Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Hunting SW New Mexico Mule Deer....

Left out of Austin late on October 30th, met my Dad in Eldorado, TX and started the trek to New Mexico early on the 31st. We arrived with plenty of time to get set up and ready for opening day on the 1st. I had a mule/whitetail deer tag for Unit 26 which is basically the boothill part of New Mexico. We camped south of Hachita, NM near Gillespie Mountain.

We were camping out of my Dad's horse van. We were really roughing it seeing as we were sleeping on rollaways, but it made camp very comfortable.



Nov. 1st I took out of camp at first light. I drove up some old two-track until it ended and loaded the pack and took off. I did a little glassing from here:



I was using my Velbon tripod which worked out great but I'm curious how it will hold up over the years. It held my Fujinon 16x70s stead though and I can't say enough about these for the coin. They are big and heavy, but they work great. Here's my setup--the rifle is my custom Remington 700 in 257 Weatherby, pack is a Badlands 2800 with the 96oz water bladder which I really liked. I wore Cabela's Microtex Lite most of the time and love the stuff. It was great in weather from 40's in the morning to 80's in the afternoon. My only complaint is the stuff appears to be made of velcro as every burr in SW New Mexico ended up on my pants.



I glassed this ridge for a while before heading out to a spring I had wanted to investigate. All the creek beds are dry this time of year and I saw a lot of sign on this creek bottom, but no animals.



I cruised along this dry creek bed for a while and came upon this which definitely surprised me as I knew there were bears in the area, but never expected to see any sign of one. Garmin 60Csx for size reference...



I hiked hard that day, damn near killed myself, but didn't see any animals (save jackrabbits which seemed to be behind every bush out there).

Dinner that night was a welcome treat. Pork ribs, corn, asparagus, and a little red wine. that's me on the left, Dad on the right.



A sunset shot of Big Hatchet Mountain...

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Day Two I hiked out and glassed before breakfast was served around 10am...

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My little brother flew out and joined us on the 1st which worked out for me as he makes a good pack mule. Day 2 he and I hiked up to an old mine location after breakfast.

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If you look closely in this picture, you can barely make out our campsite (trailer and trucks).

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Remnants of the old mine. The shaft is in the middle of the picture.

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I think we woke this dude up as he came out to check out what was going on.

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That afternoon, we glassed from this ridge until dark, but didn't see a thing except for three illegals. If you haven't been in this part of the country, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how many Border Patrol agents are stationed down there. It really is unbelievable the amount of money and manpower that is being focused in this part of country.

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Sunset picture that evening...

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Day 3 I woke up, hiked out in the dark and glassed from the same ridge:

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After breakfast, my brother and I took out on the 4wheelers to see if we could find some new areas to hunt. Public land in this area is pretty limited and much of the access is cut off by local landowners. They (landowners) and the hunters we encountered were a mixed bag. One guy who worked for the Diamond A Ranch (formerly the Gray Ranch) tried to fill us full of BS about what was legal and what wasn't, what was State/BLM land and what was privately owned. Another rancher I ran across was really friendly and mentioned we could hunt his place (for a small trespass fee) in the future. Their website is www.hurthunting.com if anyone is interested. Hunters ran the gamut as well, from slobs that drove their 4-wheelers up and down the creekbeds at wide-open-throttle to your average backpack hunters.

Day 3 we jumped our first mule deer. We were walking along the high bank of a dry creekbed when we jumped this guy. I took these pictures through my binos at about 175yrds.

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It's hard to tell in the pictures, but he's got a fork on one side and about a 4" nub on the other. Seeing as how he was the first deer we'd seen after 2.5 days I was close to pulling the trigger on him. But, I don't really need the meat in the freezer and I really wanted something a little bigger. I sat here and watched him for an hour or so and glassed around hoping to see one of his buddies, but no luck.

Day 4 we made a trip up into a little more mountainous country and spotted 2 (maybe 3) deer hightailing it away from us high up on Gillespie Mountain. After a quick hike up top, we could not locate the buggers.

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I think my brother is giving a Hook 'Em here and not shooting me the finger, but you never know.

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We hiked up to where Gillespie gets really steep and couldn't find them so we headed back down walking along the ravines and washes. We did jump another small 2x2 on the way down but he was moving quick and wasn't anything I really wanted to pursue anyway.

Day 4 and 5 the wind picked up to the point that we could barely tolerate it. Our tarp/awning tore, everything was filled with dust, and nothing was moving. My brother did see a doe about 50 yards from our trailer early on the morning of Day 4 when he stepped out to take a leak at about 2am.

I hunted until about 2pm on Day 5 when I'd had enough of the wind so we packed up and headed out. Spotted this while driving through Hachita...

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We had a great time hunting/camping. Don't really see us heading back out there, but we did have a good time regardless.

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After a night in Fort Stockton, TX (and a badly needed shower), I got back to Austin around 3pm and picked up my little girl from her Nana's house.

Friday morning the wife, kiddo, and I loaded up and headed to Corpus/Port Aransas for the weekend. All in all, a pretty danged good week with the family...

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Mistake no. 1, in that country you should have loaded dads LQ horsetrailer with horses...That is horse country, lots of deer but they are about 25 miles apart..I have hunted most of NM and it has some outstanding big bucks in the Southern reaches..some really nice photography and sounds like you guys had a great hunt and thats the bottom line. Cute kids you got, and I hope you didn't drink the water in Ft. Stockton unless its changed dramatically it used to taste like natural gas!!! yuk!

Yeah, horses would definitely have been a plus in that rugged country. In fact, if I went back out there, I'd probably go that route.

Funny you should mention the water in Ft. Stockton. My Dad grew up in Eldorado and said the same thing about the water, but they've done something to fix it as the water tasted fine.

-Dan

In the picture of you and your dad having dinner, please tell me that isn't a satellite TV remote control on the table!!

lol...yep, nice catch. We're pretty die-hard Longhorn fans and didn't want to miss the game. Of course through the brilliance of the FCC, we weren't allowed to watch any of the major networks on DirecTV so we missed the UT-Tech game. We were able to catch the (disappointing) election coverage on Tuesday however.

Nice write-up Dan...

Pretty country. Bet it was full of coyotes...

Thanks Greg. We heard a ton of them at night, saw tracks everywhere, but I only tried one evening to call anything and had no luck.

Cool Dan. Bummer about the lack of deer seen...

We saw 30 deer a day. 95% were does the other 5% were smallish dinks...

Great pics and great story, Dan. I've never hunted Unit 26 but it looks EXACTLY like the country I hunt in the Big Bend area for mulies.

I'll be there in two weeks, hopefully I'll bust a good one. Might get an Aoudad too as they have become quite prolific in our area.

Bill

Bill,

Are you guys on a lease? I've been thinking about just biting the bullet and paying to hunt in TX. After you figure in the travel expenses and additional tag fees, it's not that much more to just hunt here. Especially when I buy a TX hunting license every year anyway.

-Dan