My hunt started off in New Mexico a couple of years ago at a Wal-Mart buying an over the counter license for muzzleloader season back when you could still do that. After I got my license I drove to the Lincoln National Forest. After I set up camp I started driving to some areas where I had heard there where some good bucks.   

I was hunting Quebec Leaf River Barren Ground Caribou with Tuttulik Outfitters on the 4,500 square miles of prime migration-route land in the Native Inuit territory. This area runs along the Hudson Bay's East Coast and the Minto Lakes area. This is the main migration route for the Leaf River Caribou herd, estimated at over 650,000 head.   

After doing a short pre hunt interview, we settled in for the evening. At about 3:30, I decided to hit the rattling bag. I rattled for a minute or two and twenty minutes went by with nothing happening. At about 4:00 I decided to hit the rattling bag again. About ten minutes after my rattling sequence, I heard my cameraman say "Buck", "Buck". I turned my head trying to locate the buck. Just forty yards out, I picked up movement.   

The buck came much later in the day. We walked several miles and viewed many potential shooter bucks. I was really trying to hold out for an exceptional buck. Of course, I was hunting with "Old Reliable", my favorite Ruger M77 chambered for the flat shooting 7mm Remington mag (although the bow was in the truck with me and ready to go for any opportunity which may have arisen).   

While watching the doe, I heard something making noise in the leaves behind me. I just figured it was probably a squirrel, but then I heard it again. I turned around slowly and there stood the most beauitful deer I had ever seen. He was a big 8 point buck. At this point my nerves were really getting bad. He stopped 30 yards away broadside.   

I parked the truck and we began our hike up towards the top of the mountain in the dark. I suddenly stopped 200 yards from the truck. I thought that I had heard a bugle echoing in the canyon below. After a few minutes standing there listening, I heard 3 more bugles in different directions. Mark asked me if they were elk bugling, because he and Rob had never heard a bugle before.   

In the bottom of the canyon, we hit a fence that we had to cross. We did so as quietly as we could. Just over the fence I heard a very unmistakable sound, the sound of horns rattling. The sound was very close and very loud. We started looking around, and only 50 yards from where we were standing, two behemoths came crashing through the mesquite, horns locked and noses to the ground. Between my Burris 4.5X14 scope and Charlie’s Leupold binoculars, we could see horns everywhere. But, which horns went with which deer – which was the bigger buck?   

He took off when he saw us following 2 does down a long fenceline. Unbelieveably, we kept following him slowly and got around him so he was between us and the fenceline that the does had gone under. He couldn't follow though, his rack was too big to get under the fence, and he didn't want to jump it.   

My major mission was to get my wife a buck so when he popped up I told her "shoot him, shoot him" but I think at that point she was experiencing her first taste of buck fever. I cranked a shell in and found him in my scope and at that point I realized the caliber of this buck. I knew he was a monster.