September 26 - Day 3
Wyoming Archery Mule Deer Hunt
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Wednesday A.M. This morning I decided to check out another new area I was told about by a local hunter who said there were some good bucks in the area. It was an area with lots of visibility from good vantage points from which I could glass several different meadows. I got there about 20 minutes before shooting light and started glassing, but didn't see any deer right off. I did see a very nice Bull Moose and a cow. There was an "inner" meadow that I couldn't see very well from where I was, so I slowly worked my way down to it to get a glance for deer. I had to work my way through a wet drainage filled with aspens and dead branches, and inevitably as I got close to the meadow I stepped on a dead branch and made a pretty good crack. Immediately I saw deer bounding away. They had been about 50 yards away, right on the edge of the meadow, where I couldn't see them. I saw that there was at least one nice buck. They bounded about 100 yards and then looked back, not certain what had spooked them. They slowly wandered over a hill, and I thought that maybe I could do a successful stalk. They were headed towards some forest. I decided to attempt it, and started on a big circle to get around in front of them and get the wind right. My loop took me about 20 minutes, and for most of that time I tried to stay at least 50 yards into the woods to be sure and stay out of their sight. When I got around to where I thought they should be, I came slowly to the edge of the meadow and found that I had overshot and gone past where I had last seen them. So, I went back into the woods a bit and backtracked until I got to where I thought they should be. I started scanning the meadow looking for them, but they weren't to be found in the meadow. Then I made a mistake. Thinking that they must have seen or smelled me and left, I let my guard down and started walking at normal pace along the edge of the woods. I hadn't gone 15 yards when I noticed swift movement in front of me, in the edge of the woods, and there the deer were. They had already busted me, though, and were on their way out of there. Another stalking lesson learned. Incidentally, I forgot to mention that during my stalk I did get a brief closer look at the biggest buck with my binoculars, and I would estimate him to have about a 25" spread, a real nice 4x4. There was another decent buck in the group, but nowhere near as big as the boss. That was the end of my morning hunt. I'm sorry I don't have more photos from the morning hunt, my computer mangled some of them accidentally (darn machines!). In the photo above, the "inner" meadow in the bottom left hand corner of the pic is where the big buck was this morning. Wednesday P.M.  If you look close, you can see my blind on the right side of the photo  The view from inside my blind This afternoon I set up my ICE Blind on the edge of the meadow where I saw the lone buck feeding yesterday evening. I was hoping he would come out again this evening and feed in the same area. Unfortunately, he did not, and neither did any other deer. I'm not sure what happened, but the fact that cowboys/ranchers with horses and dogs were rounding up cattle out in the open only 1/4 mile away all afternoon and evening might have had something to do with it. I went out this evening expecting to sleep in my blind if I didn't get a shot in the evening, and hopefully catch deer out feeding in the morning without spooking them while walking to my blind in the dark. Check back tomorrow to see what transpired (or didn't) on the morning hunt.
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