Couldnt Have Asked For a Better "Quality" Experience

[mburrows]

This past May I moved to MT so this would be my last year applying for WA special permits and as luck would have it, I drew my dream permit, a late season archery mule deer tag in a unit that is near and dear to my heart.  I was shocked that I drew as I only had 7 points and being that I'd just moved, my vacation time was going to be stretched pretty thin but there was no way I wasnt going to spend every second of the season hunting.  I reached out to a few members and in particular Jbar and Jstone were awesome to talk with and exchange info with. I ended up spending 2 rough days hiking and side hilling some rough country with Jstone, he got to watch all the action and helped me pack out as well. I cant thank him enough for his time, knowledge and energy.

The trip started out great and on the morning of day one I saw saw a great buck already heading out in the back of somebody's rig.  It was a beautiful buck and it definitely made me even more excited to start hunting.  I saw a number of deer throughout the day, made a stock that didnt pan out but it proved to be good practice moving in close.

The second and third day were fairly light hunting days with Thursday being Thanksgiving, I spent the majority day of with the family which was great in its own right but still made time to do some glassing and turned up a few bucks and a pile of does.  Friday, the third day, was more or less a wash with thick fog just about everywhere in the unit so I opted to spend a lot of time in the truck which made for a boring day overall.  I met Jstone and his hunting buddy that day for the first time and we planned to meet up a couple days later.

The 4th day my one of my best friends (bigdog253) drove over to hunt with me for a couple of days.  We immediately turned up a nice 4x4 down in the saddle of a steep narrow ridge.  It was an ideal spot for a stalk, wind in my face, him facing down hill and he was all alone.  I got to within 120 yards but the snow was loud against my boots and my pants were so loud against the tall grass so I dropped to my long johns and ditched my boots for an extra pair of socks.  I made my way around behind the buck and got to 50 yards.  I ranged him several times collected my thoughts and then he noticed the "clink" of my release against my range finder but I was ready.  I went to pull my bow back as he stood and in that action I hit my release mid-draw and the arrow sailed harmlessly about 10 yards infront of me and thats all this big buck needed to see to get of out of there.  I was pretty upset with that stupid mistake.

The following day we caught a glimpse of a number of deer and a couple of exceptional bucks, saw some awesome rutting action with all the sights and sounds that come with that including a couple giants bucks fighting, one of which I'd eventually put my tag on. 

The next day Jstone and I met up as my buddy had to get to work.  It was a LONG day with a ton of hiking through some nasty, slick and steep draws.  We saw some more great bucks including an awesome 3 point with eye guards.  About 2pm we were following one deer when we looked up and saw a tank of a buck, one I took pictures of through my Maven's the day before.  One of his eyes was sealed shut and looked swollen.  The buck was rutting hard, he wouldnt leave his does even after he saw us and he let us walk towards him from 120 yards to 45 yards at which point I had a clean shot on him. It wasnt ideal but given the situation our only play was to go straight at them as they got comfortable with our presence they almost just wrote us off.  At 45 yards I hit him in the front shoulder, obviously not ideal.  I put another one in him at 75 yards and it completely destroyed his shoulder.  He bedded up within 100 yards, we had eyes on him but it was getting dark so we backed up for fear of pushing him.

The next morning Jstone and I located him and its hard to describe how excited I am to have filled this tag with this deer.  I could not have asked for any better of a hunt or for better company.  Having one of these tags, I felt some pressure but I just felt lucky to be hunting this time of year in that part of the state.  It was a "Quality" experience to say the least and I still cant believe it went down the way it did.   

[full choke]

Beautiful buck!

Congratulations on the tag, and thanks for sharing the story!

[huntnfmly]

Great googly moogly.
Nice buck I love those dark antlers thanks for sharing and good story

[Watimberghost]

Thats a great buck! Quality expirience for sure

[redi]

Great buck.

[blackveltbowhunter]

Awesome story and buck!

[SuperDave]

Awesome buck, thanks for sharing

[Pathfinder101]

great buck, great story. 

[jackelope]

Awesome Buck. Awesome story. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

[denali]

Well done !!  I think we briefly chated on the road couple of days ago, I was in a red Ram 3500

[boneaddict]

Neat hunt.  I’m glad it worked out for you.

[Dan-o]

Great write up and great buck.

[Karl Blanchard]

Congrats man!  You done good!

[X-Force]

Beautiful buck

[WAcoueshunter]

Great buck!  Well done, love those dark horns. Thank you for sharing!