Since all anyone ever seems to post are hunt reports showing fantastic hunts, perfect camps, great guides, and monster animals, I though I'd write up my first attempt to hunt mule deer in the New Mexico desert mountains. It isn't pretty, but it is completely real and probably represents a better picture of life than most glossy magazines. It certainly reflects my hunts much better in that regard!
Even through all this, I go back for more...once the time afield gets into your blood, you just can't get it out!
Hunt report, New Mexico Unit 29, 10-14 November, 2007
Hunt–4 days, November 6th
All of the preparations are as done as they are going to get. Lists rule the day as plastic tubs and bins are being filled at a prodigious pace. Cold weather clothing, tent, camp utensils, rifles, ammo, knives, and the lists go on. As bins are filled they are moved to the bed of the pickup. Eventually the truck is loaded and backed into the garage, ready to go. It is nearly midnight, and a small measure of sleep will help with the long days to come.
Hunt–3 days, November 7th
A full day of work is begun early in order to leave and begin the long journey before the evening rush hour traffic is in full force. At 4PM the wife and kids are loaded in the truck and waiting at the back door of the office building. We are off! 4 hours later we pull into Kerrville Texas for the night, one small but significant chunk of the traveling taken care of. After unloading much of the truck to prevent theft (a remote but always present possibility) in the hotel parking lot, another short night of sleep is enjoyed.
Hunt–2 days, November 8th
This is a long travel day, from Kerrville Texas to Las Cruces New Mexico. The kids are entertained by the DVD player and are generally very tolerable. The only mistake is in putting their car seats side by side. They torment each other during lulls in the movies. Note to self: Put them on opposite sides of the truck and pile stuff between them so they can’t hit one another.
Hunt–1 day, November 9th
After a good breakfast and long farewell to the family, I head out to the campsite. It takes several hours to drive from Las Cruces, but with the family staying on to visit family it was the right place to stay for that night. After a quick fuel and sandwich stop in Alamogordo (which may have been the cause of problems later) I hit the final leg of the journey. Lincoln National Forest is beautiful and high, piney woods country. There is a house there that I would consider a dream home, see the pictures.
Soon after Pinon the roads go to improved dirt and rock. This is pretty barren and dusty country and is around 6000 feet in elevation. The GPS is just about the only way to navigate the roads, as road signs are practically non-existent. I had looked at satellite photos and marked intersections with directions as required, and therefore I was able to drive to the campsite with no real problems.
The other 2 members of the hunt party were not arriving for another day, so I had first choice of tent sites. After setting up the tent I walked around for about an hour, but dark comes early at those elevations and time of year. After a quick supper of scrambled eggs and sausage, I had the first of many bouts of the runs. I assumed the sandwich from lunch was bad and it would pass. (Ha! Murphy was in full force in this one detail!) It is a new moon night, so it is extremely dark and clear. I am over a hundred miles form the nearest city and over 30 from the nearest excuse for a town. The stars are spectacular, and the night is very cold. I quickly discover that I have under packed blankets and my sleeping bag is not sufficient. I cannot keep a draft of cold air from going down my back and my feet stay cold. I also have trouble finding a sufficiently level patch of ground for comfortable sleeping. Several times I have to get up and relieve the rumbling intestines. Around midnight a ‘thundering heard’ comes down the road. I can’t tell in the dark night, but I think it is a herd of cattle. In the morning I find a herd of 6 horses (possibly wild though they would let me get to within 25 feet or so, definitely unshod and with unkempt tails and manes) at the tank, where I see them for the rest of the time. All in all, it is a miserable night with little good sleep.
Hunt day #1, November 10th
I have forgotten to reset for Mountain Time, so the alarm is an hour late and it is breaking light when I get up. I rush around getting ready to head out despite continuing problems with my guts. Breakfast is limited to fruit juice and granola. After dressing very warmly I head out. I quickly discover that I have too much clothing and take off the heavy coat. It weighs me down the rest of the morning. As the sun rises the air warms rapidly and that, coupled with the exertion of climbing at high altitudes, makes me sweat into my thermal undergarments. Not good for comfort. Every time I stop I am cold, when I walk I sweat. I live literally a few feet above sea level, so increasing my altitude 6000+ feet takes a lot of time to adjust to. The base camp altitude is around 6050 feet, and the hikes are normally up to 6300 or more. I head NE of camp, to some hills the other guys have hunted with success in years past.
