200"+ Typical, WA Giant: A tribute to the one that got away...

[wsmnut]

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to share that buck with us.  He is amazing.

[Shed Stud]

That a boys! Glad someone had a go at him. He'll be there next year! If you want a feel at that bone from last year....😎

[WAcoueshunter]

See if this works.

Those are awesome.  Thanks to both of you for posting pics.  So cool to know bucks like that are out there. 

[boonerboy]

Hey shed stud, post a damn pic already would ya?? Hahaha. What'd they score last year?

[cmiller85]

That a boys! Glad someone had a go at him. He'll be there next year! If you want a feel at that bone from last year....😎

 

[Pinetar]

haha Now that was funny Boneaddict

[257 Wby Mag]

Great pics and story, thanks for sharin... once again, the elitists think they know what's goin on... Funny stuff...

[JDHasty]

Just seeing a mule deer like that does things to a man who hunts. 

I was just north of Musselshell shooting prairie dogs and had one like that come out right in front of me about five years ago.  You never forget it. 

Here is what is so wild about the experience:  My friggin brain shut down for a few seconds.   I could just not get my mind around what I was seeing AND I was not deer hunting at the time. 

Serious guys, I noticed movement to my right and this buck came up a draw like he was King Tut, walking like a Tennessee Walking Horse, all the heck full of himself. 

It literally took me four or five seconds to realize what I was seeing.  I was LITERALLY in a catatonic state.  I saw something move and I turned my head and looked and just could not get my mind around what I was seeing. 

OK, if you want to know EXACTLY where that buck was - go on Google Earth and find Musselshell MT.  Go across the HWY and that first house used to be Jim Gofena's home.  You see it there and right up the road, just to the north is a clearing that used to be home to a massive PD town.  It is obvious as the nose on your face.  It is a large open hay meadow surrounded by pine timber.   

Nobody has access any longer for any reason, Jim's brothers now have control of the High Butte Ranch and they are like dealing with the Tasmanian Devil on his worst day... when they are on their best behavior.   If this wasn't the case I would never divulge the location of one of my favorite PD towns.  In other words, don't bother - it is now as accessible as a city park for shooting anything. 

Once you see the clearing, you will see that on the north end there is a dry wash that runs east to west before meating another north south dry wash and that buck came out of the timber on the east end and strutted right along that dry wash until he winded me and then he took off at a trot and vanished. 

It would have been a "chip shot" to take him before he split the scene, and I had been shootin' prairie dogs for a week off hand with a Hornet.  I can tell you right now, had I been hunting mule deer - I don't know if I would not have learned first hand what I have only ever heard about - "buck fever." 

I have shot nice big game animals without giving it a thought, but just seeing this deer, in his home range, even way out of season, left me so confused I didn't know if I was afoot or on horseback.   My brain shut down, I just could not, for about five seconds, even get my mind around what I was seeing. 

That is why I think that you hear about the guy that got beginners luck and shoots a monster like the one in the photo.  He just doesn't know any better. 

Just seeing a mule deer like that does things to a man who thinks about hunting all the time that are "spiritual."  It screws you up, or at least it screwed me up to the extent that I couldn't even get my mind around it until I had replayed the experience in my mind over and over again. 

I was simply mesmerized and dumbfounded.  If I had a valid deer tag in my possession at the time I saw that buck I don't know if I would have been "man enough" to function.  It is a "spiritual experience" and by that I mean my senses just were TOTALLY overwhelmed. 

I honestly thought I was seeing an elk at first.  Really, in all honesty, that is a Quality Bull area, and even though a mule deer looks nothing like an elk... you do the math.  I just could not get my mind around what I was seeing.   

I've stumbled on monster Rocky Mt elk, my cousins' ranches are up against The Bob and I have also seen them between Roundup and Forsyth, and I have seen monster Moose in the wild, my grandpa lived in Livingston all his life and my sister was born at the hospital in Yellowstone and I spent a lot of time in the Paradise Valley MT, still in all I have never had an experience like seeing that monster mulie in his natural home.

My cousin Pat's ranch is surrounded by the Broken O, and while riding around on a four-wheeler I have seen some monster Montana White Tails in the hay meadows on the Broken O and the Sun River Ranch and on the Khron Ranch, real honest to God MONSTERS, but seeing them did not affect me the way seeing a mule deer like the one you have photos of did.

There is definitely something about a monster mulie that is all together different.     

You are a blessed man to have gotten those photos.       

[JDHasty]

Just to elaborate on what I wrote above, we were hunting in that general area ten years earlier, a friend who was in his eighties at the time saw one like I describe and he couldn't shoot it.  I asked him why and all he could say is he just couldn't shoot it. 

He said it was so magnificent that he just wanted to absorb the experience for as long as possible before shooting it and then when he had it in his scope he could not pull the trigger.  I asked if he had any regrets:  He said I don't know, I have thought about that question a lot and I still don't know. 

He took a couple decent deer on that trip and a nice speed goat and so he does not have any compunction against shooting a nice buck.  But he just does not know if he has any regrets about letting a mulie buck like the one he saw walk.  He said that at that point in his life....

I'm 56 and seriously doubt that "at this point in my life..."  I still thank God for just being in a position to hunt.  Even when fate leaves me without anything tangible, but if I had a monster mulie like that I know that if I botched it and didn't have a BIG taxidermy bill to fit into the family budget... I would not be kicking myself in the posterior daily and cursing every day that I did not do something to prepare myself for when fate smiles on me.     

[ian_padron]

Absolute TANK! Only a matter of time before it all pays off for you man and I'm guessing the years of tag soup will be totally worth it!

[jackelope]

Please keep this thread on the track it is currently on.
Thanks

[Mark251]

Great story!  Great buck 

[rosscrazyelk]

Awesome buck. .. I liked your story as well. I am living thru these threads  and friends stories. I remember  when I used to have time to do this.  Nowadays  my time is very limited, the price you pay to have a job  and have a young one in the house.  No worries though I will get out eventually. 
Thanks for sharing

[M_ray]

Rumor has it this buck is dead and only went 191" 

 

[WARHORSE]

This should get interesting!