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We sat here and glassed for deer much of the afternoon until dusk. We watched four does from this location.
Coming off the end of the rifle elk hunt where my son Dallen had a couple of missed opportunities to get a bull we were hoping to make up for it during the deer hunt.
Dallen was using my latest handload of the 80g Tipped Triple Shock with Hodgdon Superformance powder. This load has a muzzle velocity of 200 fps faster than my previous load and is now going 3550 fps from a short 22-inch barrel A-Bolt Stainless Laminate Hunter rifle. I was looking forward to seeing what performance on game this bullet would have with the increased velocity.
Opening weekend we decided to hunt the sagebrush-covered hills of the Henefer-Echo public ground. I knew that the hunter to deer ratio was going to be well in favor of the hunters but I hoped that we could find a buck before someone else did.
We arrived at the parking lot an hour before light. Trying to find a place to park was a little tricky. There were definitely going to be a lot more hunters than deer on the property today.
Snapped this photo of the back of Dallen's hat while he was watching four does feeding below us. Can I please cut your hair Dallen? :)
A couple of Bald Eagles soared over us at one point during the day.
My friend Ryan and two of his kids on horseback mule deer hunting below us.
We hiked hard in the dark for that first hour before light working our way around sagebrush draws before it got light. As it got light we decided to hike up to a ridgeline to sit and glass the area from. As we were slowing working our way through the sagebrush I looked back over our shoulder and spotted four bucks that were watching us from a saddle of a draw below. There were two, two-point bucks and two three-point bucks in the group. Dallen quickly got set up on the shooting sticks and was ready to take one of the three-point bucks however they were standing behind an old fence line. (Later that day I studied the map and gps and realized the fence was an old one and that the property line was another half mile away.) Not knowing this section of the property that well I told Dallen to wait until they crossed the fence. When the bucks decided to cross they did so running and they didn't slow down until they were 750 yards away.
We quickly started around after them. Once we got to where we saw them go into a sagebrush draw we started a zig-zag pattern to try and find them. It didn't take long for them to find us first and we caught a glimpse of them bailing over a ridge at a full-speed run. Dallen was hopeful that we might catch up to them again so I sent him hiking while I called my friend Ryan who was on a horse somewhere further up the canyon to let him know some bucks were headed that way. Just as I got him on the phone I looked back and four more larger bucks (small four points and three-point bucks) were sneaking out of the draw.
I had to yell to get Dallen's attention who was now forty yards away marching up the hill. It also took me several times yelling to get his attention... reminding me of yelling for him to get off the computer downstairs and come up for dinner. He never hears a thing for the first ten or so yells... anyway the bucks heard my yelling and that just elevated their exit speed. By the time Dallen turned around and was ready for a shot they too had run over the ridge... What were the chances that there would have been two groups of bucks in that draw???
Here is Dallen with his 2011 mule deer buck he dropped with a single shot at 619 yards. He was using a 243 WSSM, Browning A-Bolt Stainless Hunter Laminate with 22" barrel and a Bushnell Elite 3200 3-10x SA Scope. A wonderful little mountain rifle we really enjoy hunting with.
Dallen putting on the latex gloves to help his old man with boning out the mule deer.
Dallen packing out the head and a little of the meat on my HideAway Expeditions frame pack while the bulk of the deer meat is in my pack.
We had two good chances to take a buck and struck out much like Dallen's elk hunt we just experienced the previous weeks before this hunt. Having such close calls and missed opportunities was really not helping Dallen's morale.
We spent the rest of the day taking a nap and glassing for deer. We were able to find five does that afternoon but no bucks. :(
During the week I took Dallen out of school to take one more chance at finding the bucks we saw on opening weekend. We hiked all over the place trying to find a deer and the property was just devoid of deer.
My good friend Ryan was hopeful to get his daughter her first buck. We made plans for the last Saturday of the hunt to take her and Dallen back into the area that my brother Weston had taken his mule deer buck during the elk hunt with a buck/bull combo tag. There had been a lot of small bucks in the area during the elk hunt so I was hoping we could get the kids in on a few bucks.
