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Game: Rocky Mountain Mule Deer Outfitter: http://www.perkinsoutfitters.com/ I've been mule deer hunting in Montana for 21 years. The past 14 years I've hunted with Bill and Mark Perkins of Perkins Outfitters. Bill has several great ranches totaling several hundred square miles. He takes a limited number of hunters and with this much territory over hunting is not an issue. The terrain ranges from the Powder River bottoms to some rugged piney hills. In between you will find open prairies and sage brush cuts and draws. There is an abundance of quality whitetails, mule deer and antelope. This year Bill's son Mark was my guide. Opening morning of the 2011 deer season found us glassing the sage brush and grassy flats trying to locate a big buck heading back up into the hills to bed. We were seeing some nice bucks but nothing I was interested in harvesting. Around 9am we spotted two bucks that had just crossed onto the neighbor's property. They both looked respectable so we got the spotting scope out to take a better look. The back buck had extra points and very good mass. We eventually pegged him as a 7x7. He was a neat buck, one that I would consider harvesting if he wasn't on the neighbor's property. The rest of the day was spent glassing a lot of country. We saw several hundred antelope, 10 coyotes and around 20 mule deer bucks. Our thoughts kept going back to the 7x7 we had spotted in the morning. We decided to get to that area the next morning at sunrise to see if we could find him feeding on our side of the fence. Mark picked me up at the hotel in Miles City at 0 dark 30 and we were off to the ranch. We timed things just right and were only a few miles from where we had spotted the buck as daylight was breaking. We started glassing and within about 30 minutes we spotted our buck over 1000 yards away. The good news was that he was at least a half mile from the property line. We watched him feeding on a grassy flat for about 10 minutes before he wandered out of sight into a deep cut in the terrain. We weren't sure where he was headed, but we could see all of the surrounding area and we were sure he couldn't leave the area without us seeing him. We decided to put a stalk on him and see if we could get a good shot. Our plan was to stay down wind of him and try to get up in the hills above him. We were hoping that we could locate him from a high point and also be able to continue to watch the surrounding area in case he tried to slip by us. Not knowing where he was, we had to be on alert just in case we jumped him. We started our slow walk to get to a better vantage point. I was concerned that we had walked several hundred yards past him when Mark spotted the buck. He was bedded on a cut bank about 200 yards below us. Unfortunately, he wasn’t offering us a good shot. Over the next half hour we made four attempts to get in position to take a good shot while trying not spook the buck. Finally on our fourth attempt we had him broadside in front of us at 132 yards. I got my bi-pods down and peeked over the top of the hill. I slowly got into position to make the shot. As I put the scope on the deer’s vitals he was staring right at me. The thought most of us have had at one time or another jumped into my head, please don’t bolt before I get this shot off. I squeezed the trigger of my 300 win mag and his head hit the ground. There would be no tracking job with this buck. |
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