Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB's Wyoming buck

John
That buck in the picture on your website is a dandy- Would love to hear a few details of THAT, if you have the time.

Fred

Was hunting in southern Wyoming not too far north of the Colorado line with an outfitter who specializes in mule deer. He wasn't too opimistic because they'd had a VERY tough winter, with snow 4 feet deep in the valleys in some places, and a lot of the bigger bucks had winter-killed. But I decided to hold out for a big one anyway, as a few always survive.

Anyway, we saw a pretty good buck the first morning, within 5 minutes of shooting light, a fairly heavy 3x4 maybe 26" wide, but passed as I hadn't even had time to hunt yet. My hunting partner passed too, even though he had never killed a really good mule deer, which proved to be a mistake.

We hunted for three days after that, glassing during morning and evening, and pushing aspen patches in midday. Finally one of the guides saw really big buck, with wide, pale antlers, in an aspen patch during a drive on the third day, but the buck did not come out. The bigger bucks were coming down from the high country, using this one patch at the base of the mountain as a first stop on their way into the valley.

Anyway, the next morning we went back to the same aspen patch with 3 shooters and 3 people to push it. TWO good bucks came out, in the only direction not covered by a shooter. But we saw them both at long range, and they went into an even bigger aspen patch maybe 3/4 of a mile away. One was a high, dark-antlered 4x4 maybe 25" wide, while the other had wider, heavier, paler antlers that weren't as high.

We decided to work the same play on that aspen patch, and the outfitter asked me if I could shoot at 300+ yards, and I said yes. He knew one of the other guys couldn't, an older guy who was a repeat customer--a great guy but not a good shot, and my partner had already decided to sit on the trail back to the first aspen patch, figuring the bucks might break back the way they'd come.

The outfitter put me on the edge of a big basin on the other side of the ridge from aspen patch. Any shot I got would be long, but he said bigger bucks often broke that way. So I wiggled into a stand of sagebrush and sat there, watching.

After an hour I'd heard a few shots from the direction of the older guy. but seen nothing. Then all of a sudden I noticed the pale-antlers buck trotting away from me along a ridgetop, at least 300 yards away. I got the scope on him, using the reticle to estimate range, and by that time he was over 350, but slowing down. As he walked off the ridge and along a sidehill down toward a steep coulee I got the first dot on the reticle ahead of his chest and shot. He stopped, and I could hear the whump of the bullet coming back as he went spraddle-legged and his head started down. I missed him with a second shot, then put another right next to the first one, behind the shoulder. He toppled over then. We later lasered the shot at right around 360. He had a 27" outside spread and the bases were 5" around. He was really fat--it was October 13th--and tastes just great.

It turned out that the 4x4 with high, dark antlers had indeed gone by my hunting partner, but he passed him up, hoping for the buck I killed. It also turned out the buck I killed was NOT the wide, pale-antlered buck the guide had seen the day before. He said that buck's antlers were not as heavy but wider. So all together 4 darn good mule bucks with spreads of 25" or wider were seen, not bad after a tough winter.

The rifle used was my NULA .30-06 with a 3-9cx Trijicon AccuPoint, the ammo a Norma factory load with the 180 Oryx bullet. One bullet went all the way through, while another ended up in the far shoulder, breaking the bone.

Thanks John
To my eyes, those big mule deer are one of the finest trophies in this country. Love to see pictures of them, and hear of sucessful hunts.

Fred

Yeah, me too. The outfitter (Wynn Condict) is a real mule deer nut, and grew up on the family ranch so knows rthe area real well. After we hunted and talked mule deer for a few days, we just talked mule deer even more!

One of the big things about guided mule deer hunting, I have learned, is finding an outfitter who really understands them. Some outfitters just take mule deer as they come, along with whatever else comes along, whether pronghorn, blakc bear, elk or whatever.

Wynn knows those animals too, but his real love is mule deer. He also knew that I wasn't going to shoot unless it was a really good buck, so we worked pretty well together--and got lucky too. But I have also found that the longer I hunt, the luckier I get.

