Jackelope
Lil-Rokslider
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2012
- Messages
- 231
Well some of the WA guys have seen this plenty of times before on the WA forums but I figure why not post my story on here. I found out in the spring of 2010 that I drew a late muley permit in my home state of Washington. My inlaws live in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in the southeast corner of the state. In '09 we got word that the state was issuing some new permits for muleys in the Blues so I couldn't apply fast enough. I knew with only 4 points going in, the odds of me drawing were about nill. Well, what do you know, I drew. I had pulled the only permit in the unit, and the hunt was to happen the week of Thanksgiving. I was really nervous as my mule deer hunting exoerience is kind of limited, and because where these deer go late in the season is sort of tough to predict. We got down there and went out on day 1 and did some glassing. This area burned in 2005 so we spent the 1st day glassing a couple draws of burnt timber. We turned up 22 deer the 1st day but no big bucks...in fact no bucks at all. I was a little discouraged to say the least, not that we didn't find a big buck on the 1st day, but that we didn't see a single buck all day. On day 2 we got up and decided to hike into a wilderness area. It was snowing and there was about 10" on the ground. We put about 7 miles on round trip and cut 4 sets of deer tracks. The snow picked up to where we lost any visibility we had so we headed back to the trailhead and the truck. No dice that day. Day 3 we got up and it was 7 degrees and snowing sideways, blowing real hard....just an ugly day. We decided to take a ride in the truck and see what we could see. We ended up having to chain up my buddy's super duty on a road as we couldn't get through a good sized drift as we were heading to an area with a forest service road about 6k' elevation. There was a lot of snow on the roads but we kept going. We spent a couple hours driving around, glassing where we could see anything more than 100 yards or so. We didn't see a single deer that morning aside from a nice whitetail buck that I couldn't shoot as my permit was only good for a muley. We decided to head back to the wall tent, play some cards and kill a couple hours to see if the weather turned around. We were driving past the little spur road that we started on on day 1 and my buddy decided to turn down it just to see if there was any visibility down there. The road loses a little elevation so we thought maybe we might get under the clouds. We get about 1/4 mile down that road and a muley doe walks out into a meadow about 100 yards from the truck. Right after her was a nice looking buck. We made the decision to take him, mostly because he was the 1st buck we had seen in almost 3 full days of hunting. I bailed out of the truck and got off the road to where I could shoot and took the shot. He dropped in his tracks. It was 11 degrees when I killed him and snowing sideways. He's not the biggest buck in the mountains but he is a nice Washington buck and we had a great time down there. I wish I had a glamorous "back country" muley harvest story to share but the bottom line is that big bucks are where you find them I guess. He scores right at 150" and he was estimated to be 9 1/2 years old. The guy that drew this tag in '11 killed a small whitetail on the last day. Thw WDFW made it legal to kill a whitetail OR muley in '11. I didn't have that option in '10. Enjoy the pics.
I've got a few more scenery pics I can post up later on. By the way, thanks for the great forum. I really enjoy looking at all the great pics zand stories and the learning I get out of this site every day.
I've got a few more scenery pics I can post up later on. By the way, thanks for the great forum. I really enjoy looking at all the great pics zand stories and the learning I get out of this site every day.