On the hike out I jump a doe and 2 yearlings or fawns. They ‘pogo’ run over the hill, stopping briefly to look at me before bouncing away. After finding a good spot to set up and glass a canyon I break out the binoculars and begin examining every piece of brush within several hundred yards. About an hour later I see the first of many fellow hunters. Strangely enough, there are 2 guys but they look really strange. As they get closer (they are walking the same ridge line I am glassing) I see that the one in front is a white guy and he is carrying a rifle, and the guy in back is a young black guy with a backpack and no rifle. WTF? This guy is on safari and has a Sherpa to pack his gear!?!? Since they are about to walk through my field of fire I whistle to them and wave, just to let them know I was there, and they stop. They talk to one another, look at me through binocs, and are generally looking like a couple of stooges. Then they continue on, walking through my field of fire, and even roll a big rock down the hillside about 200 yards in front of me. Assholes! I want to yell at them but a confrontation between armed men in the woods is just not going to solve anything, so I pick up and move on.
After walking ridgelines for a few more hours and seeing nothing else but other hunters, I head back to camp for lunch and to see if the rest of my party has arrived. They haven’t. I eat a small sandwich of tuna steak in a pouch on bread and take a short nap. At 2PM I am still alone so I pack up and head out again.
This afternoon I head west of camp to an area overlooking a stock tank and a few canyons. I spend much of time hiking the ridges around 3 canyon fingers without seeing anything. About an hour before sunset I find a good overlook of the tank and set. About ½ hour later the safari guy and his Sherpa walk a far ridgeline. They see me again, stop for a minute (about 500-600 yards away) and then head back over the way they had come. Nothing comes to the tank, so as dark falls I head to the road leading from the tank and hike back to camp (on the same road, about 1/4 mile down). I startle 2 young deer and they bounce over a nearby hill. Lordy I wish I could run and climb those hills 1/1000th as well!
R and C have arrived and set up their tent, and are out and about scouting. I fix a batch of Macaroni and Cheese with canned ham, and am eating that when they return. Ugh. Not a good food for hunting camp when you are still fighting intestine problems. I am beginning to question food problems and think this might be a flare up of my irritable bowel syndrome…and I have forgotten my medication. Not good.
R and C start a campfire, eat, and we chat. R and I graduated form high school together but haven’t seen each other since. We have swapped some emails, but mostly we share another friend, another classmate that I have kept in contact with over the intervening years. We were friends in high school and get along well together around the campfire. After a couple of hours of catching up on old times and talking about everything from hunting, knives, and guns to caving and astronomy, we head to get some sleep.
I move the sleeping mat around and find a much less lumpy section of ground and the night also seems much warmer. I have thicker socks and long underwear on though, so that might make the difference. I get a decent night sleep…the only one of the trip.
Hunt day #2, November 11th
We get up at daybreak and I eat another quick breakfast of granola, juice, and cheese sticks. Hopefully it will work against the intestinal problems. I pack up extra water and Gatorade to try and keep hydrated. The bowel problems have eased but not gone away, but keeping hydrated is a challenge in the dry air even with no other issues.
We return to the NE hunting area and cover it much more thoroughly. With 3 of us we spread out and essentially walk several miles of ridgelines in the morning without scaring up a single buck. We see one group of 3 deer busting out of a clump of brush, but I can only clearly see one and it is distinctly antlerless. Aside from a bunch of Spanish Dagger, Cholla cactus, and other hunters we don’t see much of interest. The views would be stunning if one were not so tired and frustrated from a lack of success.
R and C are going strong, as it is their first real day out, but this is my second and aside from borderline exhaustion I am on my second full day of hunting and the altitude and the shits are wearing me down badly. After the frustrating morning we return to camp for lunch. I eat cheese and crackers and some dried sausage…and guzzle the water and Gatorade.
