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Wife's 1st Mule Deer / & nasty outfitter

Muskeez

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Joined
Aug 21, 2012
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1,738
Location
NW Iowa
I have to thank a couple HT guys first, Grant from MI , Colton, and Jon from MN, thanks guys and it was nice to meet Jon in person at a gas station in SD.

My wife and I drew Wyoming Region B deer tags as a second choice. Lord only knows why I put B as a second choice,... I was absolutely positive we would draw a LE unit as we had 2 more points than were needed last year. Well point creep kicked our butts and we got region B deer tags. First thing the biologist said when I talked to him was that they don't recommend B unless you have private land to hunt. Nice! Well, I knew that some public is better than none and we would make the best of it. I did a scouting mission with my bow on Sept. 1 and after 4 days of seeing one buck per day I shot a forky after he came 75 yards too far into the breaks after feeding in the private hay fields all night. I watched him go into a wash out cut and never come out. I snuck up on him 30 minutes later and shot him straight down in his bed. Tag punched and relieved that I would only have to find one deer in October for my wife. Thanks to OnX, as without it I would have went by the fence which was off by 200 yards.

We decided to go back out the second week of the rifle season to avoid the orange army. Good call I believe as we operate in low gear. We saw about 1-2 bucks per day after a ton of glassing and walking. The weather was wet and the boots got heavy! We booger-ed up a couple stalks on a forky and a small 3x3. We weren't seeing enough deer to be fussy.

Grant told us about a small piece of public land. He had been sneaking on some antelope a week earlier when he saw 3 mule deer bucks on the same small parcel. As he started his stalk he had a nasty landowner/outfitter drive up and start yelling at him and of course spooking the antelope. This fella, lets just call him "Crazy Carl", as I don't want to use his real name, insisted that the grassland map and the OnX chip were wrong and they needed to get off of HIS land. Grant and his father did just that as they didn't want a fight. They went on to shoot antelope on a different piece. Grant told me to check out this spot for deer and check with the warden first before hunting it. I did just that. The warden was an awesome guy and confirmed that it was indeed National grassland and public. He suggested I still hunt elsewhere if possible to avoid any confrontations. The warden went to talk to "Carl" who changed his story and said that Grant was "headed out onto his deeded land" earlier in the week and that is why he chewed them out. The warden told "Carl" to not be chasing anyone off of the public land that is bordered by his land. I agreed with the warden that we would not be walking this piece of OUR land , but I did tell him that if I drive by and spot a deer on it that we ARE going to shoot it. He agreed and said that of course that was fine.

So after a 3 mile walk on Monday morning with 5 pounds of mud on each boot we needed a break so we decided to drive down past "Crazy Carl's" since the night before in the dark we had seen several deer on the side of the road as we drove through that general area. Sure enough after 5 minutes of glassing I find a herd of about 10 does and one buck bedded in the sage. We spent the next 30 minutes glassing them ranging every hill, doing the math on yardage into miles, and estimating where the buck was bedded. I was jacked and ready to go but my wife was reluctant. She worried about "Crazy Carl". I showed her all of the maps and explained to her that the deer were on OUR land. We just needed to get close and make a good shot. After another 20 minutes of talking her into it we were off to give it a try. We crawled as close as we could before getting skylined on a small hillside. The deer were below us and feeding and bedding off and on. The buck was bedded most of the time. My wife struggled seeing the buck through the scope and through the yellow grass tops. We later learned that her breathing on the scope didn't help either :) After laying there for an hour we decided to put the pack upright and she would use it as a rest to get over the grass. As we did so the buck saw us and stood, she got him in the crosshairs and fired, and the buck folded on the spot! We were so thrilled and relieved that the buck hadn't ran off into the private land and we felt so blessed and thankful! I kept my GPS on the entire time to document our path and shot so that we could show CC or a warden if needed. We took 15 minutes to admire her buck and take many photos before starting to bone it out. The snow had just started 10 minutes before she shot and by the time we had him back to the truck there was 1.5" of snow on the ground and the sun was gone. It was a very enjoyable hunt and I'm glad the crazy man hadn't come out to confront us. It was also more than a little pleasing to know that we had shot a buck from a spot that the local landowner/outfitter had misbehaved on. We had kind of a "HAH, TAKE THAT!!" moment :) Grant especially got a kick out of it and texted me that they were glad that we had gotten one from that piece.

