I’ve all the time been a giant woods whitetail hunter. I grew up in New England, the place deer looking meant monitoring, nonetheless looking, and roving by way of limitless miles of blended hardwoods and thick pine forests seeking to bag a ridge-running mountain buck. It’s one in every of my biggest passions and what I really like to do.
So after I moved to Southwest Montana in my late 20s and found that the majority of whitetail looking there was remoted to wide-open river bottoms and agricultural fields — moderately than the encompassing snow-capped mountains and rocky canyons that appealed to my big-woods sensibilities — I used to be sorely dissatisfied. But, there was one other critter hiding amongst these picturesque peaks that my native associates assured me would give all of the rugged looking journey I might ever ask for: the mule deer.
Reality be instructed, I wasn’t all that impressed with mule deer after I first noticed them. They got here sedately right down to the river after I was fishing and strolled up the driveway to my cabin like demure livestock, as confident and unafraid because the cows I noticed within the surrounding fields. Whereas I believed they had been lovely and cool-looking animals, they only didn’t spark that very same feeling of thriller and lust for journey that their Japanese whitetail cousins had.
I actually felt like I might miss my beloved big-woods whitetail bucks when looking season rolled round, however I nonetheless determined to provide these cumbersome, floppy-eared deer a strive. Little did I do know that by the point my first Western looking season ended, mule deer would change me as a hunter endlessly.
The Wild Rovers
One of many attention-grabbing issues about mule deer is that they’re a comparatively new species. They developed across the finish of the Ice Age when whitetail deer from what’s now the Japanese U.S. pushed previous melting glaciers to fulfill and breed with the blacktails of the West Coast, making a hybridized species of hardy, adaptable deer that quickly populated the recently-formed Rocky Mountains. This makes the mule deer a purely North American big-game animal that has been formed and cast by the rugged mountains, plains, and deserts of the West.
Due to the harshness of those environments, mule deer have extra to fret about than your common Japanese whitetail. First, they’re consistently harassed by predators like wolves, grizzly bears, and particularly mountain lions. In Colorado, which has the best mule deer inhabitants of any state at roughly 416,000 animals, it’s estimated that lions kill between 100,000 and 200,000 mule deer every year. This will make mule deer extraordinarily cagey and arduous to method, as they’re on fixed alert, making them a major problem for hunters. It additionally makes them an extremely enjoyable and worthy opponent that pushes you and forces you to up your sport.
As mule deer take care of brutal winters, scorching summers, sparse feed, and restricted water sources, they don’t have any alternative however to be roaming foragers. They require massive expanses of wilderness dotted with a number of meals and water sources with a view to survive.
Whitetails have a median dwelling vary of round 300 to 600 acres, the place they are going to typically spend their total lives. Muleys, against this, have each summer season and winter ranges. These deer can journey so far as 50 miles in just some days to maneuver from their summer season to winter grounds. One explicit herd in Wyoming migrates from the Better Yellowstone Ecosystem within the northwest nook of the state all the way in which to southern Wyoming’s Crimson Desert yearly. It’s a 480-mile spherical journey that makes this herd the farthest migrating big-game animal within the Decrease 48.
The results of all this transferring and adapting signifies that you’ll find mule deer in quite a lot of completely different terrains. From mountain forests and grass-rich bottomlands to boulder-strewn canyons and scrubby deserts, wherever with ample forage and water is more likely to maintain a mule deer or two, as long as it’s the precise time for them to be there.
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This final level is crucial, as mule deer looking is usually a sport of “right here as we speak and gone tomorrow.” In some methods, it’s much like chasing migrating waterfowl and even herds of caribou. As soon as you discover them, you typically have a brief window of time to fill your tag. For hunters who like to witness these migrations, and who take pleasure in exploring wild and exquisite nation, the mule deer is the proper beast.
A Hunter’s Deer
There’s a rugged romance to mule deer looking. It reminds a type of way back days earlier than path cams, tree stands, and goal bucks infiltrated our looking tradition — a time when going out and harvesting an animal was executed with a bit know-how, a dependable rifle, and an excellent pair of trainers.
Whereas there are personal ranch outfits and different situations (particularly round agricultural areas) the place it’s potential to sample a single trophy mule deer buck, it’s a wholly completely different story on the huge public land tracts of the West. On public floor, a mule deer you see within the night could also be ten miles away by the subsequent day. Establishing a stand and ready for him to come back again is pointless. To be a profitable DIY mule deer hunter, you sometimes have to hunt the deer out and go after them moderately than sit round and anticipate them to come back to you.