After lunch we head to the west, past the tank and hunt west and south of camp for over a mile. It is a nearly 3 mile round trip, making a big loop out, across, and back. We are able to look over the plains south of the mountains all the way to the TX/NM border, and west well into the Fort Bliss military reservation. After hiking many more ridgelines, stopping every 100 yards or so to glass everything within sight, we have walked the afternoon away without seeing so much as a single other hunter or any deer. Sheep abound though, and we could have all the mutton we could stand were we so inclined.
Back at camp I heated a can of chicken and dumplings. Not only am I unable to get it sufficiently hot, the camp stove has suffered from the cold and is leaking propane from the knob. It flares up badly and forces me to quit using it…after I burn my hand trying to get it shut off. I borrow R&C’s single burner stove when they are done with their cooking and am finally able to get my supper hot. Canned chicken and dumplings is terrible. Cheese sticks and crackers made up most of my meal in the end.
Another evening around the campfire was passed in good company. R and I talked about old classmates and the high school days. C turns out to be a pretty quiet type and didn’t have too much to say. He seems to be a good guy, but just not a very talkative person.
Once again I put on heavy clothing to sleep. This night seemed the coldest by far. I discovered that a disposable hand warmer slipped between layers of socks on the top of your foot does a great job of keeping your feet warm. I only had to get up once and run to the ‘restroom’ behind the bush. Improvement, I guess. Old lady misery is beginning to set in and I am convinced that this will be a one time trip.
Hunt day #3, November 12th
We got up again at the crack of dawn. I found my package of cereal breakfast bars and I scarfed down several. They are frozen solid, as it was 27 F when we checked about a half hour after daybreak, but are a welcome change from granola.
We decided to search a new area west and NW of camp. Fort Bliss intrudes quickly, so we have to be careful and watch our location, but it is hard to access except by a long hike, so we hope the road hunters and the lazy hunters will have left it alone. We pack for lunch in the field and head out. I start about a half hour earlier than R&C, circle N to NW of camp looping through some new territory, and get myself into a set of very steep canyons. It is brutal, 45-60 degree slopes covered by much loose rock. After a solid hour of working my way up and across, I finally get out and am able to meet up with the other guys. After more hiking and a break for a lunch of jerky, trail mix, granola, and Gatorade, we continue hiking the ridgelines. We are following a fence line roughly on the ridge dividing the mountain range by this time. Several times we stopped for a half hour to rest and glass the areas around us.
Kill, hunt day #3, November 12th, early afternoon
After this much hiking the constant lack of hydration (despite nearly a gallon of fluids a day, mostly water with a 20 oz bottle or two of Gatorade mixed in), bowel trouble, lack of sufficient food (hard to eat when you only feel like shitting) and altitude have me pretty much ready to quit. I am barely keeping up with the other guys. Around 3PM when they come to yet another promising set of hills and ridges, I decide to stand and take a break while watching a saddle between 2 hills. R continues down the right side of the hill in front, C heads around the left of the hill on my left, and I have the middle. I am standing after glassing the saddle well and C has just passed out of my sight when I hear a noise on top of the hill to my left. When I look up I see a deer on it’s way down the hill from about 2/3-3/4 of the way up to the top. He is at a fast trot downhill and is heading down through the saddle and therefore right in front of me! I can see 3 high points on one side and I mentally tell myself SHOOT IT!
I had my rifle (Winchester M70 Classic Stainless, 300 WSM, 180 Nosler Ballistic Tip, 64 grains H4350, WLRM, 2.95” OAL, less than 3/4MOA accurate out of the box after bedding, Nikon Buckmasters 4.5-14x40AO set to 4.5) slung and was still wearing my backpack. I go through a mental checklist (I had visions all week of losing a deer because I forgot to open the front scope cover) as I unsling and shoulder my rifle. Open front scope cover. Check. Open rear scope cover. Got it. Thumb on safety. Find deer in scope. Got him. Safety off. Get crosshairs on shoulder and fire…and now I am on autopilot, waiting for the crosshair to form the right sight picture and my finger to pull. It is all without thought at this point…and as I get the dancing crosshair close I lose sight of him in the draw leading out of the saddle. Right as that is registering I can still see movement through the brush and I can tell he must come out and back into my view. He pops out a half second later (seems like an eternity…thanks to time dilation and adrenaline) and is now crossing at a near perfect 90 degrees and proceeding at a steady, unalarmed trot. I think the extra second helped calm my nerves, as I now get a great sight-trigger-BANG and everything in my head screams PERFECT SHOT! Unfortunately the deer shows exactly zero effect from the shot. Nope, not even a flinch, buck, jump, or change in pace to tell my brain that he was hit, much less hard hit. I am able to maintain a good sight on him through the scope from shot to reload, so I go for a second shot. He passes behind a small tree as I start aiming. As he comes out I am now in a hurry as he is closing on the top of my ridgeline and if he goes over the fence the slope gets VERY steep and the only road to that side requires us to go around a lot of mountain. I slightly rush the second shot. He disappears at the second shot. I continue looking through the scope for several more seconds but after one quick burst of thrashing all becomes quiet and I can no longer see him.
