Mule deer... what an amazing creature. It was the third day of the season and I had missed the second, because I was scheduled to have windows put in my house. So the third day I returned to my hunt area with my wife.

After getting a very late start, we set out on a four wheeler and found a small patch of cedar trees where we began to look for sign. A light rain from the night before made the newer tracks apparent. I found a fresh buck track pretty quickly. I continued in the general direction of the track and ran into another track heading up the same small canyon where I had guessed the the first buck had gone. My initial assumtion was there were two bucks. We didn't walk more than 50 yards and kicked out a big old doe (the second track).

We continued on and not more than 80 yards from where we jumped the doe, this bad boy jumped up. 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.

I fired and missed while he was on the run and then he made the fatal mistake of stopping and looking back. The rest is history. I got my buck. We made our way up to him and guessed the shot at 90 yards. I turned him over and then saw the width he had. I put the barrel of that old rifle up to him, which has a 28.25 inch barrel and the antlers went a good 2 inches past the end of the barrel. I almost did a back flip on the side of the hill.

An interesting part of this story is why I was using this old russian rifle. On the first day of the hunt I slid down a muddy hill and broke the scope on my .270 Weatherby mag. Funny how things work out. Oh and where I downed this deer was only 160 yards off the main two track road. I still wonder to this day how many people he watched drive right by him.