RidgeRunner76
Active member
Please bear with me here. I'm going to take my time on this write up as it has some back story, and been over 15 years in the making. I'll keep it as brief as I can though.
Way back in the early 90's we used to hunt elk and mule deer in the Gunnison Basin area. Early on hunting was good, but as a young teen I was never able to connect on a good buck. A couple of fork horns and a small 2x3. This coincided with the great mule deer decline in CO and after awhile seeing a doe was a big deal. We stopped hunting deer altogether and my dad, cousin and I started collecting deer Pref. Points hoping for a resurgence in deer populations. We weren't disappointed when the CDOW finally got a handle on things and our once great herds soared to unreal levels. These hunts needed 7-8 Pref. Points to draw, but while hunting elk every year we would see many, many big bucks. Fast forward to 2007 and after the draw that year we would finally have enough Pref. Points to draw our coveted tag in the fall of 2008 and be able to chase the big boys around. Lady luck intervened that winter, and we had the great 2007/08 blizzard that killed off 30-50% of the Gunnison Basin deer herds.
With no real options we continued to collect points and hoped to see the herds come back. In 2010 we had 2 major health scares in elk camp with my dad and cousin. My cousin was able to get his straightened out, but my dad has been a very long process. We knew what he was suffering from, but the Dr's would not issue a diagnosis( Early Onset Alzheimer's/Advanced Dementia) until Sept. of this year. It was decided last year that since the Gunnison deer herds had rebounded again, we'd burn our Pref. Points and get my dad on one last Mule Deer hunt. As luck would have it, he couldn't come this year due to the diagnosis his Dr. gave in Sept. and the death of his wife's brother 3 days before we were to leave. He did get his Pref. Points restored and if his health holds we will take him next year. He insisted my cousin and I make the trip, and we honored his wish.
I prepped my gear and headed up to the hunt area on Weds. Oct. 14th. Season opened on Sat. the 17th and my cousin and his son were to arrive in camp on Fri. the 16th. I got set up in camp and spent Weds. afternoon and through Fri. midday scouting and getting to know the area. The places I scouted out we only hunted one afternoon, as we were soon to find out most of the deer were south and west of where I had scouted. My family arrived safe on Fri. and after camp was set up for them we visited some friends in town and scouted till sundown where we were going to hunt the next morning. My cousin's son had this tag the year previous and he was invaluable asset to both of us on this hunt. Sleep was very little the night before as my cousin and I were very nervous about waiting this long for the tag and hoping we could find bucks worthy of the years spent waiting. We did have one promising sighting Friday night as we did find one buck both of us wanted to put a tag on. He was in a herd of 5 bucks, all decent 4x4's, but he was pretty special. He was 28-30" wide, super tall and had 3" eyeguards. However, what made him "special" was the fact that his 3rd points split where they left the main beam on both sides, and he basically had 10" Double 3rds. However, we never saw him or his running mates again.
I did not have my good cameras on me, but I did get to snap this blurry cell phone pic of him. He's on the far left. Sorry its not better
That's the back story.
Way back in the early 90's we used to hunt elk and mule deer in the Gunnison Basin area. Early on hunting was good, but as a young teen I was never able to connect on a good buck. A couple of fork horns and a small 2x3. This coincided with the great mule deer decline in CO and after awhile seeing a doe was a big deal. We stopped hunting deer altogether and my dad, cousin and I started collecting deer Pref. Points hoping for a resurgence in deer populations. We weren't disappointed when the CDOW finally got a handle on things and our once great herds soared to unreal levels. These hunts needed 7-8 Pref. Points to draw, but while hunting elk every year we would see many, many big bucks. Fast forward to 2007 and after the draw that year we would finally have enough Pref. Points to draw our coveted tag in the fall of 2008 and be able to chase the big boys around. Lady luck intervened that winter, and we had the great 2007/08 blizzard that killed off 30-50% of the Gunnison Basin deer herds.
With no real options we continued to collect points and hoped to see the herds come back. In 2010 we had 2 major health scares in elk camp with my dad and cousin. My cousin was able to get his straightened out, but my dad has been a very long process. We knew what he was suffering from, but the Dr's would not issue a diagnosis( Early Onset Alzheimer's/Advanced Dementia) until Sept. of this year. It was decided last year that since the Gunnison deer herds had rebounded again, we'd burn our Pref. Points and get my dad on one last Mule Deer hunt. As luck would have it, he couldn't come this year due to the diagnosis his Dr. gave in Sept. and the death of his wife's brother 3 days before we were to leave. He did get his Pref. Points restored and if his health holds we will take him next year. He insisted my cousin and I make the trip, and we honored his wish.
I prepped my gear and headed up to the hunt area on Weds. Oct. 14th. Season opened on Sat. the 17th and my cousin and his son were to arrive in camp on Fri. the 16th. I got set up in camp and spent Weds. afternoon and through Fri. midday scouting and getting to know the area. The places I scouted out we only hunted one afternoon, as we were soon to find out most of the deer were south and west of where I had scouted. My family arrived safe on Fri. and after camp was set up for them we visited some friends in town and scouted till sundown where we were going to hunt the next morning. My cousin's son had this tag the year previous and he was invaluable asset to both of us on this hunt. Sleep was very little the night before as my cousin and I were very nervous about waiting this long for the tag and hoping we could find bucks worthy of the years spent waiting. We did have one promising sighting Friday night as we did find one buck both of us wanted to put a tag on. He was in a herd of 5 bucks, all decent 4x4's, but he was pretty special. He was 28-30" wide, super tall and had 3" eyeguards. However, what made him "special" was the fact that his 3rd points split where they left the main beam on both sides, and he basically had 10" Double 3rds. However, we never saw him or his running mates again.
I did not have my good cameras on me, but I did get to snap this blurry cell phone pic of him. He's on the far left. Sorry its not better
That's the back story.
:lol:
