My SD Muley Rifle Hunting Adventure

WOW….. is all I can say. This Thanksgiving weekend I spent my time out in Western SD near Hot Springs chasing Muleys, Whitetails and spending some great time with the brand new inlaws. If you have never done a Western Hunt, you are missing out and need to put it on your list to do. My 3 day Hunt out there was by far the best hunt I have ever been on. The scenery is unreal as we hunted in the Black Hills. For this hunt I joined Stacie’s brothers and Dad on their land and some other pieces they have permission to hunt on. The style of hunting we mainly did was Still Hunting with Spot and Stalk mixed in. We basically got out at first light and were moving pretty much the whole day. We saw deer all day long and made countless spot and stalks on Muley and Whitetail deer. Man, now that is what you call hunting. Using the terrain in your favor and good ol’ fashion belly crawling to get into position for a closer look or shot opportunities.

The first morning we hunted was turkey day and Tyler and I sat at the base of the big hill behind Stacie’s parents house. It was quite cold compared to the weather I have been hunting in the past few weeks. The temp gauge showed a chilly 11 degrees that morning, BBBRRRRR. The relatively light wind felt mighty cold hitting the skin. Once it got light enough we started our climb up the hill side. The action was a little slow until we completed our climb and looked over the other side of the ridge. That is when we started to see some Muley activity. We saw a decent western muley 3×3 bedded just below us (I say Western because out there Muleys brow tines are not counted.) Besides a rifle, the other very important thing to have when hunting out West is a GOOD pair of optics. As you spend most of your time glassing the hill sides, canyons and valleys for game. My 10×42 Nikon Monarchs ATB suited me just fine. Although carrying a spotting scope in your pack may not be a bad idea either. I chose not to carry mine as I went light, not knowing where we would end up, how far we would go and what type of condition I was in. We glassed below the other ridge as we saw a very good buck chasing does over there and spotted about a dozen muleys. As Tyler was glassing them I went further down our ridge and spotted a very high racked muley bedded down about 70 yards below me. I called Tyler over and we glassed him for a few minutes and found out he was indeed a VERY high Western 2×5 with a kicker of one side. We opted to pass on this very nice, but weird buck being that it was the first morning of our hunt. I have a short video clip of him as he finally spotted us and started his way down the canyon and across the bottom.

Click Here for MULE DEER VIDEO Encounter

We continued our hunt from a top that ridge and met Stacie’s brother Travis half way down the ridge. As we worked our way down the hill side, we spotted a few whitetails on the alpha-pha field below us. So we picked up our pace and tried to intercept them before they got off the field. When we reached the field they had just dipped down into a draw. So we planned a little push to make the deer come back out. The push was successful as we got all 3 deer to come out again, but the does eluded our guns. So it was onto better things……..Turkey Dinner. After a great dinner, we tried another area and the 4 of us (Tyler Travis, Her Dad and I) were out chasing whitetails that evening as we all had doe tags to fill and we hit some different terrain and area that evening. Tyler and I were below and Jack and Travis were above on top of the Bluff, as we were surrounding the deer as they were coming to a field to feed. Tyler and I made a bad decision at sunset, as we had not seen a deer yet, so we climbed the hill only to get busted as we reached the top and all the deer ran off. A bunch of deer were coming down if we had just waited a litle longer, we would have had plenty of deer to see. That made the evening hunt pretty unsuccessful, but I really enjoyed the beautiful sunset and scenery on the edge of the Black Hills that evening, as the nearly full moon was rising in the sky as the sun was setting.

