Day 5 – After hanging three nice bucks that first day, we woke up to warmer temps the next morning that kept down the deer movement.  At about 11 a.m., a cold front blew in that brought on a steady diet of high winds, rain and snow showers that kept us out of the mountains and close to camp for the next several days.  Fortunately, there are a few roads that we can hunt no matter how bad the weather gets, but they get old quick when you go up and down them all day long.

Ahead of a snowstorm that was supposed to hit on Friday, dad & I decided to make the 6 hour drive home and come back when the hunting got better, which would turn out to be the following Monday. 

Day 10 – We arrived back in camp in the early afternoon after passing several mule deer bucks out on the wheat patch again on the way in.  A cold & misty fog blanketed most of the Trans-Pecos region.  It was all that remained of the blowing snow that hit three days ago, but it was supposed to be gone by tomorrow. 

Waiting for us in camp were the last two hunters in our group, Todd & Lloyd, and Jim (the guy who took that big whitetail).  It was almost three o’clock, and they were just about to head out to go corn some roads so I grabbed my rifle and fell in with them.  I was ready to get huntin’ again.

A lot had changed in just four days.  The mule deer rut had turned on and there were suddenly more bucks in the high flats around camp.  When the rut hits, the bigger bucks come up from the low country to cruise for does that are on the flats.  That meant that it could happen any minute. 

In the cold fog, deer were up and moving early.  It’s one of my favorite times to hunt.  And at the end of the first high flat where we usually string corn along the road for whitetail, we saw a small buck cross the road where it bends around the corner.  When we got around there, we spotted a big 8 point whitetail standing under a mesquite tree near the road.  I’d take a shot at him if I could get it!  As soon as we stopped, though, he trotted off, dropping down into the cover below.  Immediately, Jim turned the truck around to back-track down the road we’d just come down.  It looked like he was headed that way.

The buck was already 400 yards away in the middle of the road when we came back around the bend, running away.  He didn’t care about us either.  He had his nose to the ground trailing a doe.  Before I could get my gun out, he veered off the dirt road, crossed the greasewood flat to our left and vanished.  We’d never see him again for the rest of the hunt.

About a half an hour later, we were cruising slowly through a thick cedar flat just northeast of where we lost the whitetail, passing by an opening where an old windmill used to pump water into a shallow man-made reservoir.  A barbed-wire fence ran through the middle of it, stopping at a swinging gate that was stuck in the open position before turning to goat wire that disappeared into the greasewood to the east.  Thick cedars came down a slope to our right, turning into a mix of mesquite trees and greasewoods as Jim steered around the gate and continued along the fence.

A hundred and fifty yards down, we spotted a muley doe in the brush on the other side of the wire.  She was pretty close, and when she took a step, her whole body came into view.  About that time, I noticed another outline just behind the doe, then a thick set of antlers as a good buck cocked his head back and lip-curled right there in front of us.  What a sight!  The buck was a big, wide 8 point mule deer.  He didn’t even know we were there yet.  I really don’t think he cared either.  He was stuck on that doe and he was going wherever she was, which was right toward us!

The doe cleared the trees just twenty yards behind the truck, heading off down the fence toward the open gate.  The buck came out right behind.  As he gave us one defiant glance before turning his wide, chocolate-stained rack back to his doe, I’d already decided to take a shot at him if I could get it. 

“She’s gonna go through the gate,” Lloyd said from the back while Jim turned around and got me pointed in the right direction.  “He’s gonna follow her through that gate.”

Sure enough, she went through and was gone.  When the buck approached, I had my 7mm mag on a dead rest and trained right at the small gap between the end of the gate and the cedar thicket about five steps away.  Looking up from the scope, I saw him cross.  He came through at a steady walk.  I picked his body up when he cleared the gate and fired as soon as his body filled it.  He bucked and was gone!

When the doe came running back across a minute later, we knew the buck was down.  We found him twenty yards past the gate.