After moving from the Willamette Valley in Oregon when I was young to mule deer country in Sisters, Oregon in 1979, I never thought I'd care to hunt blacktails again. Seeing my first 36" mule deer in the summer of 1979 gave me a bad case of the shaky knees! After two or three years of chasing the big deer with a rifle I discovered they were less wary during archery season, so I tried that instead. Years of that produced some dandy mule deer, but the areas mule deer population collapsed in the 80's, but not before producing one book buck for me. I call him Walter, the big sunavabitch buck. (like On Golden Pond, remember?
) For those that track such things, he nets 173 1/8 after 10 points of deductions.
One fall, after bowhunting unsuccessfully all season for big muleys, I went without filling my tag. In Oregon, we had an opportunity to hunt westside (blacktail) late if unsuccessful in the general season, so I headed over the Cascades to "hunt the rain". I grew up hunting blacktails with dad and grandpa, but hadn't been back in years.
I parked the truck on a side road closure in a downpour, and as I was standing outside the truck putting my raingear on, I began to question my sanity. It was pouring buckets! But I was determined to hunt, so I finished getting dressed. A flash of movement caught my attention and I looked left as two bucks shot across the main gravel road. Holy Cow! I just saw two bucks and I haven't left the truck yet!
Rather than give chase to two small bucks on the road, I headed up the road closure to look for a place to hunt. Randomly picking a spot to head offroad a little later, I immediately started spotting deer. Melting snow and rain was falling out of the trees making a pretty good racket that covered my approach on a small buck. (Note that the elevation was right at the snowline, where the concentration of deer hung out). 45 minutes after leaving my truck I was standing over my first blacktail kill in a long time. I was back home and dry, deer hanging by 9 am.
I was in love with blacktail hunting all over again. I largely abandoned mule deer hunting and hunted that area for years and drug some dandy bucks out of the rainforest. I learned that the big ones are a different animal than the forked horns you're likely to see walking around in broad daylight. The biggest bucks are nocturnal, even in remote areas. The best odds of getting a really big buck are identifying where he beds and trying to get him right at the first and last minutes of light, or flushing and shooting him during the daytime. The exception to this is the last day or two of season. All heck breaks loose when they start walking looking for hot does. My largest came really late in season by rattling him in. I would guess that the majority of my blacktail tags have been filled on the very last day of season.
Now I've moved back to southern Oregon, westside, blacktail country, and I don't even apply for mule deer tags. BTDT. I love hunting big blacktails. All the same rules apply as when I was young, and Seafire hit a home run with one thing he mentioned. The big ones learn early that if they stand still, most threats walk right on by. So, keep your fricken eyes up, ESPECIALLY when you're bombing along without a thought in the world that a deer could be around with all this noise. That is actually a hunting strategy for killing big blacktails! Sneaking along is almost a guarantee that you will never walk up on a good buck. They are too smart and have too good of hearing to be caught like that.
Another thing that works is flushing them with noise, like a predator call, or a slingshot, or better yet an old fashioned sling. The sling is quiet and you can chuck rocks into cover undetected. A big buck will try to sneak out, head low and moving slow. Walking a ridgeline and chucking rocks on the leeward side out of the wind has produced bucks for me.
MOVE SLOW, they have nerves of steel, and will wait you out by letting you walk by. If you move slow, stand around alot, open a candy bar, scratch your nuts, check your safety, scratch your nuts again, they may bust from cover, but be ready, they could be right under your feet. They rely on shock and awe in these circumstances to get away without you firing a shot. It's very much a cat and mouse game with the big ones. Enjoy it, that's what you came for!
I could go on and on. I love the game. Here's a couple photos of some my buddies and I have taken. Some deer were taken before the age of digital, so no photos of my biggest.
A small one for buddy John last year. He came over a rise and the buck was bedded in the middle of a bunch of does, his harem.
Year before last, I took John into a honey hole and he tagged this one on the lest day after a long stalk, his best in 35 years of hunting them.
Another friend, Jim, put in for muzzleloader and drew for my area, so we got him this one in 45 minutes of what we thought was a scouting trip! Lesson, always be ready with blacktails!
Sometimes the little ones don't have good color like you want, but the sport is just the same
But sometimes they do. A last day buck came to rattling after randomly finding his trees scraped and bedding spot in a new area.