an obsessed prospector. I wore out shoes and backpacks, whipped myself into great shape and discovered where to find the deer but, alas, I bagged very few good bucks. During that long stretch of time I bumbled nearly every stalk I made. To this day I have nightmares of all those huge velvet racks bouncing toward the horizon like dancers to a rhythmic beat.

I guess I needed those 25 years to slowly learn an important lesson: hunting smarter is better than hunting harder. That may seem like a cliché to you but I’m here to tell you it is the pure truth. Only during the last 5 years was I able to use the pearls of wisdom accumulated over the previous 25 to bag a few nice bucks.

I only wish I could go back now, armed with the prudence of age and the temperance borne of repeated failure. Let’s put it this way, some of those dancers wouldn’t make it to the skyline.

The concept of ‘Hunting smarter’ isn’t new to me. I think I’ve always understood it on a theoretical level. Implementing the concept however, has been the difficult part. Here are the short versions of four great hunts that took place in three states over the course of the past three years. Each serves to highlight a major milestone in my education as a mule deer hunter.

2001 COLORADO: DON’T MAKE EVERY STALK

This hunt took place on the fringe of the badlands of eastern Colorado before, during and after Thanksgiving. It was peak rut and the buck we were after would eventually pay the price for his passion.

This buck was with does that were reluctant to leave the weed-filled CRP fields they called home. CRP works well for stalking because the thick dead weeds provide great cover. However, these weeds are noisy and you have to have a strong wind to provide cover noise. Unfortunately, if there’s enough wind to cover the noise you make, it is also blowing hard enough to make shooting accurately a very difficult task. Before the hunt was over I found myself alternately praying for wind and then cursing it when it came.

I was hunting with Aaron Neilson, owner of Adventures Wild, an outfitting business on the eastern plains. We were seeing one particularly impressive buck almost every day. I had to fight back the almost overwhelming urge to go after him each time our scanning binoculars picked up his wide and heavy frame. I knew it made no sense to go after him until the wind blew a gale.

With the forecast calling for near calm conditions, Aaron and I decided to head to his house in Littleton to spent Thanksgiving Day. We didn’t bother heading back to the plains until the forecast changed. Two days later we found ourselves in a real howler, again glassing familiar surroundings. We found the big buck on the second day and made our move. The long stalk brought Aaron and me to the top of a small ridge overlooking the ravine where the deer had disappeared and were now bedded. We peered through yucca plants as the wind whipped their pointed spiky leaves back and forth over our heads. “Can you shoot?” Aaron asked.

“No.” (The wind was blowing at least 40 mph.)

“What do you mean, no? You have to shoot.”

I had already missed one shot at the buck earlier in the week on a similarly windy day, and now I was a little trigger shy. I had made a good release that day, but I still don’t know where the arrow went. I think it ended up in Kansas with Dorothy and Toto. It obviously didn’t hit the deer. Since that day I had been practicing hard whenever the wind blew. I thought I knew how far I needed to aim to the side to compensate for wind drift, but I just wasn’t sure I could hold the bow steady enough to pull off the shot.

Finally, after some hushed strategising I came up with a plan. At wind-blown 3-D tournaments we sometimes used other shooters to block the wind so our bow arms wouldn’t bounce around as much. The plan now was a take-off on that theme. Aaron would rise up on his knees and hold his jacket open like some kind of camouflage pterodactyl to break the wind as I knelt at full draw next to him. It was a radical plan to be sure, and risky. The buck was asleep with his head down, so I wasn’t worried about him. But, the does all had their heads up. That was likely to be a problem.

Aaron was only about two or three inches from my bow arm as I drew my bow and slowly rose up on my knees. There was so much wind-whipped motion in the grass and yucca around us that the does didn’t seem to notice. I shot the buck through the heart and when he jumped up he didn’t know which way to run. He collapsed 25 yards from our feet. It was a shocking conclusion to a nerve-wracking hunt.

