Last week, my buddy took the whole week off to hunt. He planned on hunting in my ground blind where I had been bowhunting all last month. Well he gets up there, and the whole piece of property had been logged! Absolutely gutted. We were upset to say the least. Anyway, I started looking for a new place to try with the unit that he had an anterless permit. I found a promising looking area and found out how to get there using a couple maps. So, my buddy calls me to tell me he'd been unsuccessful that day on some BLM land and I tell him about this new area. We decide to meet up and try to find it. It proved easier that I had thought. As we pulled up to parking area, there is a truck there. No big deal. We decide not to tromp through and possibly ruin this guy's hunt. We turn the rig's around and proceed down the way we came. Now there is a large field on the eastern edge of the property and what do we see? 5 mule deer does just hanging out. They definitely weren't there before. So we whip around and park again. We get out of the trucks and he asks me if I had my rifle with me. Duh, of course I did. He asks to borrow it. Side note: He missed a deer the day before and doesn't thinks his gun is off (we've all heard/used that before). So I give him my gun and the magazine and off he goes. I stay behind since I had my step-daughter with me. About 5 minutes later, POW!!! I see the deer running through the woods. A few minutes later a very xcited hunting partner runs up with a bloody twig. Score! So I give my daughter an orange vest and put mine on and off we go. There was lots of blood, obviously well hit. Then the blood trail kinda peetered out. So fan out and search. I'm walking along looking for blood and I look up to see where my buddy is. I turned around and not 5 yards to my right and a bit behind was the deer. Let the celebration begin!!! The shot was perfect, double lung. My 25-06 had done it's job, and done it well. It was his first WA deer and first muley. He was beyond excited. Great day.
Dressed weight: 103 lbs.