Friday even we were up in the high country glassing for deer with the kids. It didn't take us long to find some bucks. The deer were still hanging out in the area they were two weeks before. As it was getting late we made camp and made plans to go after them the next morning.
Almost an hour before you would want to hike down into the canyon two groups of hunters showed up and marched off down the trail invariably bumping the deer out of the location they like to be feeding in during the night and early morning hours. Dang it! This put a small damper on our plans. At about a half-hour before light, we started working our way to the area the bucks should be in and to no surprise we found hunters surrounding the canyon.
We moved off to the left and started glassing and found the deer were way down in the bottom of the canyon. Again not a surprise because of the hunters hiking in so early right through the feeding area of the deer.
Ryan found a two-point buck bedded in the brush below us. We tried to get Darla in for a shot at this buck.
Ryan and Darla glassing for mule deer.
Dallen and I taking a break hauling the boned out mule deer meat back up the mountain.
Dallen and I taking a hauling the boned out mule deer meat back up the mountain.
Here is a photo showing the entry hole of the 243 WSSM 80g Tipped Triple Shock bullet on Dallen's 2011 mule deer taken at 619 yards. At this distance, the bullet would have been traveling around 2100 fps and still made a pass-through on this mule deer.
Exit hole of the 243 WSSM 80g Tipped Triple Shock bullet on Dallen's 2011 mule deer taken at 619 yards. There is also a very small exit hole about four inches above the tip of the bullet that is in the photo. I didn't find this second hole until I skinned the deer to bone out the meat.
Without hiking around past the hunters that were set up in front of us we decided to try and get as close as we could working our way directly towards the deer down through some small cliffs. When we had made it to the last cliff we were still 500 to 600 yards away from various small bucks that were feeding in and out of maple trees, chaparral and other brush below. If we tried to get any closer we were going to have to scale down through rock slides and thick chaparral brush. The deer would clearly hear and see us and we would also not have any good place to set up and shoot from.
So here I was stuck in a dilemma. I wanted Ryan's daughter to get a buck. I felt pretty comfortable with Dallen taking a shot from this distance and other hunters were closing in on the group of deer below... I really felt we needed to take a shot from here. At 619 yards below us a three-point buck and a two-point were feeding next to each other. With the kids set up on shooting sticks I calculated that we wanted to hold for a 550 shot with the steep angle. That would make approximately 36 inch drop with the bullet Dallen was shooting. I instructed Dallen how high to hold and he sent an 80g Tipped Triple Shock at 3550 fps from a 243 WSSM down to greet the buck. The buck dropped like a ton of bricks. The buck appeared to be completely dead... or was he only just shocked? Then after a few seconds up comes the bucks head and he tries to get up but his spine was clearly broke. We watched him crawl into the brush and then decide to head down to try and get a closer shot at some of the other bucks for Ryan's daughter.
The deer weren't spooked that much as we started to work our way down through the thick chaparral and rock slides. On the way down the other hunters had finally moved around into shooting distance and a barrage of lead started to rain down into the canyon. On a couple of occasions we set up on the way down hoping that our young female hunter could get a buck, but alas it wasn't to be. She was a trooper hiking down in and out of a very steep canyon, a canyon I'm sure few ladies have ever ventured into.
Surprisingly when we got to the downed buck, probably a full hour later, he was still alive and required a finishing shot to the neck.
Upon inspection, Dallen's shot placement was great with a double lung shot just off the back edge of the shoulder blades. The bullet at 619 yards would have been traveling at 2100 fps and it had complete penetration out the opposite shoulder. How had the buck lived so long with clearly a lung shot? How had the spine been broken? Upon skinning the deer to bone it out the mystery of the spine being severed was revealed. The bullet upon entry had hit a rib and exploded a larger sized entry hole than the exit hole. This caused a "malfunction" in the bullet and a pedal of the bullet came off sending it angling up through the spine, leaving a very small second exit wound out the opposite side.