How we handled this difficult shot is noteworthy, but that’s not the true lesson. The key to success here is something that took me many years to learn: you don’t have to make every stalk you are presented with. We watched the buck without stalking him several different times because the conditions weren’t right. We chose to wait instead of forcing a bad hand. Based on the circumstances: tough stalking conditions, a buck anchored with does and the very size of him (we weren’t likely to find another as big if we blew this one) led me to excruciating patience.

Five years ago I would have gone after him every single time I saw him, regardless of the conditions

2001 NEVADA: OLD BUCKS ARE DIFFERENT

I was hunting a huge Boone & Crockett class typical in the mountains of Nevada. He should have been dead four times. That’s how many times I’d been on him. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I had him at full draw once as he stood on the edge of a small opening, a single step from making a trip to my taxidermist – and onto the first page of the record book. Rather than step into the opening like he was supposed to, he skittered across so fast I couldn’t get a shot. So it went for several days until one afternoon when I saw a cougar stalking through the copse of trees I’s seen him go into that morning. I don’t think the cat had killed the buck, but he was most certainly gone. We searched the area for 2 days with no success.

Once the big typical disappeared I wasted no time in switching my focus to a smaller yet still very nice buck we had seen earlier in the season. Given the disappearance of the other buck, I decided to cut my losses rather than hold desperately to the dream of that huge typical.

Greg Krogh was hunting with me, and with his help we soon found another buck a few miles away. The buck was across a canyon. I took off around the head of the canyon to get into position on the other side while Greg stayed behind to guide me in. The big typical was traveling with four other bucks and when I started getting close Greg gave me the signal that suggested they were very close. I must have made a sound or the wind swirled or something because the entire group got edgy. They were still feeding along, but now they were lifting their heads a lot more and visibly nervous.

As they each tiptoed past I counted four bucks, all of them nice but none resembling the one I was after. He was obviously the only fully mature buck in the group and he had reacted differently to the threat of danger. He had slipped under a juniper, into some thick brush and bedded down. He began studying everything carefully. After the other bucks had passed I heeded Greg’s signals and stalked close to the buck’s bed just in time to see him sneaking away out the back door. I shot him in mid-sneak.

While it was certainly important on that hunt to know when to cut my losses, the most significant lesson the old buck reaffirmed is the fact that mature bucks are different. You can’t hunt them in the ways that you would hunt young bucks. Outside of the rut, they aren’t likely to act on impulse and make a mistake. Everything they do is slow and studied. When confronted with possible danger, they don’t show curiosity or ask questions; they simply melt away. The big typical did it in the face of the lion threat and the buck I shot did it when something in my stalk tipped him off.

To hunt big mule deer well you have to be around them enough to learn and appreciate their idiosyncrasies. Understanding their unique personalities is the only way you’ll ever be able to consistently anticipate what they’ll do next.

2002 NEVADA: CLOSER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER

I ran hard to intercept a buck I had glimpsed moving through the junipers. I arrived just in time to set up before he came through the trees. He gave me a 3 second direct broadside shot but I passed him because his rack didn’t seem all that tall and at that angle I couldn’t see his width. Once he turned and started walking away I quickly thought better of it. From behind, that wide spreading rack looked like something from the prehistoric era.

It was a typically hot and dry late August in the desert of Nevada so my best chance for a second encounter would likely come at the community watering hole. Deer patterns in the area revolved around that small tank.

I set up my ground blind 30 to 35 yards from the waterhole because I’ve learned that mule deer have a definite comfort zone–a distance around them where they won’t tolerate anything: no movement, no noise. As you move closer their sensitivity goes up exponentially. For example, you can get away with much more than twice the movement and noise at 40 yards than you can at 20 yards. Closer is not always better.

