Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT Blacktail deer hunting

Guys, I've got a line on a very large blacktail. I've seen him twice now in the same place and come very close both times to getting a shot with the 99 358 16" carbine. Tonight I set up in some cliffs and he came out right at dark. I could make him out at 50 yards with the Zeiss 8x binos, not with a naked eye, it was too dark. By the time he quit staring at me so I could set the binos down and switch to the rifle he ducked his head in the tall dry grass and I didn't see him again. I heard him 5 minutes later in the timber at 60 or 70 yards but it was too late to shoot anyway so I snuck backwards out of there and am hoping for a chance with a little more daylight. The moon is coming on though so the odds aren't good I'll catch him in daylight, unless the rut kicks in soon. The memory of him will last a lifetime either way, but here's hoping he has some bad luck in the next week or so.

As I watched him watching me tonight I was thinking man oh man, why am I holding the binos and not the rifle? He'd have been dead for sure at 50 yards facing me.

I've seen and even taken some great blacktails, but this one would be the biggest by a good bit. Looks more like a mule deer truly. It was too dark to make out points tonight but he has a very large frame, very wide and tall. Once in a lifetime buck. Wish me luck. I have a lot of confidence in the little carbine shooting 180 grain Barnes ttsx bullets. It's a monster combo for big blacktail buxks in the brushy mountains I hunt. Going to be hard to concentrate on work all day waiting for the evening hunt!

Forgot to add, this would have been a disasterous hunt with a peep sighted rifle. Just an FYI. Leave the peep sights on target rifles! They have no place on a hunting rifle you might end up in a low light situation with.

You might consider this to be just an opinion, but tonight proved to me that serious blacktail hunting rifles simply MUST be scoped. And the better the scope, the better! Every minute of shootable light matters, and the biggest bucks WILL push the envelope on your shooting light.

Go get 'im, Roy!

Wishing you a Happy Hunt Roy!

Good luck! I have to admit I'm confused by blacktails.. kind of muleys, kind of not, antlers go from smaller to mule deer sized..

Get 'im!

Best of luck!

Good luck Roy, hope you can kill him. I agree on peep sights, I have two rifles with them. They are morning only rifles for sure. As i get older my night vision has gotten worse I think,

I always wondered if blacktails ever hybridized with mule deer. They are genetic close relatives but in my experience have very different habits--blacktails are sneaky by nature. But that may have to do with their habitats more than genetics.

In California, we have blacktail range that runs into desert mule deer range, and the desert mulies are usually about the same size as blacktails. But I've never seen a study of deer populations in that area (East sides of the coast ranges in central CA), probably because nobody ever goes there (and I wish it would stay that way....).

Blacktails also apparently practice yoga in their spare time. How else could you account for them going UNDER manzanita bushes without tangling up their horns? (Just try it, even without horns....but do mind the buzzworms!).

Give it Hell! Roy

Good luck Roy, and are those my missing pair of krocs?

So, venison liver and onions for dinner tonight?

Too whupped from work to go out. Working 50 miles from home and ran late.

Good luck Roy, hope ya get that beast. What are the average weights of a blacktail buck and doe? Have never seen one or in fact a mule deer. Here in my state whitetails run supreme. Ya hear about a mule deer or a cross between a mule and white tail once in a while in western Iowa.

Iowa whitetails can get pretty hefty due to all the abundance of corn and soybeans in the state. Does can run 150-170# easy, bucks 200+. My biggest, a 12 pt, 271 pounder (field dressed) I bowshot in Nov of 1985. He was a monster, had all of the other bowhunters in the area peed off as they were after him to. I had a uncle that hunted Muley's in Colorado that once said Iowa whitetails were the best tasting venison in the US, no comparison. Corn fed'!

No idea what most deer weigh, I have to quarter them to get them out of the places I hunt, as a rule. And when I manage to get one to the truck intact, I don't weigh them. I've always thought that must a down south thing where you can roll up to them with the John Deere, push em in the bucket, and take em back to the barn to weigh em. The butcher weighed this deer (in two pieces because he was three miles in), no head, hide, guts at 107. #7 biggest mule deer killed in Oregon with a bow as of the year I got him.




But, I guarantee you this blacktail was heavier, but I wasn't able to weigh him.

Changed the scope out to a brighter model. Spent the entire day hunting him yesterday. Very steep country, hard to hang on the hillsides, very hard on feet and ankles. The tricky part is at some point, any minute if not already, he will leave his summer haunt in the cliffs to go downhill to breed does. I hope to be able to figure it all out.

Good luck. It’s exciting to locate a good buck, then trying to get him in hand.

Rut be coming on here , i can feel my neck swelling. Problem is between the road hunters that shoot this years fawns, last years spikes, and does of any age, throw in a half dozen cats and twice that many wolves, i only see a deer maybe oncea week. Best of luck Roy with the big guy!

Get em' Roy!!!! Did some research on your blacktails. I've always thought (just thought) that blacktails were smaller than whitetails on the average, but discovered they are on the average similar in size. Read once that Mule deer were on the average bigger than whitetails, being a Midwesterner, what did I know about either. Have never seen or really read much about either mules or blacktailed deer. To busy reading up on whitetails. Nice heads ya posted of blacktail's, made me think, they aren't smaller than our monster whitetails here in Iowa. Interesting to read the blacktails are considered a subspecies of muley's. Hope ya get your deer and can see some pictures.

I spent a four day Thanksgiving weekend at the tail end of Iowa's bow season back in the early 70's once tracking, stalking, and laying in wait for a huge body and racked area whitetail buck that didn't cooperate for the two month bow season. Came close on the last day, but that supersmart cautious buck won in the end. I and others figured some lowlife poached him because after that season no shotgun hunter came forth bragging about getting him, no body or rack was ever found, and the following season he was never seen. Rack is probably hanging in some high priced supper club in Chicago or New York or someone's room where a fabrication on how it was bagged is given. Bit about the two cities isn't in jest-alot of poached big racked buck antlers and heads are proven to wind up in those places poached by lowlifes who have no scruples.

Here's some photos of some similar areas. Blacktail deer seem to gravitate to this type of habitat.

I've got this bucks bedroom pinned down to a small bench on an open grassy hillside where the timber and grass meet. He's got a dozen beds he can follow the sun or shade with. I just need to keep after it until season ends next Friday. I'm taking all week off in the hope I can get one shot at him.

I hiked the long way around in the dark this morning and came in from the east. This allowed me to glass a larger area with the sun at my back. I couldn't see directly into his spot from my vantage but I know he will be in the open as soon as the urge hits him. I spotted one buck and two does from there before moving to the top and flushing two bucks and a doe from the NE slope. All within range of the 284 at 350 yards or less but they weren't him.

That terrain beats the heck out of the viney maple and alder around Tillimook!