Sorry so late on the post but we actually got these bucks on the first couple days of November but just now getting around to uploading the pictures. We spent 5 days chasing bucks around over on the east side of the state this year, and it was a kick. First to score was my cousin Daniel on a pretty nice 4x3, we'd hiked and checked a lot of ground and we'd seen a few bucks but nothing we were looking for until I spotted this one from a long way off. At a distance he didn't look very big but we decided to sneak around and take a look anyways, and as we crested the hill I peaked over the edge to see him still laying there and he was quite a bit nicer than we originally thought. Since I spotted him I had first chance at the shot, and after I checked him out for quite a while I decided not to shoot since it was just the first day and we hadn't really gotten the chance to check out the rest of the area. I ask Dan if he wanted to shoot it and there was no hesitation. We got into position, the buck stood up 250 yards away and he drilled him. He was pretty pumped as it was his first time hunting out of state and first Mule Deer he'd ever taken.
My buck we had a couple encounters with on day 2 but his does busted us on our big stalk and we just never could catch up to him again. So day 3 we decided to hunt the same general area to see if we could find him again, we'd seen 4 other bucks in that area that I would've been plenty happy with but I saw something different looking to my buck that I was really hoping to find him again. As we got down into where we'd bumped him the day before we spotted 4 does and decided to sneak around on them to see if there was anything else with them when we heard shots ring out way up the canyon (my uncle ended up missing a little 3 point). That's when all hell broke loose, 2 coyotes come running right by us and the 4 does we see bolt out of over the ridge. We sat there deciding what our next move was going to be when I caught movement a couple ridges over. It was the goofy horned buck from yesterday working our way with a doe. We watched them disappear into a canyon and busted towards the direction they were headed. We ended up meeting each other head on at about 60 yards and they didn't have a clue we were there, one shot through the boiler room and the buck was mine, my biggest to this date.
The day after my dad and I were headed towards the same canyon and there stood a buck looking at us that we hadn't seen yet, and he was BIG. he jumped out of the truck and snuck around to where the buck disappeared and I drove around to the other side to watch the show. I watched as he jumped the buck at about 80 yards away, and 3 shots later the buck was still going strong, no blood, no hair, buck fever had won that battle. We hunted around into the basins he'd ran to see if we could just maybe we could find him again. We ended up seeing him twice more but never closer than 500 yards and never presented a shot. We found the buck he was running with bedded with some does at 349 yards and he decided he might as well take him, although he wasn't as big as the first buck. One shot later and the buck was down, and as we walked up to him we realized he was a bit bigger than we'd judged him and he ended up being the biggest buck of the trip, with a tank of a body on it.
We caught Dan's hunt and mine on HD video as well, a fun trip for sure.
