Hunters: Logan Erickson and Shane Smithmen
Story by: Logan Erickson
Species: Mule Deer
Location: Wyoming
Method: Rifle (300 PRC), horseback backcountry hunt
Our planning and scouting started long before September 12, 2025, but that was the day my brother Mason Erickson, my good friend Shane Smithmen, and I went into the backcountry. We rode three horses and packed four into a camp in an area that we’d spent a lot of our time scouting and archery hunting. We had a nice wall tent setup. During the archery hunt, I had missed the deer of my dreams in a basin close to camp. Now, we were back to see if I could get another chance at “UNO” or some other great bucks that we had seen in the area during the archery season.
That evening, we got to camp in the dark and got everything settled. The next morning, we were in our usual glassing spot thirty minutes before first light. We spotted a few small bucks right away but nothing more than that for the morning glass. We decided to move to the east a few hundred yards. When we did, we bumped a buck we were very familiar with that we had hunted the year before. We called the deer “Flatbed”, due to his giant frame—we figured he was thirty-four-plus inches wide! We watched where he went, and he ended up on a face about 800 yards from where I had missed UNO with my bow. We spent the next two days scouting but never did turn up either of the two bucks.
The season opened on September 15, and we had a plan. We were going to get into position to potentially have a shot at either of those two big bucks if they decided to come out in the spots where we had seen them the most consistently. 3:00 a.m. couldn’t come fast enough. We woke up to the sound of rain pounding against the wall tent. There was no rain in the forecast, but we knew that didn’t mean anything in the high country. We rounded up our best rain gear and saddled up to head to our glassing point well before first light. We got rained on the whole ride over, which made it quite miserable once the wind decided to really pick up come first light.
Glassing as much as I could with the wind in my face, an hour went by. Neither of the big bucks had shown themselves yet. Then I heard a shot just below me where I had missed the big 200-inch buck we called UNO. I panned with my 15x56 Mavens down into the basin and glassed what looked like a wounded deer. I quickly threw the spotter on the deer and watched UNO fall and take his last breath.
My number one deer was dead. Nonetheless, we ended up running into the hunters who had shot the deer, and man, what a stud. We wished the hunter congratulations. I knew Flatbed and some other great bucks in the area were still alive. We decided to watch the face we had last seen him on till dark. My buddy Shane ended up shooting a nice four-point buck right before last light. It had been badly wounded by some other hunters we’d run into earlier in the day who had told us they wounded a deer in a nearby basin and couldn’t find it. The buck ended up in our basin, and as soon as we saw the bullet wound in the side of the deer, Shane made a perfect shot on him and put him down for good.
Hiking up to dress his buck, I knew we were in Flatbed’s territory, and we wouldn’t have shot the deer if he wasn’t wounded. But we had to do what we had to do. The next morning, we took off to a farther basin with less expectation than the morning of the opener. The morning glass turned up some smaller bucks—nothing Mason or I were interested in, so the hunt continued. We glassed from the vantage point till about 1:00 p.m. and figured our best bet for the evening would be to head back to a spot much closer to camp. The spot was out of gun range from anywhere we had been seeing bucks, but it was the best spot to see everything.
On our way back, we dropped below where Shane had killed his buck, and Mason said, “Let’s pull up here around the corner and sneak back to see if we can see anything on that face where we last saw Flatbed.” So that’s what we did. We snuck the horses down and tied them up a couple hundred yards around the knob, out of sight from the shale face.
We crept up to glass the whole face, and Mason spotted Flatbed before I could even get to where we could see. He looked at me, pale as a ghost and as worked up as I’ve ever seen him. He said, “There he is!” I looked through my binos and knew instantly it was Flatbed. I lay down and tried to get settled on him. Mason got on the spotter. The buck already knew something was going on. Shane walked up behind us, very loud, clueless of what was going on. He came up over the skyline, and I remember frantically whisper-yelling at him to “Hold still!” When he saw my face, he did exactly as I said.
I resettled on my 300 PRC and pulled the trigger. I hit a little far back, and the buck ran to a small patch of trees. We’d gotten the shot on video and knew it wasn’t a very good shot—it was in his guts… We waited maybe thirty minutes before deciding my brother would hike around and come down on the buck from behind. If the buck jumped, I was there to shoot it. The trees he’d gone into were in the middle of the shale face, and I was in the best position to see as much of that mountain as possible.
Mason got to about 150 yards above where we’d last seen the buck, and sure enough, he came running out. He got through a couple of openings before I was able to get steady, but my second shot went through the pump house. Down he went!
We were all beside ourselves walking up on this deer. With no ground shrinkage at all, we finally put our hand on Flatbed, a true giant high-country buck. He ended up being thirty-five inches wide, and a rough score on the mountain put him at 193 inches gross. Hard work and time had paid off; even though it was only the second day of rifle season, the day I killed Flatbed was my thirty-second day in the mountains either scouting or hunting deer.
I couldn’t have had this opportunity and killed a dream buck like this without my wife and kids understanding and being supportive of my passion. What a wonderful woman my wife Brynn is! And thank you to my brother Mason and good friend Shane for one of the best deer seasons of my life!
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