A little late on the post, but I've been busier than I like to be, but here it is. I spent the opening weekend of the MZ season with my father in law, cousin (carpsniperg2) and my brother in law. The weather was good and the deer hadn't been pressured, so we had high hopes. Throughout the day we ended up seeing a ton of deer, I imagine somewhere around 100 with 10 or so legal bucks (3 pt. or better unit). About 2pm we were moving along a flat and looked out to a ridge on the top side of a decent canyon and saw a group of deer about 750 yards away that saw us and split almost instantly.....
how could they be sooooo spooky?
We decided that it would be good to slip down to the edge of the canyon and see what was moving around, if anything. We walked about another 100 yards and I spotted a couple does....and dropped to the ground instantly. We snuck up a little closer and saw that there were 3-4 does with a really good looking buck...THEY HADN"T SEEN US YET!!!!!!!! We ended up sneaking along the oak line and got to within 30 yards of the group of deer... which ended up being 20-25 animals
. After sitting there for about 45 minutes we had 9 does within 30 yards and we still couldn't find the buck, but the wind was perfect and they had no idea we were there. Finally we decided to try to move to a position where we could try to find the buck. When moving one of the 25 pairs of eyes caught our movement and spooked the group up the hill to the ridge and we finally got a look at the buck, a very wide 3X3 with eye guards which my cousin estimated to be 24 - 25 inches wide. The three of us moved up the ridge and noticed that they weren't too freaked out and that there were 4 legal bucks in the group with 2 of them being shooters, the large wade buck, and a tight and heavy crab rack buck that my cousin passed up on the opening day (friday) before we were there. I decided that I would circle around the ridge to the other side and hope that if the deer spooked they would travel over the top and come by me. After I moved around the other side I got out to the tip of the ridge and there they were, about 20 deer, with a couple smaller bucks, BUT WHERE ARE THE BIGGER TWO?
??
After a few minutes I see two deer moving towards the rest of the group, I pull up my glasses and yes!!!!
It's the tight racked 3X3 with eyeguards. He kept following the doe and eventually became the closest deer to me, at about 110 yards. I had a sitting rest and shooting sticks and rested my sights on the buck as he chased the doe up and down the hillside. I decided that I would be happy with this buck and that after 2+ hours of chasing these deer, it would be awesome if I could put my tag on one of these two bucks. I kept wondering to myself where the bigger buck was and was holding off shooting until I knew I wasn't missing the bigger buck somewhere. Just as I decided I was going to take the shot at the buck at 100 yards I hear a BOOM! The deer go crazy and start taking off down the hill and into the sage line. I decided that it was now or never, I grabbed my gun and my sticks and rand down the hill to the sage line. As i come over the hill in the sage I see two deer in front of me, the only deer still in range, and to my luck, the buck I had been looking at and the doe that he couldn't seem to let go. I planted my butt on the ground and got my sticks situated, steadied my sights on his shoulder and as soon as he stopped I touched it off. The smoke flew and I moved to the side to see what happened. I pulled up my glasses and at first it looked like I had missed as he took his first 2-3 steps and on his 4th his back end dropped to the ground and he went to the ground. The shot was 90 yards and I hit him right in the boilermaker with a 290 grain Barnes Tipped MZ with 100 grains of 777 pellets behind it. Bullet was a pass through and did some serious damage. I ran up to the buck and he was stone dead, went about 15 yard from where I shot him.
I came to find out that the BANG I heard that moved the deer was my father in law shooting at the larger buck, but missed him just low.
That thing was a nice buck so I really wish he would've got him. The picture of my buck is below and although he isn't a monster by any means he is a great buck for me, nice mass, older buck, and a pretty good Blacktail in my mind. Overall it was a great weekend of hunting. The next weekend we went back up and helped my cousin get his buck, a very nice 3X4 with eyeguards so a 4X5. His post is on the MZ forum, posted by Carpsniperg2 and is a great buck. Enjoy the pics!!