Sometimes bullets do weird things and I am grateful this time that the Triple Shock actually came apart or this buck may have been a lot harder to recover. I actually wish the Triple Shock bullets would lose their pedals upon impact giving much more damage with multiple bullet fragments flying around inside the chest cavity.
Similarly, because Triple Shocks from my 270 WSM have not performed well at times with direct vital zone shots I have switched to 140g Accubond bullets in my 270 WSM to be able to be more effective at taking down big game, especially at longer ranges. In the case with such a small diameter and weight of bullet that the 243 WSSM offers I choose the harder better penetrating Tipped Triple Shock. This small 80g Tipped Triple Shock bullet will not disintegrate on mule deer and elk at close range, like other .243 bullets do, and this bullet does perform fairly well at longer ranges.
In the rush to get down the mountain to hunt I left my camera at the truck. Luckily Ryan had his camera.
After a few photos with Ryan's camera (thanks Ryan!) we loaded up the packs with the boned out meat and up the mountain, we went.
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Dallen hunting in the snowstorm on opening morning of the 2011 Utah rifle elk hunt.
I had high hopes of taken my oldest son Dallen back into the area I had hunted during the archery season. I had a couple of bulls patterned pretty well and I didn't think anyone would bump them out of the area because of the remoteness of the location. I also hoped that we could find the young 4x5 bull that I stuck an arrow into below the spine and above the lungs during my archery hunt. The shot has haunted me and I kind of hoped to find the bull alive and well and possibly have Dallen take him so I could dissect exactly where the arrow struck the bull etc.
Well as luck would have it the day before the opener of the season a whopper of a snowstorm moved into Northern Utah. It dropped a lot of snow in the high elevations. Well, this would push the elk out of this high country and it would also make the jeep trail into the area inaccessible. In most cases, I really like the snow to hunt with but in this case, the snow was not good.
Our tent collapsed from the snow while out hunting elk on the opening morning.
With the snow, we decided to head back to the area in the Uinta mountains where we elk hunted the previous year. We made the three-hour drive the day before the opener and set up the tent in the snow near one of the trailheads that lead to the area we wanted to hunt. All that night I could hear the snow falling on the tent and I would knock it off to keep the tent from collapsing on us.
The next morning we set out early in the dark through the snow and ongoing storm. With the conditions the way they were I got a little messed up in the direction that I wanted to head. As it got light we corrected our course and started slowly working our way around a park with burnt-out timber to our back and side. All the time a moderate amount of snow was falling.
After about a half-hour I looked back to the burnt timber and spotted a herd of elk that was slipping right past us at about 60 yards. I quickly noticed that there looked to be two four-point bulls in this small group of elk. As I got Dallen's attention I also got the attention of the elk and they started to clear the area at a faster pace.
Can't find your snow gaiters? I found that a little duct tape works pretty darn well at keeping the snow out.
We can laugh about it now but in the excitement Dallen fell apart so to speak, buck fever might be the correct term. Once he had his heavy gloves off he short stroked a cartridge that didn't want to feed well (I have since tweaked the magazine so this shouldn't happen ever again) then he pulled the bolt all the way back which in turn placed the bolt behind a second cartridge in the magazine. I quickly cleared the jam and handed him the rifle. I then hear, "Dad the gun won't shoot." I look back at the rifle and somehow the bolt handle was lifted up. I shut the bolt on the rifle and was expecting to hear a bang... "Dad! I can't see through the scope!" I quickly wipe off the scope lenses. By this time the elk had made it over a rise and out of sight.
He is young and I remember a few missed opportunities in my youth that can be chalked up to lack of experience and buck fever. But now that the season is over we can laugh a little about the experience and know that he will be better mentally prepared in future hunting encounters.
The mountain was a winter wonderland that day. It was a really beautiful sight to see. When we were off the trail there were somewhere near eighteen inches of snow that we had to push through.
Here a photo of my Montero at sunrise as we are preparing to go glass for mule deer.
We had no trouble in finding many small bucks but larger ones just weren't showing up anywhere.