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This will flip muley looking looking right into a drawn-out sport of strolling and exploring, the place you climb up steep mountainsides and crawl over rocks, following tracks and different signal by way of thick brush and dense timber. It typically means climbing deep into the backcountry and learning massive sections of terrain the place you would possibly spend hours and even days simply watching the panorama and taking your alternatives as you discover them. Briefly, it’s all the pieces deer looking ought to be.
Most mule deer aficionados select the spot-and-stalk methodology, the place you climb to the best level you’ll find after which glass the encompassing terrain with binoculars and recognizing scopes looking for an approachable buck. It’s a method of looking that requires immense persistence. You seek for meals sources and bedding areas after which decide aside the hillsides and brushy valleys attempting to make a deer seem earlier than your eyes.
Different mule deer hunters select to nonetheless hunt, monitoring the deer by way of thick timber and snow. This methodology will get on the very core of looking, because it requires you to maneuver slowly and quietly by way of the forest shadows like a predator would, attempting to identify a buck earlier than it spots you and bounds away out of sight and out of attain.
Each strategies require little gear past an excellent pair of trainers, a pointy knife, an correct rifle, and a high quality pack, which is important. As a result of when you hike into good muley territory, there’s an excellent likelihood you might come out heavy.
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Hunters who do their homework and put within the miles will finally get alternatives on mule deer. In contrast to another big-game species, which might have sparse or remoted populations, mule deer herds are usually dense. Their populations do fluctuate, and mule deer have their very own conservation challenges, together with habitat loss, persistent losing illness, and different isuses. However these recurring herd animals will typically return to good meals and water sources 12 months after 12 months, giving educated hunters some possibilities at success.
Trying on the numbers in Montana, Colorado, and Idaho, success charges for mule deer hunters appear comparatively low, averaging round 10 to 18 p.c. The majority of that harvest comes from areas alongside migration routes, nonetheless, the place 25 to 45 p.c of hunters are literally profitable. Outfitters and guides who arrange in these areas, particularly these with personal land connections, can boast consumer success charges between 85 and 98 p.c. This exhibits that after you discover a lonely nook of land with mule deer in it, you’re more likely to discover a variety of them. And that is very true throughout the rut.
Normally occurring between the second and third week of November in most locations, the rut is when mule deer bucks surrender their usually solo existence and start keying in on does. Like whitetails, muley bucks are often separated from does for many of the 12 months, selecting to journey alone or in small bachelor teams. However as soon as the rut begins they usually begin looking for out scorching does, their habits change.
The rut doesn’t essentially make them extra receptive to calls or scents, like whitetails. Nevertheless it does imply that as long as you discover a number of does and hold them in sight, it gained’t be lengthy earlier than a buck comes alongside. Their deal with the doe is usually so intense that they’ll ignore all the pieces else round them — together with hunters — and in the event you can keep away from scaring off his girls, you’ll be able to generally make strikes in plain sight of a rutty mule deer buck with out spooking him off.
It’ll be an excellent buck, too. Even youthful mule deer sport a branched set of antlers and a heavy physique, and after spending a lot time climbing and on the lookout for them, each hard-earned muley buck seems like a trophy.
The Buck Stops Right here
By the final week of my first season looking mule deer, I used to be determined. These cheeky and seemingly un-spookable deer I had seen grazing alongside the roadsides and strolling nonchalantly throughout my entrance garden throughout the summer season had disappeared as soon as autumn rolled round. Of their place was a cautious and flighty animal that appeared to bounce away and vanish into the terrain as quickly as I scrambled after them. It was an intensely irritating expertise because the deer all the time gave the impression to be simply out of my attain.
I had nearly given up when, round final gentle on the final day of the Montana looking season, I glassed a small group of deer feeding in a steep canyon. I grabbed my rifle and crawled up the close to vertical canyon partitions, popping my head over a small crest to see a doe and a pleasant 4X4 buck taking a look at me from 150 yards. Shouldering my rifle, I obtained the crosshairs on the buck’s shoulder and squeezed the set off simply because the deer began to certain away, dropping him in his tracks. As I walked up and held his antlers in my palms, I might inform one thing inside me was completely different.
These days, after I occur throughout a pleasant whitetail buck whereas looking within the West, I often gained’t even increase my gun. Whitetails will all the time maintain a particular place in my coronary heart, however I’m now and endlessly will probably be a muley man.
