Mexico Archery 2010

[Archery Southwest]

 

2010 Mexico Coues Whitetail Hunt

 

After such an awesome 2009 with a successful Archery Bull Elk hunt, I was not sure how to top it in 2010. Well it started with the January Archery Deer hunts in AZ. I did not get my AZ buck in January, but I was lucky enough to stalk and shoot 2 nice bobcats with my bow. This year, I moved from the Hoyt Alphamax that allowed my successful Bull Elk harvest in 2009 to the new Hoyt Maxis 31. All I can say about the Hoyt Maxis is “Wow”. This is simply the best shooting bow I have ever shot, hands down. I have shot nearly every comparable bow out there to this new Hoyt and there really is no comparison. With that said, Jim Mullins Jr. was developing a few areas in Old Mexico for Pope & Young Coues and Mule deer hunts. Matt Mullins and I decided to go down and take a look at the new areas and see if we could get lucky in some foreign territory to us. We only had 3 days so it was going to be fun, and Jim had already been successful with some clients in the previous week where some GIANT Coues deer were taken with a rifle.

 

Matt and I headed out and were not sure what to expect for an archery hunt as the terrain was extremely dense. On Friday morning, we head out to a new water hole that had not been visited before to see what tracks were on it and if it looked promising. As we walk up to the water hole, we see 2 bucks on the hillside coming into the tank. I quickly grab my bow, run to a position as fast as I can to get behind a small palo verde tree and I watch this buck come running to water. I watch him close but do not ever have a chance to draw back without him seeing me and he literally walks within 12 yards from me. He is a decent buck that would score 85 inches or so and had a nice wide frame with 4 points on each side. At 12 yards, he stops cold, could sense something was up, and trots off. At that point, I could not believe I just passed up a nice Coues buck with my bow, but I did. I walked back and I got the unanimous response, “do you know you just passed up a great Coues buck with a bow?” We all laughed and got after it again to find some more bucks. The rest of day one was not as eventful and we went back to the ranch house for some “real Mexican” food.

 

That night we decided to get a blind on the water hole so it was set in for a morning hunt. We had the blind all brushed in and went back for a few hours of sleep. Matt and I decided to sit on the tank together so we could attempt a video of a possible opportunity. After about 3 hours, there was absolutely nothing coming in until… 2 wild horses decided to come in for a drink. Matt and I sat there and watched these 2 horses for 45 minutes and were pretty much sure our chances for anything to come in just evaporated. Finally, I got out of the blind and scared the horses off so we could try and salvage the rest of the morning. We laughed and started to talk through what else we could try in the next day and a half we had to hunt. In mid sentence, I causally glance over my left shoulder and see a big buck come walking in, immediately my heart is beating out of my chest and I let Matt know, “big buck, big buck.” I nock my Axis Nano arrow, and in the middle of my draw, another buck comes flying over a dirt burm not 10 feet from the side of our blind and stops the other buck in his tracks. As this more mature buck squares off at the other buck, all I saw was a really tall and wide rack on a HUGE bodied buck. With seconds to make a decision, I switched my sights to the new buck, found the bread basket, and let the arrow fly. Then the sounds we all love to hear, “Thwack”, a pass through, and a buck bounding up the burm and into the thick brush. Matt and I look at each other and then turn our eyes on the first buck who is still there and now coming into water since the other buck just took off. Without a second thought, Matt reaches for his bow and sees that it is under his pack, then he says, “give me your bow”, he nocks an arrow, waits for the buck to come into position, and lets it fly. The arrow hits its target perfectly and the buck trots off, but not far.

 

The next few minutes Matt and I just sat there in absolute amazement. We just shot 2 Pope & Young Coues Whitetail bucks out of the same blind, on the same water hole, with the same bow in 22 seconds of total time. We just realized what we just experienced would probably never happen again and were in complete amazement and excited beyond belief.

 

We could glass from the blind the blood trails and we knew we had to have 2 bucks down not too far away. We waited for about 2 hours and then began our tracking. We immediately find a huge pool of blood from my buck and start tracking the trail. After about 75 yards, the blood simply stops and we hear the buck get up and move out so we backed off to then go look for Matt’s buck. This track did not take long, and we found his buck piled up not 100 yards from the tank. With the day starting to get away from us, we called in some more caballeros to help us track my buck. Track by track we follow my buck 1/2 of a mile and loose light so we decided to head back to the ranch and start again the next day. After some incredible tracking and help from all of the team at the ranch, we finally find my buck, but the predators did too and had a feast on him. He ended up being about 500 yards from where we stopped tracking, but I was just elated to find the buck.

 

This experience was yet another hunt Matt and I will never forget and cannot thank enough Jim Mullins and the ranchers who made this hunt possible. We now have some areas that we can make extremely good for a Pope & Young opportunity for both Coues and Mule deer and we will be seeing more of the ASW team with success later in 2010. Thanks again to Jim Mullins with Mullins Outfitters for all of your help.

 

[FlyingW]

Nice bucks !!! Congrats to you both

[tjhunt2]

Congratulations to you and Matt on your coues trophies. What a neat story and I'm sure will be told many times over, around many camp fires in the future.

 

TJ

[Butters]

Great story and congratulations Wayne and Matty on two deserving bucks. This last year I have watched you two help out so many people on their hunts and life in general, its nice to see that you and Matty were able to share in the hunt together and harvest BIG bucks. Congrats Twinkle Toes and Matty. Hopefully we can do the same here this next August.

[weatherby1]

Nice deer and great story.

[izquik72]

great write up and nice bucks

congrats to both of you.

[COOSEFAN]

Great write-up Wayne, I was hoping you would get on here and elaborate further on that story I'm still excited for you and Matty, great bucks and what an experience! We'll shoot bigger bucks this next season and I can't wait! Take care, JIM>

[Snapshot]

Outstanding! Thanks for sharing your adventure!

[bonecollector]

Thats one heck of a story, congrats to both of you on an outstanding hunt!