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Story: The Spirit Buck
 As I
think back over my many years in pursuit of big mule deer, many things come to mind. All
good I guess, though some not as good as others. Of course the best memories come from
hunts when you took some of your biggest bucks or they can also come from taking a very
crafty old buck. Great effort has a way of accenting memories and the quality of a trophy.
Success shared with good friends and family brings satisfaction that only intensifies as
the years go by.
I can also think of hunts where all the preparation in the
world just wasn’t enough. The situation can be where everything is in its perfect
place – the big buck, your abilities, and you. The problem is he somehow makes it to
cover with just a half a second to spare, or he sees you coming and ducks out without you
seeing him and you can’t quite figure out how he did it. How could one small limb,
though unseen, deflect your bullet and be the difference between elation or total
dejection as that monster buck drives out of that pocket and over the ridge? You waited
for that perfect shot and fully expected that tale, tale, "whomp" but it just
wasn’t to be. Maybe you ran as hard as you could one way only to find that the buck
ran the other and so on and so forth.
Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. Some hunts everything seems to click
and on some hunts they just don’t. At the time there just doesn’t seem to be
anything much that you can do about it.
This story is about a mule deer hunt on an Indian reservation in 1991 that is truly the
exact opposite. It was a hunt that was so perfect and so orderly from start to finish as
to almost seem bizarre. If you could imagine this hunt in the form of a movie script, I
was the one chosen to play the role of the character who harvests the buck of a lifetime.
I’ve always watched for undiscovered areas or new hunts that could potentially
produce big deer. I've been following this reservation for some time and when I noticed
they were offering a trophy deer hunt beginning on December 7th and only costing $500.
That‘s a true no brainer!
We could only hope that not many other hunters were following it too because there were
only ten permits offered.
Randy Bradbury and myself have shared many successful hunts together so again on this hunt
we would apply together. Just the previous year hunting with Randy I had harvested a Boone
and Crockett typical mule deer in Arizona that netted over 200 pts. It was not long before
we had our tags in hand and were making plans for our hunt.
The first thing we did was to find and talk to the helicopter pilot who had flown the last
counts and classifications on the unit. We found out where the concentrations of deer were
that time of year and what we could expect to see. Other than that we pretty much just
waited for December to roll around.
I guess you could call this as much an adventure as you could a hunt. We were going
unguided into an unfamiliar country and a somewhat unfamiliar world. We were doing it in
winter conditions and we were staying in a tent. We were fortunate to have a good friend
named Terry Jacobson accompanying us. I’m not sure if he volunteered or was
commandeered. Terry had run a trapline on the reservation and we were happy to have him
along.
We spent the day before the opening traveling and finally found a suitable place to set up
camp. We had just enough time before dark to get a feel for the country and see what deer
signs we could see in the snow.
I’ve always said one of the best keys to success is to hunt in the place and in the
way where you can most optimize your chance for success. Big bucks aren’t normally
found where the highest concentrations of deer are but this was the rut so things would be
different. We decided we would hunt the next morning and then decide where we would go or
what we would do then.
The next morning we were hunting some long ridges that came off the southeast side of the
mountain. There was a fair amount of deer sign and we found several does including a
couple of bucks in the 26 to 27" range. There was one especially large track of a
buck that was coming off the mountain at night, running the does and returning to bed on
the mountain. He was potentially the kind of deer a guy should spend some time on but I
felt a force that just seemed to be pulling me elsewhere.
At 10:45 A.M. we were again together and I convinced Randy that we needed to grab a
sandwich and spend the rest of the day looking for something different.
The area had seen a large snowfall, so most of the deer were down in the pinion/juniper
flats and on the steeper slopes that rose just above them. The trouble was the roads were
terrible. We soon found that the good roads went to houses and the little two trackers
were the ones that went to the base of the mountain.
We set off going west around the south sides of the mountain for probably four to five
miles; passing several little roads. Finally I saw one that though not any different from
the rest seemed to beckon.
After working our way up this so called road, we finally entered the edge of a drainage.
We were greeted by more deer signs than we had seen anywhere. Randy, Terry, and myself
just looked at each other and smiled.
We had gone probably not more than a block, when suddenly about a hundred yards ahead a
deer came around a tree and dropped out of sight into a large wash. I saw only one antler;
A VERY LARGE ANTLER, with multiple cheaters on it.
I exclaimed, "there’s a taker, he’s at least 35 inches wide". I
quickly shut off the truck, grabbed my gun and took off running to where I’d last
seen the deer. Randy was right behind me, so as we came out on the edge of the wash, I was
on the right and Randy was on my left. I was naturally looking up on the right and Randy
was looking down on the left.
Randy excitedly said, "there he is"! I turned to see this buck standing looking
under a pinion tree and probably no more than 80 yards away. His head was lowered so he
could see us under the branches. All we could see of him was his eyeguards and long beams
extending out to where they forked. I didn’t have to see anything above that. He was
on Randy’s side so I naturally said, "He’s a monster, take him".
Randy coolly put this giant in his crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened!
I remember Randy saying simply "my gun!" He opened the bolt of his action,
closed it, wiggled the safety forward with some force. He then aimed and pulled the
trigger again, with the same results.
That was it. I exclaimed, "get your butt out of the way" and took one step
forward and fired. The problem was the buck had tired of us and was vacating the premises.
I fired just as he disappeared behind a pinion tree and then took off running for a better
angle for a shot where I thought he would reappear.
I met Terry and we both just stood and watched for what seemed like an eternity. The buck
never came out. I pointed to the tree I shot through and assured Terry that there was just
no way I could have hit him.
Terry ran down to the tree and quickly hollered, "hey, he’s laying right
here". I got there to find Terry mesmerized. All he could say was, "look at all
those points", and all I could say was, "look how wide he is".
My little brother once said that you can tell a true trophy hunter when he pulls out his
tape measure before he pulls out his knife. The tape did come out first, at least in this
case. We measured him at 41 5/8 inches wide and roughed him at close to 245 points net B
& C. He would officially score 243 6/8 B & C points after the 60 day drying
period. The deer, believe it or not, was taken with a dead center chest shot.
You can imagine how Randy felt. He took the bullet out of his gun and dry fired it several
times and it worked perfectly. He later took a heavy 29" buck on this hunt. His gun
has worked flawlessly to this day.
I guess we can all speculate on how this could happen, or if things are ever somehow
predestined to happen and if so what forces control them. I’ve always been reluctant
to tell many people this story. I do know that right or wrong, I could sure feel something
or someone riding shotgun with me on that special hunt. I wish I knew because I’d
like to invite them along in the future. |
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