Ahh... I can feel you guys on the whole having to pack-in all your water deal. Not fun.
EDIT: Woo man that is some steep terrain!
Haha keeps the pressure out at least, we're the only ones crazy enough to pack in there
I like it man. I’m headed out tomorrow for my first mulie Hunt with my buddy he’s 65, I been hunting and fishing with him since I was a kid. Similar situation. I’m gonna dig into your bear videos when I get a chance. Are you gonna put on video of your mulie archery encounters?
Right on, best of luck man! If you're successful I would still let him carry a little bit of meat so he still feels like he's putting in the work but definitely make it as easy on him as possible...it's incredibly rewarding in my opinion. I may at some point but didn't get any footage or anything aside from recovering my arrow and briefly explaining what happened. I will take a minute to lay it out here nothing crazy exciting but I did learn a valuable lesson on the first one that may benefit someone else.
We had arrived to an undisclosed lake after dark on September 8th, in that region it's open for any mule deer buck with a bow from the 1-9th and opens up to rifle with a 4 point or greater antler restriction on the 10th. I can still hunt with a bow after the 10th but am subject to the 4pt restriction as well and we would be hiking in during the day of the 9th so I knew that morning would be my best opportunity. I woke up early and layered up...up here we deal with the typical early season heat mid day but at night the temperatures can drop significantly and it was pretty chilly that morning. I grabbed my bow and made my way into the flats that sit between the lake and the ridges heading up into the high country.
I began poking my way into the brush, searching for a game trail to follow. I found one fairly quickly and began following it, within 50 yards or so I found a bed and some fresh droppings. I kept moving slowly, now in still hunting mode and stopping every few steps to scan my new view and listen. After a few minutes of doing this I came to a stop and heard a snap. I slowly looked up towards where the sound came from and there was a deer 30 yards away staring at me. It was still pretty low light in the timber, I slowly pulled out my binos and raised them to get a better look. Damn, no head gear. Didn't bring my camera and it's a bit too dark to film anyway, guess I'll just watch her for a bit and wait for the light to open up a bit more. I put my binos up again and as I was watching her I noticed another deer appear behind her. Crazy how well they can blend in when they're fozen, then a little ear twitch can bring them right into view. As I'm thinking that another one appears, and then another. I see 4 deer in total, all within 40 yards or so. First one is a doe, how about that one? Doe. That one? Another doe. How about that one in the back? Damn, another doe. Wait a second! The daylight was clearing up my vision by the second and I was beginning to make out a rack on the deer in the back. I could see he was a nice tall 2 point with very dark antlers and back tines that hooked forward. At this point he had fed behind a large bush to my right that I would need to clear in order to get a shot.
I slowly made my way around the bush and as I emerged on the other side he saw me, immediately stotted off and I lost sight of him. He couldn't have been more than 40 yards but no shot opportunity. Well that was cool, guess I'll just watch these does and see how close they let me get since they didn't seem too concerned, they were making their way towards the ridge but weren't in any major hurry to do so. I slowly began practicing my deer stalking skills on the feeding does, at times they would kind of realize something was there and move 10 yards closer to the ridge but it was a cool little experiment on what I can and can't get away with. At a certain point I looked up at the ridge and realized there was a deer standing about 30 yards uphill, I put my binos up and it was the buck! Guess he had disappeared in the brush but then headed up to the ridge to wait for the does. He was steeply quartered away and his body language said come on, let's go! I ranged him and saw 50m at the bottom of the screen (the local archery range has targets set in meters so that's what I've always shot at, 10m = 11 yards) but didn't want to shoot any farther than 45. I decided to be aggressive and either get a shot opportunity or spook him off so I could have a coffee before we start our grind up the hill.
I walked straight towards him and paced off the last 5 meters. The does knew something was up and moved up to just below him on the ridge. He was quartered steeply with his head at such an angle that I knew as long as I was in front of the pelvis I would kill him. In hindsight I definitely saw his body language, panicked and rushed the shot...didn't settle into my anchor like I should have, most likely never checked my bubble, didn't take the time to really execute the way I know I'm capable of and when the shot broke I watched my arrow sail about 2" to the right of his shoulder blade and hit the dirt as all 4 deer became airborne, weaving in and out of each others path on their way up the ridge. I was a bit baffled at such a significant miss, at a known 45 meters I would look at my bow in disbelief and wonder what got bumped if I missed an entire 3d target like that. The level of the arrow looked perfect so I was confident in the yardage but just out of curiosity I ranged the spot again. Well shit. Yes, he was 45 meters...with the angle compensation. I never even noticed how steep that hill was and had never looked at the top of the screen where the angle is displayed, with the compensation he was over 60 meters away and the factors that came into play from rushing my shot compounded into a clean miss at that distance (thankfully). Very glad I didn't wound him and it was a valuable lesson to always double check the actual line of sight distance and to be much more patient with letting an arrow go as that wasn't an ideal shot angle either.
The 2nd opportunity wasn't as exciting, we saw a spike in a marsh while we were driving from one trailhead to another. He was 32 meters (35 yards) and I drew back but he was in tall grass up to his neck and I couldn't see exactly where his vitals were. Thought he might step out and expose them so I stayed at full draw but he finally just spun around and took off, gave him a couple "maaahhhh"s but he never stopped to look back. Wasn't too bummed about it but was I happy I showed more patience this time, I is learning!
