Archery and Muzzleloader Reports

Wow! Time flies these days. I haven't been very good at keeping up on this thing, so this entry will cover a lot of stuff. The hunts once again brought many new experiences and stories to tell. First, the archery hunt: Z, Farva, and myself didn't make it out until the last week of the archery hunt. This was planned because we wanted to stay away from people as much as possible. We headed down to Enterprise for our second year in the south. Once again the number of big deer we saw blew me away. We chased several nice bucks and flung a few arrows, but unfortunately-none hit their target. We learned once again how difficult the archery hunt is, especially in a desert environment. We had a great time, but I will say that the mid-day heat was nearly unbearable and forced us into heading home a day early. With that, we set our sites on the muzzleloader which was only a couple of weeks away. We arrived late on a Wednesday night and got about 3 hours of sleep before dragging ourselves out of bed. This time Dixon was with us so we split iup into twos. Z and I headed to our normal spotting location and upon reaching the top were immediately seeing deer. We spotted several bucks, but only one kept out attention. He was a decent 4 point that was probably 23 in. wide. We kept our eye on him until our attention was grabbed by a much nicer prize. To our right we spotted several bucks that we believe were the same ones we went after on the archery hunt. Included in the bunch were 3 nice bucks all pushing between 25-27 in. wide. We decided to be very patient and put these deer to bed, but once again things didn't go as planned. Four hunters that had no idea the deer were there, meandered right up the canyon and spooked the large bucks. Needless to say, we weren't happy. We headed down the mountain to get ready for the night hunt. That night we took horses back to death canyon where I killed a decent 4-point last year. The horse ride was fun but took a toll on all of our bodies. We chased a couple deer out of the canyon, but never got close to or saw one worth shooting. The good thing was that despite the bad hunting that night, we had a great ride. The next day I woke up and headed up to the saddle where I saw the bucks the previous day. Upon reaching the saddle, I spotted a nice 4 point on the skyline. I believe that he was one of the bucks that Z and I had seen the day before. I waited for the buck to go over the ridge and began my sneak. It took me about 2 hours to get to my point of destination. When I got there, I saw a couple of deer feeding, but couldn't find the buck. I waited about 30 minutes before determining that he must have slipped out. I walked up the ridge about 100 yards before turning around only to see my buck running out of the draw I had just been sitting in. I raised up and fired a 200 plus yard desperation shot with no results. That was all the action I saw on Friday. Saturday was a different story. We got up and decided to road hunt until we saw something worth going after. On the other side of the mountain we ran into some nice bucks that Zenger had spotted the night before. Phil and I put the sneak on but ended up spooking them down the canyon to Zenger. He was able to get a shot off at what he thought was the 4 X 5. Unfortunately, the deer that he hit was not the big one. It was a decent 22 in. 3 point. The crazy thing about the shot is that it went through the deer's ear and hit the base of its antler. The deer was stunned. We walked right up to it and it just stood there. After taking a couple of pics, we put the deer out of its misery, quartered it, and hauled it out. It was a fun morning hunt, although Zenger was a little disappointed that he had picked the wrong buck out of the crowd. He was also frustrated that the antler fell off while quartering the deer. Anyway, that was the only deer taken this year, but we had a blast! We also learned a lot more about the area and look forward to getting back down their next year. See the bottom of my blog for a full-size picture!