Mullie down

[Neal]

The rest of the story:

Made my way to the top of a ridge looking down into a deep canyon at first light.  I spotted this buck and two other 4x4's feeding about 600yds away on my side of the canyon.  The wind was in my favor and as I was trying to figure out how to make a stalk when something spooked them and they ran into the bottom of the canyon.  I lost sight of them and figured they holed up in the bottom of the canyon.  I made my way down to the bottom but they were gone.  As I was trying to decide what to do next 8 does came out of a small draw into the canyon bottom about 100yds upwind of me. So I'm thinking maybe the bucks were in the same draw and will hopefully feed down to the bottom.  After about 10 minutes of watching the does I spotted the bucks 400yds up on the side of the canyon. Meanwhile the 8 does are walking straight towards me and I'm thinking this is going to end badly. The does got within 25yds of me and we had about a 10 minute stare down, they finally had enough and ran up the opposite side of the canyon as the bucks.  This spooked the bucks and they started running down the draw that I was sitting in the bottom of.  The first buck ran by me at 25yds and didn't see me, the second one hit the brakes about 30yds away from me and looked at me for what seemed like an hour before he took off following the first one. They were both nice bucks but I wanted a shoot at the last (biggest) one.  Meanwhile the last one was about 100yds back and kept coming right at me, when he got to 35yds I put the front sight on his neck and touched if off, down he went.  I wish my 14 year old daughter would have been with me, this is her first year of hunting. I'm confident we could have had two bucks down which probably would have killed me by the time I got all the meat packed out.   

[Neal]

Forgot: Thompson Center Black Diamond, 100 grains of Triple 7, 250 grain Hornady SST, being in the right place at the right time, priceless

[Ibcnurun]

 

[wackum]

Nice Buck 

[kodiak 907]

 

[SemperFidelis97]

Great mulie thanks for telling us the story.

[HntnFsh]

Dandy buck. Cool story. Congrats!

[beave]

 

[pashok23]

 

[JJB11B]

Great Buck man

[HUNTINCOUPLE]

Real nice buck Neal! Thanks for sharing.

[Natures Way]

Congrats nice deer!

[Neal]

Thanks for the congrats everyone.  It was a fun hunt.

I just got home from taking my 14 year old daughter hunting in the same area hoping to get her on one of the two 4 x.4's   that was with my buck.  It's her first year of hunting so I was hoping I could get her close to something.  We put three stalks on a decent 3x3 over a seven hour period and I don't know how may miles.  We ran out of cover on the first stalk at 150 yards, she didn't feel comfortable at that range and we ended up bumping him and the forken horn that was with him. On the second stalk we were almost close enough for her to take a shot but they were feeding toward us so we decided to let them get as close as possible.  Just when she felt comfortable with the range a doe almost walked into us and did the typical snort which pushed the bucks out again.  We spotted them an hour latter bedded in some sage but no way to get on them without a very long back track and come up behind them.  So we circle around and I remembered a game trail that would put us right on top of them.  When we got to the trail I had my daughter go first and told her how to walk without making a lot of noise.  I was amazed at how well she did!  We ended up getting within 20 yards of them when the forken horn stood, up a split second latter the 3x3 stands up, I see my daughter shoulder her gun and I waited for the shot.  They start to run, no shot, I said why didn't you shoot.  She looks at me and says I wasn't sure which one was legal.  I was very proud of her and upset with myself for assuming she knew which buck to shoot.  Sorry for the long winded story but hopefully anyone that reads this will remember what might be obvious to them isn't to a first time hunter.  If I would have just said the one on the right I would be packing meat right now instead of rambling on in this forum.     

[ShaneTyTrey]

Excellent buck, congrats

[MLBowhunting]

Awesome buck