A lot of people think getting a good mule deer on a guided hunt is easy, but it ain't. I know, because I have hunted them a lot--as a "self-guided" hunter (whatever that means), a guide, and a client. many hunters still expect to book a mule deer hunt and find big ones standing around waiting to be shot. It doesn't work that way, but if you know mule deer a little and the outfitter does too, then the chances get a lot better.

I have ended up not pulling the trigger on many mule deer hunts, either because I didn't see the buck I wanted, or saw him and it didn't work out!

Overcoming the "easy game" misperception amongst tyro mule deer hunters was always a challenge when I was guiding in Wyoming. They had all read one too many articles alleging that mule deer aren't that challenging to hunt.

Not so, particularly when they grow more than three points on a side...

Dennis

Yeah, they read about how mule deer aren't near as smart as whitetails--or always stop and look back. This last implies that you're going to see them in the first place--before they see you!

Nice buck!

WB.

Thanks! And thanks for posting the photo....

He's got a little gray in his face.

So does the buck...

And that is a grand, grand buck.

Dennis

Fabulous buck,JB!

the only real deer are mule deer, and JB's description of his hunt tells exactly why. compare that story to a white tail hunt where they have a stand by the feeder LOL, kinda a joke.

I don't know how people figure mule deer are dummer than white tails, they must not have hunted them

That's a chunky son of a gun!

John,

Magnificent Buck!!!
Kudos on the shot and kill.
Outstanding narrative too, as always.

Don

Nice one John...

Tony

Nice buck, but who really shot it? Come on a .30-06 did that? Nahhh, couldn't be!

IMO, the 30-06 is still king!

cumminscowboy
I agree with you about not wanting to shoot a deer coming to a feeder. However, go to northern New England and try to kill a big whitetail buck, and you'll find that a heck of a challenge, too.
Big bucks of either species are, hunted under fair chase are tremendous trophies.
Fred

Very nice buck! That thing definitely has mass...

sactoller,

I usually end up using the .30-06 some every year, and often with the 180-grain load at the "traditional" velocity of 2700 or so. This is partly because I get assigned to "field test" a lot of bullets (this Wyoming hunt was a Norma field test) and EVERYBODY makes a 180 .30-06 load.

But over the years I have also found out that, of course, the load just works. In fact I know the trajectory so well that I've used it on animals out to 450 yards or so, and found out it worked fine. All this proves is that, once again, KNOWING your rifle and ammo is much more important than all the minutiae that we like to "discuss" on the Campfire. I'll also note that there isn't any significant difference in the trajectory of any 180-grain spitzer load out to at least 400 yards, despite all the talk of ballistic coefficients.

I normally sight .30-06's in 2 inches high at 100 yards, and that means rthe 180 load will be around 2 feet low at 400. Hold for that and you'll kill just about any big game animal, including springbok or pronghorn. On something the size of a big mule deer (or caribou, kudu or elk) hitting the vitals is relatively easy.

A multi-point rteticle helps, but an awful lot of plain old plex-tyope reticle have the tip of the bottom post about six inches below the intersection of the crosshairs. This means that same tip is 2 feet low at 400. I killed several animals at around 400 using the tip of the bottom post long before mutli-point reticles became common.

Plus, of course, I have found that a 180 from the .30-06 in the right place is more than adequate for about any non-dangerous game. And some supposedly dangerous stuff....

Congrats on a fine mule deer. It's nice to see that some mature bucks made the winter in the valley. South-central Wyo was tough this year for mule deer, and it will probably be several more before it's back to normal. We pretty much knew what to expect west of the divide since we'd had the worst winter in 15 to 20 years, but apparently it was worse in the Platte valley than originally estimated. The limited late season tags on both sides of the divide had pretty dismal results this year so it was quite an accomplishment to take a good, mature buck like that during the general season.

Kudos again on your hunt.