Weston with his 2011 mule deer taken with a buck/bull combo tag.
Hiking the boned out buck up and out of the canyon.
With Dallen in school, my brother asked if I could help him with getting a mule deer during the week. He had drawn the buck/bull combo tag. This allowed him to hunt mule deer during the rifle elk hunt. I had the tag in 2010 and took a pretty nice buck on the last day... if only he hadn't broken his antler.
After the snowstorm ended on Saturday things really started to warm back up. By mid-week we headed up the mountain hoping to hunt the general area that I had during the muzzleloader season. Once we got to the high country we found that even with chains my old Montero couldn't make it through the remaining snow. We would have to improvise and hunt in some different canyons than I had planned.
The next morning we were out on a ridge glassing. It didn't take us long to start finding deer. We glassed many a deer and quite a few bucks but we only found one four-point and a young one at that. He looked to be almost the exact twin to the buck I took during the muzzleloader season. We decide to pass on him and spent the afternoon napping and the evening glassing again but only more small bucks could be found.
That night Weston decided that if the small four-point was in the area again he would take him. Early the next morning we were out glassing the area again. It didn't take us long to find the buck again. We slipped around to some cliffs to take the shot. The buck was at 401 yards and Weston dropped a 140g Accubond from his A-Bolt 270 WSM right through the guts, oops! He said he wasn't as steady as he would have liked to have been when he pulled the trigger. I was on the spotting scope and quickly got my brother back on the buck again. This time the buck was at 450 yards facing away from us offering a great butt shot. Weston made a prefect shot right past the side of his butt and into the front shoulder and down the buck went.
After a few pictures out came the knives and we spent the rest of the day boning out the meat and hiking it back up the mountain.
For the second weekend of the elk hunt, Weston was able to join Dallen and I. We headed back to the same area in the Uinta mountains that we hunted the opening weekend. Once there it was amazing the change had taken place in six days. The snow was gone! Every last flake, gone.
Saturday morning we hiked back into the area we hunted the first weekend. This time we were able to cover and lot more ground with the snow gone. As I was afraid the elk had pretty much cleared out of the area. We found a few fresh tracks but that was it.
The season ended on the following Thursday and as luck would have it Dallen had the day off from school. With the warmer temps, we had been having I figured that we could make it back into the area I had archery hunted.
We headed up Wednesday night and were able to drive back into the area. We slept in the front seats of the Montero as we could not find any suitable place to set up the tent in the rocks at the end of the jeep trail we parked along.
Early the next morning we were scaling down the boulder slides and rough terrain to get to where I wanted to be before shooting light. I wanted to slip over a saddle and be waiting for it to get light as we watched out across a small bowl that was formed in the canyon. The elk like to feed out in the bowl before heading into the pines to bed for the day and we had high hopes of catching them there.
Sunrise in the burnt timber elk hunting the Uinta mountains.
As we crested the ridgeline and sat down the stampede began. We could hear elk vacating the area. No, no, no, NO!!! This can't be happening. The elk are never up near this saddle. It was about twenty minutes before shooting light and I pulled out the binoculars. There was just enough light for me to make out the figures of a bunch of elk out in the bowl, but they weren't feeding, they were headed out. I could see two elk that looked to be fairly large bulls but again the light was just a little to dark to tell positively if they were bulls let alone how big.
As the elk neared the opposite ridgeline in the canyon we were in a bull gave of a small bugle that perked Dallen up a little. In the light we were able to watch 4 cows go over the ridge and we chased after them to no avail. In the light we also started looking at the ground around us in and near the saddle and it was covered with fresh elk tracks. We had walked right into the middle of them in the dark.
I felt pretty bummed for Dallen. We could have been in the perfect position for him to get a bull if we had slowed our pace in getting to the area by about twenty minutes.
We are going to have to chalk this elk season up to plenty of lessons learned for both me and Dallen.
Smiling even after spooking the elk in the dark on the last day of the hunt.
Dallen hunting in the pines on the last day of the elk hunt.
Above are a couple of panorama photos I took when we were hunting in the Uinta mountains.
