I had a shoulder arthritic flair-up this week and was unable even to take off my jacket let alone drag a deer. BUT there are tags to fill. I got some steroids from the walk-in and planned a trip. My wonderful son said he would love to come and help my drag. I was looking to fill a spc Mule deer doe tag. It's in a hard unit to hunt with very little access to public land. We knew a spot that is right along the road but you can't see the HUGE drainage from the road and it was close to a mile walk in only to GET to where you start to hunt. It's always full of does looking for a hiding place, seldom bucks for whatever reason. We walked the drainage along the top peeking down into the brakes as we go, keeping off the skyline. At the very last break coming down, we spotted 4 deer travailing into bed down for the morning after all night of feeding, Full Moon. They did not see us I set up my son was on the range finder reading me off the yardage, there are no fences marking the public land and private so he was also on the on X. As soon as we knew they were on public it was 250 yards, I was dialing up the yardage on the Leopold. They still had no idea we were high above them bearing down on them. It looked like they were not going to stop. All this only takes moments The boy lets out a coyote stopping "Bark". It a few deer steps for the sound to get to them, and when it did they stopped and snapped their Heads and looked right at us as they stopped. I was held tight on the larger buck he stopped in mid-step. It was quartered away from us hard, I aimed at where the off-shoulder should be, which meant the bullet inters just in front of his on-side hip. It came out in the off-side shoulder armpit. Down it went. I did not say there was 5" of Icey snow on the steep slope did I? Down he went alright, to the bottom of the drainage. DANG. If it was not for my son I would have had to bring him out by the steak. He drug it up and out to the truck as I carried the stuff. Hammer 200 gr sledgehammer at 3200 fps worked well. It did not hit the guts because of my elevation over the deer I guess. It turned the liver, lungs, and heart into a well-blended blood smoothy.
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