R&C are both coming over the radio asking “What was that? What did you see? Did you get him? Who shot?” I discover that I am shaking slightly and breathing very hard. (Actually I am getting the shakes again just retelling this!) After reporting that I think I got him, I walked over and found him just as you see in the picture. The first shot was a picture perfect double lung shot, missing all shoulder bones and causing minimal meat damage. The second was a middle spine shot and destroyed a large section of backstrap, but it instantly put the deer down.
After a few minutes to recover and drink, I realize that I feel like a 200 lb weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I guess I had been so stressed and worked up for this trip, that I was putting an amazing amount of pressure on myself (I really can’t financially afford to do this kind of trip right now, but I pushed and we are borrowing from reserves to make it work) to be successful! The deer is a very nice 8 point, tall, symmetrical, and decently wide. The rack looks very much like a whitetail, but is pretty heavy and the deer is dark like a mule deer. In this region it is virtually guaranteed to be a mulie.
Now the work begins. I take my new knife, which has been a dream to carry all week (except that the sheath needs to be modified for angled carry) and start to quarter him. I have the very large Ziplock ‘storage bags’ for field bags and they work very well. One shoulder and one hindquarter fit nicely in a single bag with plenty of room for trimmings, and the bags handle the weight well enough. My knife is very sharp and seems to be holding an edge quite well. I try the Gerber guthook tool to open the skin through the belly but it does not want to rip very far. I have better luck with a shallow angle, but am unable to get it to work up the inside of the legs as I used to do with guthook knives. I'll reserve judgment on it, but so far I am not impressed with the Gerber tool.
After quartering the deer, including cutting apart the hip and knee joints and taking off the head by cutting apart a cervical joint, the Hard Working Little Knife has lived up to it’s moniker. It is still shaving sharp except for a few spots where I obviously hit bone hard or maybe the one slip that clipped a rock. It was very impressive overall.
C has brought a duck decoy bag to use as a game bag. He loaned it to me. I put my bags of deer meat into the decoy bag, R took my rifle and left to bring the truck to the closest road, and C took my backpack and for most of the trip the deer head. I estimate the meat load to be in the 60-75 lb range. Unfortunately as a game bag the decoy bag had one major flaw. It let the heaviest part of the load ride below hip level, making it drag against the back of my legs. Every step allowed it to swing forward and bang into the other leg…a constant rocking and tripping pressure that made balance (in challenging enough terrain) impossible. After several slips and one good fall, we made it to the road. While only about 1/3 mile, it took about 1/2-3/4 of an hour.
End of hunt, November 12th
After arriving at camp, I discovered that after 3 days my ice was nearly gone. I would have to drive into town to adequately preserve the meat. With my lack of sleep and intestinal problems, I decided it would be wise to just break camp and head out. Now that I had my deer I really wanted to stay, in a large contrast to the morning, but that simply wasn’t the best course of action. I did a mad dash to break camp before dark, packed up, and was on the road to Albuquerque (the rest of my family traveled from Las Cruces to there on the 11th) at dusk. After stopping for ice and a snack in Cloudcroft I was able to make it to my aunt’s house in Albuquerque around 10PM.
Rest of trip, November 13-16
I spent a few days with my aunt visiting Old Town Albuquerque and several other tourist traps, and then traveled back. We overnighted in Fort Stockton, Texas, and arrived home on November 16th. The deer is now processed into about 28 lbs of sausage, 6 lbs of 50/50 ground meat/hamburger, and processed cuts. The first batch of chili from the ground meat was excellent!
