This past September, I was able to harvest the mule deer of my dreams on public land unguided. I began hunting with my dad while I was still in a car seat. He took me with him on countless hunts, and there was never a dull moment. My dad fueled my passion for hunting at a very young age. Needless to say, I quickly became obsessed with hunting. I had always had my sights set on monster mule deer. Since the beginning, they sparked my interest because they are stealthy and behave in a covert manner. My dad and I had plenty of conversations around the campfire about how much it would mean to us to be blessed enough to harvest a 200" class mule deer.
Throughout the years hunting with my dad, we have harvested some really nice mule deer, but that 200" class seemed to always be out of my grasp. The passion for hunting mule deer remains in my blood to this day.
My first encounter with this buck was in 2019 while trying to turn up a deer for a friend’s hunt. My dad was scouting a different part of the unit and saw a nice buck right before he bedded. My dad contacted us and pointed us right to him. We relocated the bedded buck, and in our excitement, we threw an aggressive stalk and closed the distance to 11 yards. The buck was bedded in a thick aspen stand with no clear shot. The wind switched on us, and the deer took his alternate exit. We didn’t see any sign of him for the rest of the year.
In 2020, I was fortunate enough to draw the same archery tag that my buddy had the previous year. Once July rolled around, I set up multiple trail cameras in the area where we had encountered the deer the year before. When I went to pull cards, I found pictures of what I believed to be the same buck because of his unusual eyeguards, but this year, he had added an inline and a crab claw split in the beam. Believe it or not, this deer actually dropped to my number two because I was after a giant non-typical buck. After hunting the non-typical for half of my hunt, I turned my focus back to the buck with the unusual eyeguards. Again, while looking for him in the area, I bumped him. Even though he was hitting my cameras once every five days, after I bumped him, he vanished and I did not see him for the rest of my hunt. On day 17, I harvested a beautiful 192" typical buck. Despite the fact that my top two bucks outsmarted me, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome of that hunt.
In 2021, I lucked out again with another archery tag for the same unit. After relocating the buck from the previous year, I knew he would be the deer to invest all my time into. On the second morning of the hunt, I was putting a stalk on the bedded buck when the wind swirled. He winded me and ran the opposite direction. I nocked an arrow and followed him for about 20 yards as he was jumping over fallen logs and running downhill. I knew this would be my only opportunity to harvest this buck after disturbing him out of his bed. He jumped over a big log, stopped, and looked back at me. I drew my bow, put the 30-yard pin on him, and released. My arrow penetrated all the way to the fletchings. As he walked off with my arrow in him, I knew it was a solid hit. Thirty minutes later, I walked 50 yards from where I had last seen him and there he was! I couldn’t believe it had all come together after all the hard work.
My first phone call was to my father in which I told him, “Dad, you need to get here now! I did it, I got him!” He rushed to camp. I will never forget his expression when he walked up to see the deer of our dreams. I had always dreamt of harvesting a truly magnificent mule deer, and having my dad there with me was a memory to last a lifetime. I am truly blessed to have harvested a mule deer of this caliber. He officially scored 207 1/8" gross and 200 4/8" net Pope and Young.
New Mexico Deer
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