My buddy's 15 year old daughter, in her last hour to hunt this season, laid a serious smack down on a very good eating calf elk. Managed to shoot it and not spook the herd. Normally I'd do better pictures, but she had to be at school 3 hours away by noon to practice and then play in her volleyball games this week.

Got back late Tuesday from helping my dad and friends from TX with their 1st rifle cow hunt. All 3 tagged out on cows Sunday morning. Fun times packing it all out....things got a little western for their liking. They got their little trailer with all the gear stuck on the way in Friday, managed to get it out and had to shuttle it all by truck to camp.

Then got some good snow Monday night and their truck got stuck shuttling camp back to the trailer. I ended up having to chain up my truck to make it thru the muck and shuttle things back and forth for them. I had fun sliding around in the mess, they did not enjoy it nearly as much. Took us 7hrs to get camp broke down and out. Moral of the story, be prepared for crappy conditions to change suddenly. Doesn't take much snow in some places to make it unpassable.

Finished up CO 1st rifle season unsuccessful. Had a bull tag, but only saw 3 cow elk the whole time in my unit. There was little to no elk sign to be found. The hunters I talked to in our unit and the adjacent unit echoed what we were seeing or lack thereof. Still we had fun and can't wait to do it again next year. The snow made things difficult as some days it could be up to your knees in areas. Setting up camp was a challenge too since we had to clear snow as more snow fell so we could stake the tent. The little bit of snow that we couldn't clear made the ground muddy inside the wall tent and it would take days for the wood stove to dry things up.

The mule deer bucks have someway of knowing they're safe on private land. We saw 20+ bucks inside of 60 yards on several private pasture lands.

This buck was killed across the highway from our ranch.

220 SCI. I watched this buck grow all summer. He'd been on our place a couple of times. I'd hoped for a shot at him, but I'm hunting 3rd.

My Airbnb guests, one guy by himself and another group of 3 with 2 tags went 3/3 on public land.




My regular second season guys on the ranch got skunked on elk, but they filled their one deer tag with a pretty decent buck.

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.

Got his jaw pulled. Sucker was old, as I suspected, even though his antlers looked like a younger deers. I'm thinking 8.5, so he was probably much bigger in the past. Perfect deer to harvest.