Thanks again to Grant and Jon and Colton for sharing where they saw deer the week before. Here's a pic of my GPS. The blue flag is where I estimated the buck was laying. The red dot is where we shot from. The blue dot is where the buck dropped. The pink line is just the Go-To feature from our campsite many miles away that evening when I took the pic of the gps screen. (No we didn't walk across that white piece) . The shot was a little risky now that I look back on it, but we are extremely grateful and thrilled with her first mule deer!
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Sounds like there are a lot of Crazy Carls out there this year. I will be headed that way on Tuesday. I hope we can avoid them. But we are OnXed and we've got a plan (a bunch of them actually).
 
Congrats on the deer!

I've heard several similar stories this year. Seems like even when they're caught, there are no repercussions.. it's kind of frustrating that the warden even suggested you don't hunt there. Carl should have been charged with hunter harassment if that story is indeed accurate.
 
The story is plenty accurate I'm sure as I got to hear 2 of the 3 people's stories. Grant didn't want to make an issue about it other than he wanted to know if the jerk was indeed correct or not and if the map and OnX were accurate just for his own piece of mind. I wanted to know if they were accurate just in case I saw a buck there. The warden said he couldn't do much with second hand info a week after the event but that he would talk with Grant if needed. I gave him Grant's phone number. In the end there wasn't much harm done as it didn't ruin Grants week , just that mornings hunt. And I figure we got even with "CC" anyway for Grant :) Had "CC" rolled up on us and ruined our hunt I would have pressed the warden to file hunter harassment type charges, and then "CC" would have got to deal with a ticked off red-head wife :W:
 
Yeah! Congrats again! My dad and I were laughing about it tonight at dinner. Screw "Crazy Carl" and his no hunting tire.
 
Congrats on the deer!

I've heard several similar stories this year. Seems like even when they're caught, there are no repercussions.. it's kind of frustrating that the warden even suggested you don't hunt there. Carl should have been charged with hunter harassment if that story is indeed accurate.

Looking back now we probably should have pressed the issue but my dad and I had 4 tags to fill in a "limited access" unit and had burned the first couple hours of opening morning dealing with that turd, and we're worried about finding another piece to ourselves. So we decided to get to work instead of burning the majority of the day. We had limited time as I have a newborn at home and my wife was headed back to work at the end of the week. We ended up filling my buck tag about 2 hours later and my dad's doe tag later that afternoon.

We we're only about 100 yards into the piece skirting a hill on a group of antelope when Turd Ferguson started whistling and yelling from the road running off the antelope. We were never nowhere near his land. Wish I would have pulled my phone and recorded the interaction but it probably would have escalated past just shouting.
 
HAHA< That's the other funny part, this crazy guy had NO HUNTING painted on a tire hanging from the fence where the land beyond the tire was a very small but public piece of land. I wish we would have stole that tire and brought it home like we joked about.
 
Great story, glad it all worked out in the end. You guys certainly deserved that buck.
 
Great story! Glad you and your wife stuck it out! Those outfitters are out of control. Congratulations to your wife!
 
Great job. Thanks for posting it here. Congrats to your wife. And thanks to the Hunt Talkers willing to share some intel with others who ask in the proper manner.

Reading this, it makes me realize what a game changer onX has been to the hunting scene. Pre-onX, almost all of us would have folded the tent and avoided the conflict with an ass like Carl. I folded my tent a time or two, only to find out in the post-onX world that I was on public land and it ticks me off just thinking about it. Now, GFY/KMA is the more appropriate response when the Carls of the world decide to claim public land as their own.
 
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