The year 2020 was without a doubt one of the most difficult anyone could imagine! My personal difficulties came to a head in the fall of 2019. After years of struggling with atrial fibrillation and related breathing difficulties, I decided to remedy these problems with a pacemaker/defibrillator. I did so on January 7, 2020, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, restoring my ability to have the stamina to hunt, which is my passion!
I celebrated my 71st birthday in December. My wife, Linda, is a few years behind me. She is my hunting partner and loves it nearly as much as I do. She is always there to help out in any way she can. She will drive, help set up camp, and even pack game across the rugged terrain. We have enjoyed years of hunting out of our home state of Texas as well as Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico, and we have hunted in three countries in Africa for Plains game. Wherever we go, we always take in the beauty, getting off the side roads and exploring. We have made some great friends everywhere we go. We like to call each trip our next adventure.
I always put in for the draw hunts in Colorado and New Mexico. About the time COVID started, after checking our draw results, we both drew deer tags in Colorado for mule deer. I also drew an antelope and a deer tag in New Mexico. The antelope hunt was in August in New Mexico. We ran into some problems with a place to stay, but Linda and I were not going home without a buck. On the second day with much scouting by us both, I shot a really nice 15" buck.
Next came the deer hunts in Northwest Colorado and in Western New Mexico. We were now faced with another problem. The dates of the hunts were back-to-back. We decided to double the hunts into one continuous trip. We had a little private cabin to stay in in Colorado, but we were going to have to camp in New Mexico. That meant carrying enough gear for two different setups at one time. Talk about an adventure in the making!
The night we arrived at our hunting destination, the bottom fell out of the clouds and dumped a considerable amount of snow. We were now given another challenge, but one that made for some fun hunting in the open country. The deer were on the move, with Linda making a fine shot on her first mulie the second morning out not too much past dawn. When we got back to the cabin, I placed the quarters we had harvested into a five cubic feet chest freezer in the front of my cargo trailer. I knew we were combining two hunting trips and needed to keep our meat frozen, so I placed my chest freezer in the front of my cargo trailer and brought a generator with us. This was the only way to take care of the meat until we got home. Believe you me, it’s not much fun having to thaw out that meat and cut it up.
We had seen a lot of nice bucks, but I just couldn’t get one to stand long enough for a shot. My turn came on the third afternoon. One of the biggest bucks we had seen ran out in front of us just before dark, and I dropped him at a couple hundred yards. Linda and I had just enough daylight left to repeat the harvesting process we did on hers. While caping, the deep white snow and the iced mountains presented themselves breathtakingly surrounded by a beautiful sunset. Linda looked off toward the sun and then turned and told me to look at the sky. Not only was the sky painted with the most awesome colors, but there above the clouds and horizon appeared a crimson cross! We were so in awe of what we had witnessed and knew at that moment that God was watching over us. We would not have experienced this memorable hunt and vision if not for our good friend and his wife allowing us to hunt on his property. We are blessed to have them as friends and thank them for this opportunity.
To make the New Mexico hunt, we had to pack everything up the next day, situating it all for a long trip. Trying to avoid the higher mountain passes in Southern Colorado, we cut over into Utah all the way down to Blanding and then back into Colorado, crossing into New Mexico. We made it to Gallup, New Mexico dead tired but still getting up early to travel to the Gila.
We made it to the Gila with barely enough time to get our tent set up. We got it done right before nightfall. It had turned cold and windy that evening, but we were able to have a campfire and so began our New Mexico hunt. The next several days, we went from seeing a lot of deer to seeing no deer at all, so we did what we always do, we decided to make the most of our adventure. Driving familiar roads from past hunts, we continued to scout and enjoy the beautiful scenery. At one point, we stopped to hike around and gather some firewood, and Linda found a beautiful white seashell under a bunch of pine needles. She took it as a sign of something good to come.
As we were driving along in the middle of the day, we saw a nice buck getting a drink in a little creek on the side of the road, giving me a chance to get a shot. I am mobility impaired, which means I am allowed to take a shot from an unimproved road like the one we were on. Unfortunately, as I was going to take the shot, he darted up the mountain. I was disappointed as I thought I was not going to get another opportunity. Suddenly, about a quarter mile down the road, Linda yelled that another nice mulie was running across the road out of the brush toward the mountainside. I grabbed my rifle with no time to spare and took the shot. He was headed up the mountainside when I shot, so we had to climb to drag him downhill. It was no easy task! When I got him down with Linda’s help, I could see how impressive he was. Linda said, “I knew when I found that shell that you would get a nice mulie!” I thought it was a sign, and I felt luck had shined on us again.
Now we had to get this big guy in the back of the truck, which was not going to be easy. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a game warden’s truck pulled up. This chance meeting made the adventure even more special. The young warden was the head warden over several hunting units there and was one of the nicest young men you could imagine. He helped me tag the deer correctly and then he got up in the back of my pickup, pulling the hefty buck in for us. What a stroke of luck to have this kind of help! Later as we thanked him and drove off, he pulled up behind us, signaling us to pull over. Linda and I looked at each other and wondered what was going on. He asked us if we were going to mount the deer, and I told him no. He said he had been trying to get a full deer hide for a poaching decoy for years and asked us if he helped us skin him out if he could he have the hide for a full body mount. I couldn’t believe the luck! I told him I would be proud to donate the hide, so he followed us 20 miles back to camp and skinned the buck out completely. I was even able to donate part of the meat from this animal to a local family in need, filling out all the proper paperwork at that time. We had plenty of meat, and we were so glad this all worked out. We need more people like him in this world. It would be a much better place.
The quarters we had left had to be put in a big ice chest because the freezer was stuffed full of meat. God definitely was with us all the way as we hunted and adventured through the COVID pandemic of 2020, and the hunt and memories will be added to those yet to come. As Linda and I say, “To the next hunt! To the next adventure!” Making it home without a problem made this a very special adventure after traveling 3,660 miles, definitely “Miles for Mulies!”
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