MuleyMadness Hunting Forums

Well this has been a heck of a season for my wife! She was able to connect on a nice antelope at the beginning of the month in Wyoming and then sealed the deal on the last day of the rifle hunt on a cool buck. This was her first year in the dedicated hunter program and had hunted with me on the archery hunt, muzzleloader hunt and now the rifle. She had stated at the beginning of the season that she wanted to get a bigger buck than what she has previously shot. So she passed up on several smaller deer throughout the season. So during the rifle hunt we had spotted a really nice buck that we only caught a short glimpse before disappearing in the thick cover. So we tried to hike in after him and glassed for hours but never did find him again. So hunted for a few more days and never saw anything worth shooting for her. Last day of the hunt we headed for the canyon where I had shot my buck on the muzzleloader hunt. At this point it was more of a what the heck let's try it and see if we get lucky on a nice buck hunt then an actual full out hunt. So we headed up the canyon and glassed and never found anything. So we headed back out of the canyon and with only like an hour of light left we were planning on heading home. But as we were driving along we spotted a herd of deer and stopped to check them out. Bunch of does and a spike that was about 14" tall…..not what we were after. But just when we were about to leave I noticed another buck stepping out of the brush. Told my wife "he looks like a decent buck…..wait! He's a decent buck with cheaters!" So after hearing the word "cheaters" my wife quickly grabbed the binos from me and looked at him and said "let's get him!" So the stalk was on. We snuck up to about 100 yds from him and found him bedded down. My wife got set up for the shot and now we just had to wait for him to stand. About a minute later he stood up broadside and she squeezed off a round and hit him hard. I thought he was going to drop by the way he was acting but he didn't so she put one more round into him. Still on his feet he staggered away but obviously hit hard. Running out of light and being the last day we tried to see if we could get on him to put one more in him but he had gone into super thick cover. So we got one of our good friends to come up and try and help us track him down. We got on the blood trail but after about 50 yds it trickled away. So we just kept going into the area where we last saw him head. We ended up bumping him at about 30 yds in the thick stuff but he wasn't in a giant hurry but by the time my wife got to where I was he had disappeared again. So we continued on for about 50 yds and found a blood trail and decided it best to head back out for the night and hope that he would bed down close by and come back in the morning. I called up the local DWR officer and let him know the situation and made sure it would be ok to hopefully recover him in the morning. He said it was fine as long as we went in without our gun and if needed he would come help us dispatch the wounded deer if needed. So having that part squared away we headed home for a not so great night's sleep. I was a little concerned that maybe the shot hadn't been that great and that we would lose him but I didn't tell my wife that since she was already worrying enough about it. Morning couldn't come fast enough. We headed back up to the last blood spots we had found and started looking for some sort of trail. After a couple minutes of looking we found some more blood and were able to determine direction of travel. So going super slow and looking for specks of blood thru the dead leaves we were able to find a decent trail. Our spirits were lifting! We continued on for about 75 yds and then the blood trail became super easy to follow. Big pools of blood….he had to be close! We kept going and then my wife said to me "Is that a rock on the trail up there?" So I threw up the binos and there he was! He had expired about 150 yds from where we had stopped last night. My wife was super excited and we were both relieved to have been able to find the buck not far from where we thought he was. He might not be the biggest buck on the mountain but he is a trophy in our book and our first buck with cheaters! My wife couldn't be happier with him and she did an awesome job of tracking to find him. This has been a great year for her and we have made some great memories!

Awesome buck! Sounds like you did the right thing backing out and waiting until morning. It's amazing how far they can go if the adrenaline keeps pumping.

Well done, like the matching cheaters. I swear I've seen someone that has trail cam photos of this same buck in the velvet??

I actually had some pictures of a buck that I posted on here that was a bigger version of this buck. Might have been his offspring actually. Couldn't ever seal the deal on the bigger 3 point with cheaters and then someone else killed him on the rifle hunt :(

Okay gotcha, maybe it was your pics I was thinking of then.

Very nice. Congrats!

That's a nice Buck. Good job.

Nice looking buck. Congrats.

That's a great buck and memory for you guys. Thanks for sharing the story and congrats.