NM Public Land Muley down!
I haven't been very vocal on here in the last year or so, mainly because the insane divorce I went through. I've got my kids 50/50, and the ex, while a major thorn in my side, got reined in. Which allows me to resume normal life to the max extent possible. So I put in and drew a NM muley rifle tag, in an area I've hunted several times, since I figured it would be "easy". Low desert country, ~4500 feet.
Since I know the unit fairly well, I had a few spots picked out, but I was planning on hitting my honey hole. I have hunted here four times now, and have (spoiler) killed 3 deer, and should have killed 4. So I show up Friday, and the gate to my spot is locked with no trespassing signs. I'm not sure I believe it, but the road is apparently private (NM switches designations a lot, which is super frustrating). I call the BLM, sheriff, no one has an answer. Finally run into the new lessees, and they took it over this past year and the landowner that "owns" the road wants it locked because of problem people. The good thing is that the county road that runs past the now-locked gate runs through a bit of BLM land, so I have access, but I'd have to do a bit more hiking.
So I'm up and about at 5 a.m. Saturday morning and head out after I load the truck. Plan on being to my hike in spot at 6 a.m. Literally about a mile from my turnoff from the blacktop, I start getting low tire warnings, and it's dropping fast. County road on my left, and I pull off. My left rear, WHICH I LITERALLY REPLACED LAST WEEK, has a huge gash/defect, right in the middle of the tread, and is gushing air. FML. Yada yada, let's change a tire. Easy, right. Damn thing was welded to the hub because of the hub being steel and the wheel being aluminum. All in the span of a week. Fought with it for an hour, and finally busted out my MSR Pocket Rocket to give it some heat. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Booch finally popped loose, and I limped back into Roswell and gave Discount Tire an earful. At least the scenery was nice once the sun came up during my tire change.
So my day was basically shot at that point. It was close to 80 F today, and nothing was going to move, and I wasn't going to hike my butt off in the heat. So I headed back to the motel for a nap before my 12 p.m. checkout, then I hit WM for a few things, and headed to BWW to watch part of the game. I left around the beginning of the 3rd, so I missed all of the excitement.
The plan was to hit a few of the smaller accessible BLM areas for the evening, but as soon as I turned onto the county road, there were three trucks spread out over the next mile or so, slow rolling, looking for deer. So I passed them. Several of the spots I wanted to try already had trucks parked on them. So I kept going, and ended up at the very last BLM spot on the road, ~500 acres, but it was hilly and had three drainages with good brush in the bottom. Based on prior experience, I had a hunch that there might be a buck bedded in there that would pop out once it started cooling off.
So I park, and shortly after I start walking to cross into the second drainage, I see deer. About 12, but all does/yearlings. Good sign at least. Kept going cross a fence, then climb a big hill and stop on the military crest on my side so I can glass both the bottom behind me and inch my way over the top. See a doe on my side, but nothing else. About 15 minutes later, I inch my way over the top to glass more of the drainage. Nothing moving, but I needed to move about 10-20 more yards to get a better view of the bottom. So I did, and about 2 minutes later I caught movement to my left, about 200 yards out across the drainage, just above all the brush. Deer. Single. Binos up. Antlers, not a forky. Huge body. Rifle up. I'm on 4x,and I can't find him, because he blended in so well. Finally found him, and he was staring at me. Wind was good, so he either saw or heard me. Finally get settled, and BLAM!!, deer runs 10 feet and is down.
Holy crap, what a day. Only 800 yards as the crow flies from my truck, but that was across two drainages and one giant hill, covered in scree type rock and cobblestones.