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Here are a couple of bucks I watched a couple of times before the muzzleloader hunt. These bucks would require a very hard hike up and over a mountain and other planets to align to be able to get them. I decided the best buck in this group of bucks (4-5 bucks) I watched was not big enough to try and get... this year.
This year for mule deer I was using my muzzleloader. This was going to be my first hunt using my Nikon Buckmaster 1x20 rifle scope. I had been on the range and really like using the scope over open sights and I was looking forward to trying it out on a mule deer.
For this hunt, I decided to pack in three to four miles along a single-track trail and camp near a spring where I could use my water filter to get clean drinking water.
Once in the area, I would hike out and along ridges and glass for a buck that I would like to go after to put my tag on.
Right after taking the buck Coby, another hunter snapped this photo of me with my CVA Firebolt muzzleloader with Nikon 1x20 scope. Later that day it dawned on me that he had to of been watching the bucks before I came around the ridge. I hope I didn't mess him up in taking the buck himself... that is if he wanted to take this young buck.
I had a few days off for the hunt and had some heavy demands with work so I was hoping I could get the job over fairly quickly so that I could get back to work. I also knew that I would probably shoot a smaller buck than I wanted if the opportunity arose because I didn't have much time to hunt.
My young 2011 Mule deer buck. I took the shot at 175 yards away from the cliffs right above the tip of the muzzleloader barrel.
The first evening I glassed some does and a small buck before setting up camp. The next morning I was up early out glassing the mountain for any bucks with decent antlers. At this stage in my life, I still love pulling the trigger but like to try to get a buck in the 4+ year old maturity range if possible. After watching a few small bucks feeding their way down one canyon I decided to cross-over the ridge and glass the next canyon. After watching a few does I worked my way around to some cliffs and peaked over... and staring right at me below the cliff was a small two-point buck. He could only see my face and hat so I slowly ducked back behind the cliff and slowly started looking around below the cliff and found another buck, a larger two-year-old two-point that was feeding around some cliffs further down the ridge. I figured there might be more bucks around the cliffs that I could not see so I slipped back around the ridge and down to a lower cliff hoping to catch the group of bucks going around below me.
After packing the meat in my pack back up to my base camp I hung the meat in the shade to help it cool. Here you can see my homemade canvas meat bags with all the boned out meat in them. I have found that boning out meat and placing it in the breathable canvas meat bags has always bought me enough time to get an animal off the mountain before the meat spoils.
As I got around to the next cliff I realized that it wasn't quite as close as I hoped to get just as bucks started swinging around through a fifty-yard opening below me. I pulled up my range finder and ranged 154 yards to where they were coming out then I switched to my binoculars. Two-point, two-point, larger two-point... four-point. I took a quick assessment that he wasn't very big but that he had pretty even forks. I didn't have much time before they were going to go around the ridge and out of view so I made note that he was now the second to last buck as they filtered around the slope below and I pulled up my muzzleloader. I laid up against the cliff to get a steady rest with my muzzleloader hanging over the edge. From my time on the range I felt very comfortable out to 200 yards and for this steep downhill shot, I held for what I figured a 150-yard shot as the buck had moved further away than where I had first ranged (actual range was 175 yards that I verified after the shot) and he stopped one last time before he crossed around the ridge below. As he came to a stop I squeezed off the trigger and watched him topple over and roll down the mountain for a good forty yards before coming to a stop.
After a few pictures, I boned him out and put all the meat into my homemade canvas meat bags placed them in my internal frame pack. I packed all the meat straight up a wickedly steep canyon and back around to my base camp.
Once at camp I hung the meat in the shade and rested for a little while. After drinking plenty of water and eating some snacks I loaded up with the deer and the rest of my gear and off along the trail I headed, coming out extra heavy.
I was really pleased with the performance I received from both my Nikon 1x20 scope and the Powerbelt 295g bullets. The scope is a pleasure to shot compared to having open sights. The 295g Powerbelt just flat out canned this buck with a high shoulder shot.
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