The hunt was an amazing adventure. I left home late Friday/early Saturday (midnight-ish) and headed up, stopping in flagstaff and fredonia for fuel along the way. I reached my camp spot 9 1/2 hours later and heard my passenger rear tire leaking after unhooking the trailer. After plugging the tire and airing it back up, I started unloading and setting up. Around 3 pm I jumped into the SxS and set out to check some of the spots I had scouted. I found lots of fresh sign in most of the same areas as before. Once it got dark I broke out the spot light and drove every road and two track I came across until around midnight, then headed back to camp to sleep. I would then wake up around 4-5 am and head out spot lighting until the sun came up and I could see. Usually I planned it so I could be stopped at a place I could glass for a couple of hours until mid morning. Then I would head back to camp and sleep until 2-3 pm and repeat. I did this until Wednesday afternoon when I needed to drive into St. George to pick up my cousin from the airport and resupply. We spot lighted that evening and into the early morning of Thursday before heading to camp for some much needed rest. Around noon we checked a couple of areas we had chosen as opening day spots and decided on which was best. We glassed until dark then headed back to camp to organize our gear, have a quick dinner and then go to sleep. We woke up early to ensure we were first to our spot and waited for a few hours until grey light before slowly walking in, glassing along the way. We unfortunately bumped the deer and broken heartedly watch them head to their bedding area which seemed like a position we couldn’t access them or have a chance at them in. Nor did we want to push them out of their core area. There were lots of vehicles that seemed to want to be in this spot so we didn’t want to leave and give it up. We waited, glassed and move around a bit until 3pm when they started coming back out from the cut. We watched as two nice bucks ran each other off, both wanting to be the dominant male for the group of does. The bigger of the two presented a shot when the smaller buck ran him off but I decided to pass. An hour later the smaller buck offered a closer shot but after passing the bigger buck I couldn’t justify shooting him either. My cousin called me an idiot for passing either of them. We watched until dark then slowly backed out and headed to camp. We had a nice dinner and discussed the day, looking at the video we had taken of the two bucks. It was decided we would head back out to the same spot to get another look at them if we could. We woke up extremely early and drove to the same spot, arriving first again and waiting until grey light. We went about half as far in as the day before and stopped not wanting to bump the deer again. We spotted the group with just the smaller buck in it. We couldn’t locate the bigger buck. After a couple of hours the smaller buck gave me a shot and I connected at 475 yards. He hunched up and moved away a bit. We thought he would go down at any second but slowly turned broadside again at 525. I adjusted the turret and connected again. He lumbered a few feet and collapsed. We waited 20 mins and walked towards him. I instantly started having shooters remorse. I was done after a day and a half of the 10 day hunt. When we reached the buck I was surprised at the body size of the deer. He was definitely the heaviest deer I had harvested. I tagged the buck, we took some pics and then we attempted to load the deer into the SxS. Wow was he heavy!!! It took us a couple of tries but we somehow managed to get him into the back. I didn’t want to gut the deer there as I thought it might mess up another hunter who might want to hunt that area. We drove closer to camp, unloaded the deer and gutted him. He was sure easier to load the second time and then we drove to camp and using the winch on the SxS, hoisted him into a tree at the back of camp. We skinned, quartered him and washed the meat. After it dried we put it into game bags and hung it all. We had barely finished when an AZGFD and BLM officers rolled into camp. They checked my tag, license and pulled two lower teeth for an age check. We talked a while and they told us about some coyote areas and a possible spot for a lion. We took the deboned carcass to the lion area and disposed it in a spot we could see from a knoll a few hundred yards away. Over the next few days we switched looking at the gut pile and the carcass hoping for a shot at a coyote or a lion without any luck. It rained, hailed and lightly snowed the next couple of days making it pretty sloppy and messy. We waited until a break in the weather, broke down camp and left late Thursday. It took almost 3 hours to hit pavement which was a slippery and sliding drive out. We also stopped at Jacob’s lake for some cookies to eat on our way home. We had a trailer tire shred 25 miles before flagstaff, but other than that it was pretty uneventful. We pulled into my driveway early Friday morning, took out the rifles, binos, spotters, the expensive gear and put them into the safes. After a quick hello to sleeping family members and a shower we went to sleep. The next few days we dried out and put away the gear, washed our clothes, took care of the deer and celebrated a great hunt. We saw 112 deer, 36 bucks, one fox, one owl, 2 coyotes, 17 turkeys, 14 horses and an uncountable amount of cattle during the trip.
Thanks to all who helped and/or offered info. A shout out to Jason “coach” Jones who had the tag a few years ago and offered up everything he knew. He was very unselfish and I hope to follow his footsteps for future tag holders. A special thanks to my wife for holding down the fort while I was gone and to my cousin for taking time away from his day to day to help me. Happy safe hunting !
-Sig
