azhuntnut Report post Posted November 22, 2023 I hunted this unit last year and got skunked. I had never seen it so bad since I started hunting it over 30 years ago. I put in for it again to challenge myself to find a good buck. I did find a 180 plus buck about 7 weeks ago and spent several weekends trying to relocate him, but had no luck. I changed locations and turned up this buck 3 weeks ago. I only got about 45 seconds of footage before he disappeared. I came back the next weekend and couldn’t turn him up. About ten days ago I found him again, and got about 30 seconds of video before he melted away into one of his hiding spots. Opening morning found me and my son looking for another buck I had found for him, but that deer didn’t want to cooperate. We hunted all day and only found several young deer. Saturday I decided to go searching for the big 3, but he never showed himself. On the hike out, I found several lion tracks and figured he had been killed or pushed. Sunday the wind was gusting 20-30 mph and most of the deer I found were bedded, and also 600 yards out with no chance to shoot with the cross winds. The wind blew hard all day and we just couldn’t find much moving. Monday morning started the same with the crazy winds, but we had a plan to relocate another tall 3x3 I had seen several times for my son. On our way to that spot, I said let’s go take a look for the other big 3 and just see if he is up and moving. We were glassing from a spot that didn’t really give me the angle needed to see into his normal feeding area, but I wanted to at least try. I turned up one doe in a small cut feeding away from us. We kept glassing the area over and thought for sure there is no way this buck would be out feeding. I glassed for a while and was getting ready to move on and decided to glass below me. Standing in the open feeding was this buck at only 225 yards. I had just looked over this spot five minutes earlier. He must have been down inside a deep cut where I couldn’t see him before. I put a 168 ELD-M right in the pocket and he spun and dropped about ten feet away. While we were packing him out, we hiked down the same wash that I had used a couple days earlier. There were more lion tracks on top of my boot tracks. We scouted this area for weeks and kept seeing lion tracks in the road, but we were never able to glass him up. Unfortunately we never found a good buck for my son to shoot, but it was a great hunt and had a great time hunting with my son. David 18 1 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JSR Report post Posted November 22, 2023 Nice. I love those ELD-M bullets. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ernesto C Report post Posted November 22, 2023 VEry nice! Well done! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CatfishKev Report post Posted November 23, 2023 Sounds tough man, congrats on a good buck. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Couzer Report post Posted November 23, 2023 Solid buck David!!! Nicley done. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HyNoon Report post Posted November 23, 2023 Nice buck David. Congratulations 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wildwoody Report post Posted November 23, 2023 Beautiful buck, at first in the pack I thought you had a 130 coues buck. Ill have another hiball 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
muleyy Report post Posted January 14 Very impressive....nice buck 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
