It wasn't shaping up very well for my mule deer tag with our brutal drought the last couple of years and then through death, divorse, foreclosure, and leasing to an outfitter I lost all my ground on the four farms I hunt out there. I was making calls and chasing hunting ground even up to the last minute.
I had just about resigned to hunting WIHA which isn't all bad if you have been able to scout but I hadn't because I didn't lose my biggest and best ground until it was too late. I called a rancher who is the brother in law to the wife of a cousin of a friend of mine (whew I'm scrambling) and he had some ground available but most of his ground was whitetail stuff. I am not oppossed to shooting a big whitetail and at this point I would take anything.
So I got directions and headed for one spot he had which his nefew had seen some mule deer. This piece of property was corn stubble that fed to wheat stubble which fed to a creek bottom lined with winter wheat and cottonwod timber surrounded by hilly pature land.(nice looking stuff)As we are driving in we spot a herd of whitetail including five nice bucks moving from the feed up into pasture. (one was a monster sporting only half his rack) After watching them for a while we drove on down towards the bottom amd got out to walk on down and take a look.
As my buddy and I look things over and discuss the place we see a whitetail doe and fawn stand up on a point of brush along the winter wheat. it's 11:00 a.m. so we are really just checking out the spot for hunting later. We craw down to a fence row and watch the two deer when we see four bucks stand up to see what the does is doing. One is a big eight, a narrow ten and a couple of other small bucks. We continue to see deer pop up even a big 3x4 muley that came oof the far pasture when we decide to ease out and come back for an afternoon sit.
As we are walking out by the corn stubble we both see three mule deer does stand up and soon it's six does whn lastly a buck stands up. This field is terraced and we can only see the very top of their backs and heads and my buddy is trying to get a range while I am trying to get look a good look at the buck. Finally they move to where he gets a reading of 390 yards while I am trying to get a good position for a possible shot. As the deer moved up a terrace I was able to lock down a good hold on the buck and dialed in my 400 yard dope. I let one fly and heard the whoop of my bullet hit home and only see does standing there.
Anyway, I went from not knowing where I was going to hunt to having a buck down in the matter of an hour.
Not a monster but I am very glad to get him. I used my Model 70 stainless in 300 wsm using 168 tsx at 3100 fps over RE17.
![[Linked Image]](http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm66/southwind_hunter/muley2012240.jpg)
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/X0n16mr.png)
