One. Week. Away.

Had a pretty good morning, figured I would drop a couple pics to wet some of your whistles.

Scouted about 3-4 miles of new (to me) trail. Found lots of good parks and benches, and two promising food/water funnels. Didn't see any elk, but I'm sure there will be some there at some point. Saw about 8-10 deer. Put a stalk on a couple of them just to practice. I was able to get within 20-30 yards of 4 different does as well as 3 different bucks. Granted the bucks were all little fellers, but still worth while practice! I saw two pretty decent bucks laying up high against some cliffs, but I decided to leave them alone until I had a bow in hand. All in all, a great morning.

I would love for her to be on my grill... ohhhh so tender!


20 yards from a little forked horn

then got up on his running buddy, just slightly bigger, still a baby

60 yards from this guy, and the sun finally heated the hillside up enough for thermal to shift... so he split


There IS a buck in this picture. It is as decent little 4x4, thought I doubt you can see his horns because I didn't zoom in. See if you can spot him, its not that hard

Lung isn't picky. He'll probably settle for something in the 220" range.

Back from the opening weekend hunt and didn't kill anything. Found a nice 5x5 (I think) opening morning. Long story short, we had the wind, he didn't like that we had that advantage, and we couldn't coax him out of the timber despite our best efforts.

Got him to within 60yds; 40yds of that was meadow, 20yds of it was the nastiest and steepest stuff known to man. After the initial sighting (all of 10 seconds in the binos as he walked into the timber), I could only catch a glimpse of a leg or him darting around trying to get a look at us. Went back and forth for about an hour before we gave up and tried to come back that evening with no luck.

Other than that it was quiet and hot. Couldn't find that grouse either...2 weeks and I'll be back in there for 8 days. Hopefully a little cooler and some more talking. Good luck to those still out there.

Here's a text photo I got this morning from my friends that have been on the mountain. I haven't gotten the full story yet but I know it didn't end up in a kill or this would be on the meat pole thread. I have no unearthly idea why they tried a 2 man stalk, but you can see them working down a ditch in the right side of the spotting scope photo and the deer on the left at the base of the tree.

Got out for a quick hunt this morning before work. Sat a water hole at sunup, no action. So I walked an old logging road. Found a pretty nice 3x3 about 2 miles back in, he was really tall and decently wide, just no forks. He was with 8 does, not really sure why. They were feeding in a consistent direction, so I worked way ahead of them, and found a spot to set up and let them come to me. They were going to pass just downhill from me, and I was set up for a potential shot when one of the does started feeding uphill from the group. She fed right up to me, about 15 yards away. I was pinned with the buck at 45 yards.

I had the wind, and she never saw me, but after a few minutes she definitely sensed something was up. She very slowly backed off, and was on edge. She reversed direction and resumed feeding, and all the other deer followed suit. I stayed about 60 yards behind them, just moving along as they did. But the buck never broke rank, never game me a chance to move in for a shot.

After and hour of coat-tailing them, I backed off, made a WIDE circle and got back ahead of them. They didn't quite make it to me, when they turned and started moving uphill.. I paralleled them at about 100 yards, had a small ridge between us. I no longer had the wind, and knew this was likely a short lived endeavor. Sure enough, one of the does popped her head over the ridge and busted me.

It was my first time to stalk a mule deer, and I absolutely loved it!

Here is a pic of him. He's not a monster, but I don't really care. He would have been a delicious trophy for me! I've never killed a muley before, much less with a bow.


Only other deer I saw, a pair of does with a fawn.


I did make a new friend this morning!