Sage Groves Learning to Walk Again
Standing with a dead rest for two hours! I was peering through a Zeiss riflescope on a Cruel .270 brusque magazine padded up and waiting on a mule deer buck. Protruding above the sagebrush flat that'due south dotted with aspen groves are two, 1" antler tips. Bedded is a bays buck hanging out until the evening dinner bell rings. Waiting on him gave me time to flash back to falls by and smart mule deer bucks that would use this terrain and cover to go undetected for many falls.
One of the smartest mule deer I have ever danced with was an old nine-year-old buck with a seven" cheater as big effectually as a large cigar. I spotted the buck while glassing on a lookout man where I could picket miles of sage and aspens groves. At dusk the buck came out of an aspen grove and started to chow downward. Suddenly just before night thirty, over the ridge, gunfire rang throughout the valley. The erstwhile bucks caput went upwards and he started moving down the slope to where heavy saulsberry bushes dotted the landscape.
I watched, equally he would slip downward a 100 yards and and then correspond ten minutes watching his back track. He did this several times before finally laying downwardly in heavy brush. The side by side morn I was on the lookout glassing the area where he had disappeared into but couldn't pick him out. He must accept moved during the dark out of the area! Not giving upward, I glassed in a five-mile radius. Bing-get!
On the afternoon of the last 24-hour interval of the flavor I was glassing four miles from where he had disappeared. There he was feeding in the "Buck Hole" an isolated brushy pocket noted for holding bucks. At 8 years old he had learned how to move around undetected!
Terminal fall establish me on the afternoon of the last day of the season. Hum! Do we see a pattern to my cadet hunting? I was again padded up with my .270 brusque mag on a sage flat within 200 yards of an old buck in the sage hiding from hunters. We had spotted the buck a few hours before lying with his caput flat on the footing, hiding with only his antler tips sticking out of the sage. The fall before I found him hiding out in the aforementioned sage flat. It seems over the years I found in October, these bucks will move out into the sage land to use distance every bit a buffer from danger. And most hunters walk or bulldoze past these buck hidey-holes for more traditional mule deer terrain to hunt.
Flashing back to this concluding autumn chase. That morning Guy, my son, and I were glassing from a favorite lookout man. Existence elevated we could overlook miles of sagebrush flats and aspen groves. In the past, this has paid off many times in locating mature bucks. From this vantage point, in the final 17 years, I've spotted and harvested several trophy bucks. In fact, information technology was mutual to glass up bucks from consecutive falls. And sometimes picket bucks with age become bays quality. So information technology'due south one of my best lookouts to locate a wary onetime buck.
During that morning glassing with spotting scopes, we had picked up several does and a couple immature bucks. All of a sudden, Guy whispered that they were two-miles away is a expert buck in the sagebrush feeding. Inside a few minutes, the morning sun hit the heavy-antlered bucks back and he lay downwardly in the high sagebrush. With cameraman in tow we worked our fashion downwards to inside a few hundred yards of the flat.
The next trick was glassing up the buck in tall sagebrush. For an hour, all of united states were glassing, and glassing picking apart every sagebrush.
Finally, out in front and to the left, protruding above the castor, was two" of os. So at 175 yards now what exercise you do? Walk upwardly closer, whistle to get him up, or wait until the buck gets upwardly to stretch? I know from experience if he spooked he was going to jump upwardly and in ane motion, take off without looking dorsum. So I made the decision to wait while keeping the crosshairs on the tips of those protruding back tines. Sometimes the tips would motility above the sage as the cadet would wait right and left.
Finally, later on three hours! That's right, 3 hours of standing, waiting and peering through that scope! With no indication, he stood up to motion and "crack-pop" one shot and the buck went down. With a closer await at the buck I determined in many falls of hunting the unit, I hadn't seen this heavy-horned buck. At eight years old he definitely lived many falls in the expanse without me detecting him. With nerves of steel y'all can bet he let many hunters walk right by at close range without jumping upward out of his hidey-hole.
When hunting sagebrush and Aspen groves in mid-Oct effort these tactics for locating mature bucks:
- Seek out glassing lookouts where y'all can view a lot of country.
- Beginning glassing well earlier daylight and don't quite until dark xxx.
- Mature bucks will seek comprehend and terrain that most hunters will non hunt. Search out terrain that'southward isolated.
- Patience in glassing day-after-day and remember that nearly units volition concord a few old mature bucks and spending the fourth dimension glassing big sections of terrain will pay off.
- Finally, patience! Once you discover a trophy buck, not pushing the stem is the right tactic! Waiting until the buck gets into position for a well planned stem is crucial. Call back, virtually of the fourth dimension hunters get impatient and endeavour an unworkable stalk.
Keep in mind your seeking out bucks that have at least five years of hunting seasons under their belt. And these greyness ghosts take found ways to use the terrain and cover to make it through the dangers of hunting season undetected. All the same, implementing the above tactics can accomplish finding terrain that holds trophy mule deer.
Editor's Note: For more smashing tips and tactics on how to find and harvest bays mule deer in any terrain, be sure to pick up a copy of Mike's volume, Mule Deer Hunting Tactics .
Source: https://blog.eastmans.com/hunting-sageybucks/
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