Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Colorado High Country Muley

First off I wanna thank my good buddy Tanner for all his help on this hunt.

Now then, I'm not much of a story teller, but I'll try to hack this out as best I can.

Headed out from college in Lincoln, Nebraska Friday morning with my sister and got home in Denver in time for dinner. After grabbing my gear and loading my truck up, I left my sis and headed into the hills. Rolled into Tanner's house after another couple hours driving and discussed strategy with him and his dad. Figured out a game plan for the morning, loaded up our packs, and managed to catch a couple hours of sleep.

Woke up at 3am the next morning, ate a quick breakfast, slammed some coffee, and hopped back in the truck. We got to the trail head at 5am, strapped on our packs, and started hiking.

We got up to our planned gear drop spot a little quicker than we anticipated, thanks in large part to me pushing Tanner up the hill. After dropping most of our camp equipment we began slowly working up a drainage. Glassing the entire way with the wind in our face made for favorable stalking conditions. Tanner spotted deer on the ridgeline almost immediately, but they turned out to be does. We continued working our way up the drainage and a couple coyotes managed to catch our wind and that apparently pissed them off pretty good because they wouldn't stop barking/howling at us for the next 30 minutes.

I passed on a smaller buck trotting across a meadow above us and spotted a group of about 8 does at the head of the drainage. We picked up some more elevation in hopes of glassing across to the other side of the drainage, but that plan was interrupted when Tanner spotted 3 bucks below where the does had just been. The group consisted of a decent basket racked buck, a real small buck, and what we thought was a pretty good sized deer. A quick glance through the Zeiss spotter confirmed this was a deer that we would go for.

Dropping back 50 yards to get a ridge between us and the deer allowed us to pick up some more elevation and get a group of pine trees between us and the deer's line of sight. We managed to stalk to a distance that I felt comfortable shooting from and after setting up the Stone Glacier benchrest, I was able to put a bullet in a good spot and dropped him where he stood.

It was an awesome day in the woods that I don't think I'll ever forget. Gonna be tough driving back to Lincoln in a few days...











This deer had an absolutely monstrous body on him and was covered in fat. He also smelled like hell, must've been getting excited for the rut to get going.