The second morning came and again Tyler and I were paired up and Travis and Jack went another direction as we now were going to another new area. The day started at first light as Tyler and I started our glassing and walking (still hunting) on what I call the prairie land. This area has some cool canyons and draws with grassy prairie tops mixed in. A little different terrain then the hills we hunted the morning before. Again the mercury was quite frigid as the temperature was 8 degrees when we left the house. This area we were hunting on day two held Whitetails, Mule Deer and even Elk, so my excitement was again quite high for what was in store for me that day. It was not too far into the day when Tyler spotted a muley doe through some trees, as we were coming up a draw. After glassing them for awhile and seeing 2 smaller bucks, but knowing there was more deer around the area. we began our stalk on these deer. After a few adjustments and direction changes, we finally found ourselves up on a prairie ridge looking down and within 125 yards of the herd. After glassing them for awhile and not seeing a shooter buck we decided to move on and crossed the top of the grassy prairie flat to the adjacent ridge. We now were overlooking a HUGE Canyon as we got settled in on some rocks on the down slope of the canyon and we began to glass the entire canyon. After about 30 minutes of glassing Tyler again spotted some Muleys across the canyon about two thirds of the way up the other side of the canyon. We spotted a pretty decent buck that was chasing does and decided we needed to close the distance and get a closer look at this buck. One thing I learned the first day out there and I’m not sure if the deer can hear better out there, or if the colder, thinner air carries the sound better in the hills and canyons, but I could not get away with the noise I was used to. They could be 400-500 yards out, it didn’t matter you had to be deadly quiet at all times. So we began our sneek on these Muleys as we backed out of the canyon and moved down to get straight across from them. We got up to our point of being straight across and started our belly crawl to get up near the edge. Me being a little green to this style and location of hunting, soon learned the hard way to watch out for cactus (I was still picking cactus thorns out of my skin on Sunday night). After taking putting down an elbow and knee on some cactus plants and not letting out even a sound, we found ourselves behind a small deadfall right on the sdge of the ridge where we were able to glass again. We now observed that some of the deer went to the bottom of the canyon to feed on the grass land below. Our buck was still two thirds of the way up and just bedded down to rest as he observed his does feed on the bottom. We again belly crawled closer to the next location just above a little thicket and just off the top of the ridge. This was the closest we felt we could get to the buck in fear of being spotted or heard by the does if we would slide down the bare hill side. We could see the buck was a western 3×4 with good height and decent fronts. My range finder is limited to distance of around 400 yards, but I could pick a tree out in front of the buck at 411 yards. He was a good 30-40 yards behind that. I scoped the buck a few times seeing how steady I could get. I tried to convince Tyler to move closer to some rocks below us which would gain us another 50 yards, but not wanting to take the chance we just waited and I kept trying to get into a better shooting position. We waited for buck to see if he would hopefully come down the bottom and join the does, as we were in a stand off. The bottom of the canyon was just over 300 yards away and I felt much more comfy with that shot. We were now over 2 hours into this spot and stalk and nothing was progressing. However, our waiting game soon came to an end as the does spooked out of the bottom of the canyon and started to run up the far side toward our bedded buck. The buck rose to his feet and it was decision time. Do I want to harvest this buck or not???? Being that I have never shot a Muley before I was not going to be as picky and this was a heck of hunt. Tyler whispered that he was going to move. So, I bared down on him in my scope as he stood broadside across the canyon at approximately 450 yards. Looking at him with my ballistic reticle and knowing the distance took the guessing game out of how high to hold on this animal. With Tyler glassing him I squeezed off a shot that echoed through out the entire canyon and beyond. Tyler instructed that I just went over his back as the deer scrambled about. Being so far away from them, they had no idea where the shot came from and looked confused. Readjusting my position and getting the buck back into my scope he stopped again, broadside. I squeezed down on the trigger again as I sent another projectile echoing across the canyon, as Tyler barked out that I just grazed his chest as I watched the dust raise to the bucks face. The buck was on the move again, but still confused as where to run. Amazingly, we watched him dog a doe with is nose to the ground in the midst to all this chaos. He finally stopped again as I readjusted my sitting position again and got real steady on this buck as I raised up my scope again. I just started to bare down on the trigger when he started to move again and Tyler told me to hold on. I held back and soon watched him come to a halt again, as I got steady on him and squeezed off my third round as the shot ripped through the canyon. This time I watched my buck drop like a box of bricks on the other side of the canyon. In amazement and joy Tyler and I both started grinning ear to ear and talking through our awesome spot and stalk that had just ended. We got up and began our long trek to the other side of the canyon. As we walked up on my first mule deer harvest, he was just what we thought he was. A very decent western 3×4 muley with brow tines giving him a total of 9 points. I passed up a bigger buck one day earlier, but this one was a way better hunt and more meaning behind it for me. Travis ended up meeting us over at the buck as he was over in another canyon near by and heard the shooting. Not the biggest deer on the hill, but definitely a prized buck for this MN boy. The stalk and hunt for that buck may have ended but the work of getting the animal out to the nearest road just begun. The only down side was, we were only we able to take a few pictures before the camera battery died. After dragging him to the top of that canyon and through a whole another canyon we got him to a gravel road we could later pick him up with a truck. With all 3 of us together we decided to still hunt through another canyon back towards the truck as it was just past noon. I would hunt one ridge, Travis the bottom ,and Tyler the other ridge. Travis and I just got to the bottom of the canyon when shots started to ring in the air. We looked at each other and ran back up the Canyon. Another long story short Tyler hit a Whitetail buck that jumped up and took off. With not knowing where he hit him we let him lay and came back later to track him and ended up pushing him another mile before putting the 5×5 whitetail down right at sunset. I’m not sure how many miles we put on the day or how many hills I climbed, but my gas tank was on empty by the time we pulled Tyler’s deer out of the other canyon in the dark over a mile from where he first shot it. It was a very long, but action packed day that I wish I could do again and again. Stacie, her Dad and her niece met us at the canyon top with a truck to pick up Tyler’s and my Deer.

Well the next day brought on some more cool spot and stalks and we got very close to a whitetail doe bedded in a grassy field. Well within bow range before she spotted us, not to mention a group of muleys that came in on us as we just completed the whitetail stalk and we got within a 100 yards of the muleys. With a doe tag left but enough meat in the freezer, Tyler and I spent the afternoon just having fun spotting and stalking. That evening Stacie’s Mom even go into the action and hunted a field with us as we set up for some Whitetails. She sat with her rifle, Travis, and her Grandson Trey as Tyler and I set up with my bow in hopes to getting a doe harvest on film. We came very close, but I did not feel comfy with a 40-42 yard shot on the move as the doe only stopped in front of us briefly a few times. Like I said previously, this trip was with out a doubt the best and most thrilling hunts I have ever been on. You owe it to yourself to have an experience like this and if you ever get a chance to do it, make sure you take it. I’m already looking forward to next year to do it all over again and upping my Mule Deer standards.

Well, my 3 state gun season is over for me and now my focus will be on late season deer and Roosters. I still have deer tags in ND, SD and MN to fill and with out a doubt besides the rut, late season is my favorite time to pursue deer. Bring on the bitter cold and deep snow! . Not to mention the roosters will bunch up with those conditions. I will be focusing my time in ND and MN the next few weeks chasing monster bucks and roosters with my buddy Rufus. I hope everyone had a fun and successful rifle season. I’m looking forward to another month of this great sport of hunting. Until next time everyone be safe, have a great time hunting and stay tuned right here @ In-Depth Outdoors!

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