The WALK-UP.

This walk-up was several years ago in eastern Colorado. I had been able to purchase 2 deer tags from a private landowner for my son and myself. The landowners very good friend, a hunter, also had a tag, and was after this deer that was well scouted and known to the locals. We had been told "hands off" this deer by the landowner as he wanted his pal to drill it, and we had cell phone pictures to identify the buck. Opening morning we were approximately 10 miles away and as luck, sheer luck, no other way to say it, than we were on an elevated knob, (not many knobs in eastern Colorado to get a cell phone signal) and my phone buzzed in my front pocket. It was the landowners friend in a near panic. He was half angry (at himself), upset, and just wanted this deer dead. He had tried and missed from long range. The deer were spooked, the does in the group were wild. So, my phone rang and all i heard was "get your ass over here as fast as you can and kill this thing" before somebody else does.

Away we went. Hustled back across the section we were glassing from, to the pickup, and I gunned it, dust flying, headed to him at a speed far too fast for the gravel.

He was at the intersection he told us to meet him at. He was flustered. The deer were on a 2 mile section that did NOT have any roads across it. There was a pickup down the road glassing the deer but they did NOT have permission on that ground. We did. I pulled off the road in front of them and pulled in to the pasture about 100 yards. The bucks sold out to the south and I told my son to bail out and cut them off. He had a long way to go. I saw a big bodied deer go down in a heap a few hundred yards after they took off. If you have been mule deer hunting as long as I have, over 55 years, you will see this happen on occasion. They are heavy, it's hot, it's morning, and it's strenuous on them to run full tilt so they just hit the deck and lay down. So i headed out after what I thought I saw and my son was off running to try to cut them off. The bucks were in the lead followed by the doe group.

I went probably a third to a half mile and saw some deer heads headed north in the direction they had started south from. I hit the deck. They were peering at me over a slight rise and had seen me but I was down and they couldn't make out what I was. I had nothing to hide behind as you can see in the video As the deer come up to get a better look at me I could see horns, good ones. In a nanosecond I had to decide how I was going to shoot. The grass was too tall to shoot prone, laying on my stomach. I somehow had to swing up on my butt and shoot off my butt, bracing on my knee, trying to stay as small as i could. Tough job given the terrain. Full orange, they took off trotting then running, the buck in the back. I got around, could only shoot at the top half of the deer, the rest of him was behind the hill, and missed. I usually shoot .243's (semi-auto's) and thankfully things worked out. I missed the first shot. I missed the second shot. I missed the third shot. Didn't get excited. Stayed in the scope, believed. At the 4th shot he disappeared. I still am not sure of the distance but it doesn't matter. I guess I could count my steps on the walk up if it was important to me.

It was a beautiful morning. I will post the video below I have of the gentlemen shooting at the buck that had laid down in the grass.  He didn't get up until we all got together to see my buck. Unfortunately he missed again.