Today was a good day…

[TripleJ]

What an amazing old mountain warrior. Great story and a great buck, congrats!

 

[Jgill19]

Great buck, great write up!

 

[HairyScandinavian]

Crazy cool but and great story, thanks for that.

 

[Rotnguns]

Congratulations on a fine buck and thanks for sharing your adventure!

 

[TXCO]

Cool buck, congrats


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[Ghoul]

Man, that’s an awesome buck and a great story. Congrats!

 

[SnakeTits]

I hurried back to my pack, grabbed my loose items and began angling down the slope in a way that I could keep an eye on the bottom of the drainage but also contour around to where the buck had been mid-slide so that I could look for blood and follow the slide down the slope, hopefully to his resting place.

To keep my footing I had to put on my microspikes and was really wishing I hadn’t left my trekking poles in the truck. It took about 20 minutes to work my way around the ravine until I came to the slide. It looked like a bobsled track in the snow with a bright red stripe down the middle. I was relieved to see so much blood, confirming that I hadn’t just blown out a leg or made a non-fatal shot.

I continued to descend, marveling at all the big overturned rocks and logs with big tufts of buck hair still stuck to them. When I was about 100 yards from the bottom of the ravine I pulled up my binos and glassed the bottom and was relieved to see a leg sticking up out of the tangle of slide Alder and willows.

When I finally got down to where the buck slid to a stop my jaw dropped at the sheer size of his body - the biggest-bodied mule deer I have ever laid hands on. I had to grit my teeth to yank him out of the tangle to get a look at his antlers, and then my jaw dropped again . “ THE MASS !”, I literally said out loud. He had that look of a buck somewhat past his prime- heavy all the way through, compact, but shorter tined than a 6-7 year old peak growth buck. I knew he wasn’t a great scoring buck, no 200”er for sure but it didn’t matter to me. I love these old, crusty, black-horned mountain bucks. I’ve always wanted one like this and here he was, finally in my hands.
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Hammer of a buck! Love the mass. Congrats!