I know I promised whitetail topics in November, but you have to forgive me.
My son Cole shot his first buck the other day and it just happened to be a different species of deer than whitetail. I had a couple days off before making my annual tour of whitetail country and Cole opted to go deer hunting instead of elk hunting. I don’t blame him. Snow was taller than one of Santa’s elves and piling up by the day.
I guess I do like the horses Dad.
On the other hand, the mule deer were beginning to rut in our backyard (literally) and I had also landed permission to hunt whitetails near the Powder River in northern Wyoming. We had two days of hunting and on day one we were going to focus on muleys, and day two for whitetails.
At sunrise on our first day we started seeing good bucks right at sunrise, but they were staying safely on a neighboring property that didn’t allow hunting. Fortunately, the deer started drifting toward public land and by noon they were cutting across a large parcel of public domain. The hunt was on!
I spotted a good muley 400 yards away and in the perfect canyon hole for a stalk. I knew we had this buck until we bumped two adolescent bucks that ran smack into our mature target. The trio took off and we lost track of their escape in the canyon maze. For the next three hours we peeked into every nook and gully on the public plot, but couldn’t find the bigger buck.
We had one last hope. A large basin sat at the far side of the public plot and we had to pass it on our way out. Bingo! We found the deer, but the buck was at the bottom of the canyon and he had a foursome of security guards above him that we had to get by before we could get a shot. Circling around to get downwind we started crawling down the hill to get into position for a shot. We couldn’t see the larger buck, but the foursome was still in place and looking for danger. We slithered for the next hour more than 250 yards on our guts. Both of us nearly lost our pants and our underwear took a beating in the dirt department. We definitely were going to have to “shout out” the dirt stains.
Finally we reached the last ledge before the canyon bottom and still we had not spied the larger buck. Where was he? I lifted up and there he was napping in the very bottom of the canyon less than 100 yards from our position. Cole slid up beside me and propped the TC Icon up on Harris bipods for the shot. The .30 TC barked and the buck never budged. Cole had his first buck! It was a big, mature Wyoming 5×5 muley to boot!
We gave each other a big hug and headed for home to gather the horses.
There’s no need to get a backache when I’m feeding horses year-round. What a night. The stars were blazing under a full moon. The Wyoming sky was amazing and put the finishing touches on a day full of memories neither of us will forget soon.
Mark Kayser
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