Many of you know that I just got back from spending 10 days in "God's Country." I was in North central Wyoming with two of my best friends, my dad and a couple of his buddies. This was probably one of the most rewarding hunts I've been on and I'm eating a $552 deer tag, but it was well worth it. My dad tagged his elk on the 5th of September and had to wait until the 15th to begin his moose hunt. Long story short, no buck mule deer fell to my arrow but 11 nannies (whitetails and mule deer) got whacked. My dad's bull elk Before we arrived my dad talked to his high school football coach that has a bunch of land and a plague of deer. I knew he had a lot from hunting birds and fishing on his property but what we experienced was truly unreal. This place is the Milk River times 10. The landowner told us to shoot as many deer as we could. :D I watched well over 250 deer enter an alfalfa field each evening that we hunted the bottom land. The first night my buddies each tagged a doe and I played surveillance from a nearby hillside to see where the big dogs were coming from. I watched several nice deer enter the field but the first night, but they came in at different places for each of the next few nights. After the first night we went to the local gas station (37 miles away) and purchased a couple additional doe/fawn tags for use on private land only. I set a stool next to an open gate where I had watched a ton of deer pour into the alfalfa. I walked to where I wanted to sit in a fence row and busted 12 does/fawns, seeing what I had the night before I was far from worried about it. Approximately 6 minutes later 3 does and a couple fawns strolled past at 10 yards heading for the easy access to the field. My Slick Trick ventilated the first doe and she went about 20 yards and fell dead in the middle of the 2 track dirt road. 5 minutes later and another 15 deer had fresh green stuff on the brain and the lead doe took an ST at 18ish yards and she crashed about 75 yards later. My doe tags were filled so I headed back to the truck and went back to my perch atop the hill to watch my buds. These photos are of the creek bottom that we were hunting, followed by the two does. We were approximately 13 miles (as the crow flies) from camp and over 4000 ft lower in elevation. Gotta have a "tough guy" pic. :D Extremely warm temps during the day made the high country mule deer hunting a challenge, which is why hunting the lowland was an easy decision. Here are a few photos from the mountains. The second to last morning my buddy and I spotted a bachelor group of 7 mule deer bucks, two of which were studs. We parked the trick and sprinted up an overly steep and long hill to cut the deer off where they would enter the timber. We reached our destination in the midst of wildly bugling bulls. We nocked our arrows and peeked over the tops of the sage brush to see the antlers of our deer at no more than 30 yards. I squatted down and looked to the left as I heard thundering hooves. As you can hear in the video, I stopped counting at 78 and that was before the second heard of elk came over the ridge. The elk had no idea we were there and spooked our deer right out from under us. It was a pretty incredible experience to say the least, I wish I would have had the big video camera for the footage. There were at least four bulls, two of which were 350 class or better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki5pNez1eP4 Little 2 point My buddies last day doe My wirehair pup "Hoyt" enjoying the search for Blue Grouse In the middle of the day we found ourselves in the creeks drifting "Dave's Hoppers" on the end of a fly rod catching rainbows and browns between 10 and 18 inches (pictures to come). On the final morning we went to glass some sage flats to see if we could find any antler sticking out of the brush. We were unsuccessful in that regard but my buddy poked this coyote at 250 yards with his .25-06, he's been skinned and his now in my deep freeze awaiting the tannery.
LMAO Easily the best quote I've heard in years :D Dustin, that was pretty friggin' amazing. What a hunt! Congrats on the daily-double and to the your pops; now, that's living the dream
Good story Dub, Great photos and thank you for sharing them with us. Takes me back there again. Gorgeous and congrats to everyone on the animals.
That was the weakest tough guy pose I've ever seen! :D Congrats to all buddy. Man what beautiful country.
Sometimes when a hunter from this site posts a story with pics, it makes you want to tell the wife were selling out and moving. This is one of those posts. Congrats on an awsome trip man.
Great stuff, looks like you guys all had a blast. The animals, story, and pictures are awesome. Congrats
Thanks guys, my dad is still moose hunting now. I have some pretty decent footage from the 3 days I was with him, I'll post it up soon. Definitely a beautiful place... I'm still trying to figure out just how I ended up in Oklahoma from that!