The same principle applies when stalking. I used to try to get as close as possible when stalking deer. I remember stalking to within 8 yards of a huge buck one time. When I made my move to get a clear shot he blew out of his bed like he’d been launched. I would have shot a lot more big mule deer had I stopped my stalks at 40 yards and waited rather than pushing to get as close as I possibly could. If you’re serious about mule deer hunting, 40 yards has to be within your effective range. Learn to shoot really well from 35 to 50 yards, because that’s where the bulk your good shots are going to come.

On the third morning in the blind I shot the buck. He didn’t come in until 8:00 – more than two hours after sunrise. I was starting to get groggy from the heat and the short nights when I looked up and the buck’s 30+ inch wide rack was perfectly framed in the blind’s window. He was staring straight at the blind. I was shocked. I had cut and stacked juniper all around the blind to break up its outline but the buck still knew there was something there that didn’t quite belong. He finally came in and offered a shot, but he was very cautious. Had I set the blind closer to the waterhole like my first instinct had suggested, he most surely would have turned and left.

Once again, there are two lessons to take from this hunt. First, there are times when water will be the key to a successful early season hunt. In dry areas, water is all-important. When you arrive to hunt, make every effort to find the puddles where the local deer are watering. Historically I’ve never had the patience to sit water—I wanted to go out and kill something.

Second, closer is not always better. As mentioned, the mistake of getting too close has cost me many nice bucks through the first 25 years of my mule deer education. Sure, nothing beats a clean 20-yard broadside shot at a standing buck, but they are hard to come by. Prepare for longer shots so you will be free to make the right decisions when setting up a stalk or an ambush.

2002 ARIZONA: YOU HAVE TO BE FIT

Chad Smith and I were glassing the rim rock country of southern Arizona when we spotted four bucks: one buck was outstanding and the others weren’t too bad either. We watched as the convoy of antlers worked its way along the bottom of the main canyon before turning up a side draw. That was all we need to see. We had watched enough bucks to know they wouldn’t leave the canyon’s arm, but would likely bed on the shaded side somewhere near the top. We took our best guess and I was off.

Running, first away from the deer to get out of sight and then up through the Rim rock and across the plateau to the arm the bucks had entered, I was determined to beat them to their bed. I didn’t want to be stuck trying to stalk four bedded deer. They would definitely have the advantage in that situation. It was probably two miles around to the other side and I was really sucking wind when I slowed down to make the final approach. When I peeked over the lip of the rim rock the biggest buck was right below me pawing out his bed. I literally didn’t have a minute to spare.

I was lathered in sweat and about ready to cough up a lung, but I forced myself to get steady as I made a good release and soon claimed the 29-inch buck.

There are two lessons here too. First, I’ve learned to hate my options when dealing with bedded deer. It is much more difficult to stalk them than deer that are on their feet. As this hunt illustrates, I’ll do everything in my power, even if it means pushing myself to near exhaustion, to get to a spot where I can ambush a buck before he beds down. The classic spot-and-stalk mule deer hunt where you watch a buck all morning until you see him bed before going after him just doesn’t work for me.

Mature bucks pick their beds so danger can’t approach without detection. Given any kind of decent choices, their bed is one of the last places I want to try to stalk. Rather than waiting until they lay down, watch just long enough to figure out where they are likely to go and then get there as fast as you can. This brings us to the second lesson.

You have to be fit. Hunting mule deer usually takes place at altitude and takes a lot of effort and if you make it a priority to beat a buck to his bed you will no doubt find yourself running or at least moving fast at the start of most stalks. To do this safely and quickly you need both strength and endurance. Both are the result of a good exercise program.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve counted eight tips. Only the final one dealt with something physical. All the others were about strategy. Like I said at the very beginning of this article, my years of gung-ho pursuit have given way to a much more studied approach. Occasionally you do have to push hard physically, the key is to only push hard when it’s necessary.

I’ve learned that hunting smart is a lot more important than hunting hard. It’s no coincidence that it was only after learning this lesson that I started shooting the kind of bucks I’d been after all along.