CatfishKev

Nice buck and big body. I bet you were drenched with sweat when you got back to the truck!

I'm also a fan of the buddy heater. Open up the cabinet doors and leave the door to the shitter open and let it go. If I am counting on a buddy heater I run a battery powered carbon monoxide detector. If you are running the buddy heater while in the camper set the alarm lower in the trailer then where the lowest person is sleeping. It's not fun waking up dead.

Well done!

You guys killed it! Great job.

Did anyone reach out?

Depending how long the shot is, further away this important imo. I use 2 legged trigger stick with a beanie or something rolled up in the crafle and tied into place with the wrist strap keeping the beanie in place. It gives it gives you something to push down into to get a good cheek weld on the rear stock. We've killed many times this way, almost as good as being prone. Rock solid if you do it right.

Nice buck dude!

Congrats you guys. Yup that's more then a meat buck there. 2 mornings ago was the first time a actually put a sweatshirt on, digging these nice mornings

Awesome buck, love those dark horns

Heck yeah! Great bucks;

Lol, every time someone posts a post with just a name my head always goes to the worst. Glad to see Stanley is alive and kicking.

As long as you don't put it out to far on the fore end of the stock crunching the stock against the barrel it shouldn't change poi

Lol, well not the same one. When trying to take the travel trailer to my son's job my truck took a shoot again so I'm borrowing my daughter's Kia Sorento. I'm in the pest control business so I had to relocate a skunk and a squirrel in the back of her car. She was less then thrilled 😄

heck yeah dude! That's a big old gnarly character buck and he's looking swole! Of course the first guy in the spotter looks like a wet dream but that is hunting and you still came out great in the end. The chase is what we live for. Thanks for sharing your story. Id kill that buck in a heartbeat myself. Well done.

Oh heck yeah man, good luck to your boy. Dress warm! Just spent all day Saturday butchering the kids 2 cows under close adult supervision from a great dude way more experienced then us. I was surprised how much work was involved. Got 2 WT tags to fill next week in 30b if all goes as planned. My go to spots are overgrown so I think we are gonna have to check new spots. Still stoked though

Dang, way to get it done. You guys are having a good season it looks like. Huge congrats! Y'all got any more tags to fill?

I grew up in a super dysfunctional family. Yes I'm sure everyone is shocked ... My only good friends are from this forum so I got nobody to share with but y'all. I'd be interested.

So what did he score?

Yeah I think it's easier for them to get the handouts. I've known of jobs where contractors had to hire rez folks over no rez and it sounded like a nightmare from the contractors perspective.

I've used "wild game processing" with good results awhile back.

I call those victory steaks. Nice job, hope to hear a story of you didn't already post one.

First off thanks to the good Lord for the time I got to spend with my boy, it was a heck of a time with plenty of ups and downs. Can't say enough how cool it is to watch your kids slowly become young men. Second thanks to @M@tt for coming down to help the first couple days. Great guy for sure. And of course @zackcarp for squeezing room in the walk in to hang the kids buck. This hunt started with high expectations, Kiki said he wants to hunt muley's, and so we did. Started off in an area I thought was a slam dunk. As usual (for me anyway) hunting mule deer made me humble. Spent the first couple days glassing up only forkies and does. Moved the camper closer to home, glassed up more forkies and does. Luck turned Sunday morning when we spotted a couple decent coues bucks and we went for it. As they do like ghosts they disappeared while on the stalk. Thought for sure they were heading for thick cover but in retrospect that phrase got me.. "coues are always where you last saw them". Looked up to see them high tailing it away from us. Next morning got off to a 15 minute late start, my fault but it could a made the difference. Got to the glassing point and immediately picked up a herd of muley's. Saw one that I knew right away was a stud. Bailed off the hill to give chase. No biggun where I thought he should be though. Had a doe and a spike walk right in front of us and that was it. I decided to pull out to not ruin a future chance. Came back that evening and no deer to be seen. Talked momma into coming the next morning, promised her we were close to sealing the deal. The next morning she was not as gung-ho when 330 rolled around, but she still came. Got breakfast at Denny's (part of the deal we made) and off we went. Got to the spot early and started glassing in the dark. No deer... Kept glassing... No deer.... Kept glassing... A couple does.... Oof. I told Caliche even if it's trash deer we should probably go for it since momma don't come out often. He agreed. Well once the sun was up I spotted one lone coues over a mile away verified he was a decent buck based on overall frame but we kept glassing for a closer opportunity. Suddenly like clockwork several white rump patches started appearing very close to the coues buck. We all converse quick and decide there is a chance the big one is nearby and if not we still got the coues. Bailed again off the hill, while in route momma said the big one is out there. We got to where I felt comfortable stalking and started to glass and could not find any muley but the WT buck was right in front of us under 200. The wind also started to shift. Momma said where the big muley was but due to the wind shift and not knowing the location of the rest of the muley herd we quickly decided let's kill this coues buck. Texted momma we are on the WT and getting ready to shoot. Well momma was so mesmerized by the muley she didn't keep eyes on the buck we were actually shooting and she didn't realize what I meant by WT. So we set up for the shot in a quick and quiet rush, Caliche looks at me and says "dude, this is so exciting!" and a minute later bang! I see the buck in my binos fly backwards and drop. Clearly we are full of adrenaline and I tell him he dropped, I texted momma "he dropped him". She responds I'm still looking at him??? I'm like no babe he shot the whitetail buck! So we rack another round and creep in just in case. we were in tall grass and sure enough the hit was a spine shot. Saw him up flailing and told him put one through his neck high and he did but for good measure had him put another in his head. Hence the bulging eyes. Once we really stopped and got to look him over I was pretty stoked at the buck he just killed. I assured him this buck was an old stud. Pretty gnarly horns and big body. Rack had some serious character and we had no regrets shooting this guy over the big muley. Called momma for the pickup while I showed Kiki how to quickly gut a deer. We earned ourselves some deer dragging sweat and met momma for some more pics. As per usual my new hunting partner Bucky the Boston terrier was there for the entire hunt, although not on the stalk he still put on the 12+ miles with us for the rest of it. Can't say as a dad how proud I am of Caliche.. out of all of my kids he's the one that seems to be bitten by the hunting bug the most. He was all in and fully immersed in this hunt. Even being the first one to pick up deer behind the glass a few times. This kid has grit and he sure makes me proud. He even caped his buck himself and measured him. He did dam good too on both fronts. Buck grossed 94" and netted like 88 and change. Can't wait to do it again. Got another youth tag this Friday and can't wait. It's my youngest boy Enoch. I don't think he's gonna embrace the suck though so probably forkies are on the menu, but if he's happy I'm happy. Thanks for reading. Ps. Not gonna lie, we had a hard time not laughing while taking the first few pics. Them crazy Steve Buscemi eyes

That is awesome man huge congrats on a great buck!

His is definitely wider. Here's a pic with a drafters ruler on inside spread. It's a 12" ruler with about a gap of 1/4 left between plastic and antler. The lines on the ruler actually start and end with about 5/15 on either side of when the marks start and stop. So I figure inside spread on mine to be almost 13" on the nose. So yeah a 16" spread is a big difference.

At the youth hunt they said usually cows get killed 4 to 1, this year was exact opposite. Kids were having a hard time on elk. When I spoke with Dave (member here) he said all the previous hunts had been tough and a lot of unfilled tags. I don't know how to hunt pines that aren't glass able. I feel lucky we got it done. Tough year for sure. Sitting water adjacent to cover might be the way to get it done this year.