Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Thanks Montana (solo backpack elk) and 2013 season

After dropping the meat off I headed east to where I hoped to find an old beat up mule deer buck and shoot him in his bed.

I stopped and had a great meal at-



And arrived at a piece of BM property in time for a quick afternoon jaunt.


Not ten minutes in I had spotted 4 or 5 does feeding and then jumped this baby fork horn and a doe-


Be advised that if you think you're going to be cute and lay down to snap a picture... there are cactuses.... grin



Walked in around 1.5 miles and stayed till dark glassing. In total I think I think it was 15 or 20 deer that afternoon.

Hard to tell from the pic, but this was a pretty decent buck with good mass..... on private ground-




Headed back to the truck at dark. And so it went for the next five or six days. Walk in, in the morning and out at night sleeping in the truck.

One morning it snowed-





And as I snuck through a creek bottom I busted up 6 or 7 does and this 5x5-




This dummy didn't walk away like the does he walked towards me from about 100 yards to less than 60.


I saw quite a few 4x4's like this-






But nothing I wanted to smoke until the next to last day. Just made it to the only fence on the place when I spotted 10 or 12 does being chased out of a creek by a couple bucks. Those two were the same size little 4x4's I had been seeing, but probably 30 seconds later another buck came up out and I saw immediately that I would shoot him. All the bucks so far had been narrow and save for the one on private land, young. This one wasn't very tall but was quite a bit wider, had good mass and was older.

I ranged him at 450 something, and while he pushed off the other two bucks sat the rifle on a fence post and dialed the scope as the grass was too tall for prone. He paused briefly and while the reticles movement was within his chest, I just didn't like it. I figured that when he walked out onto the flat above the creek where the does were he would pause and give me a shot, so I quickly climbed over and got prone. As it were, when he came out he went straight to dogging the does and didn't stop at all until he was at almost 700 and partly hidden by grass. I wasn't taking that one and he pushed the chicks off onto the private land. Thought he might come back out later that day, but instead he just bedded down in the field with a doe and mocked me all afternoon.

Hunted the next morning and it went from 40 something degrees and sunny to single digits and blowing snow with nearly 50mph winds. Had planned to hunt one more day, but the weatherman called for a pretty decent snow storm. Saw one smaller buck, until the weather just drove me in.

With that I said goodby to Montana and headed back home.

I did stop at Cabelas and thought this was fitting.... grin

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