First off... Huge thanks to all of you that offered words of encouragement, ideas of where to go, gps coordinates of your super secret spots, etc. Definitely helped us both to keep the positive attitude that is required to be successful.
Today we decided to hit Carly Knoll right at first light, then head off into Timber mtn and glass off the top of the whites. We figured and hopes with it being Tuesday, that there would be fewer people at Carly Knoll. I was wrong lol. We stopped for a few minutes right at legal light, saw 2 pretty nice bucks, and just as it was getting light enough to see what they were, I start noticing the orange dots that already out in the chained areas. Even if we had wanted to shoot one of these bucks, no way we could have done it safely. So, off we go!
We got to our first glassing spot, which I'm sure many of you have been to before. It looks down on the west end of Nephis pasture. We spent 2.5 hours there, and only could pick up 3 small bucks, and one doe. By now it's about 10 something AM. We had planned to spend all day out there just exploring and looking for a good spot for the evening hunt. Next spot up is another glassing locations that looks off the whites, down into long canyon.
Just as we are about to the end of the road, I notice out of the corner of my eye, an oak brush limb swinging back and forth. Almost no wind, so something had to have just run through there, towards the drop off. We pull up to the spot, hop out and quickly walk to where we can see down the hill. Immediately with my bare eyes, at over 300 yards away, I can see a big old buck hurrying down the sandy ridge. Throw the binos up, and I know instantly this is the one we've been waiting for. All I see is tall, dark horns with awesome mass. Don't even know or care how many points he has.
Lauren is right there with me, rifle in hand. Open up the bipod, prone out, I call out the range, she dials and praise heaven above, he stops! He knows we are there, but not exactly where. As he tries to figure that out, we have just enough to time for a shot. He's quartering away a bit, perfect shot opportunity. BOOM! WHAP! I see him hunch, and run over the hill out of sight. We go over the shot, she tells me she was steady, level, and held center chest. I've hunted with her enough to know what that means!
We drop all our unnecessary gear and head on down. Got cliffed out halfway, had to go back up and around the other side, found a safe way down by following the FREEWAY of deer tracks in the sand. She spotted him first, that was the teaser pic I posted
When we set out for this hunt we had a couple goals. One was to experience the pauns desert style hunting. Sand, cliffs, yuccas, the works. The other was to kill a buck, we used terms like "special" "unique" "something we can't kill at the normal place" We had no goal of score, width, number of points, etc. We were able to accomplish all those goals today!
Definitely mixed emotions. Super grateful for the experience we had, and the awesome buck we took. But, sad that it's over and back to the real world. So, any of you that draw this tag next year, and need a helper, I'm your huckleberry as they say!
Now that the rambling is done, pics.