Mule deer NDR

Andrew Schaefer

Active member
Earlier this year I drew a either species/either sex tag for the December rifle season in the western mule deer unit in Kansas. I've shot a pile of whitetails in my day, but I had never hunted mule deer. Even though my tag was good for either sex, I had already filled the freezer on a couple whitetail does in October, so I going to hold out for a somewhat decent buck. I did a little homework and settled on a location for my hunt. I was hunting on private property open to public hunting through Kansas' Walk-In Hunting Program. Western Kansas is known for being really flat,and for the most part it is, except when you get near a stream or river, then the land is highly eroded (sorta like the Dakota badlands or the breaks country in Montana except on a much smaller scale) with steep valleys and deep draws. Most of these drainages are grazing land because they are too steep to farm, and the adjacent uplands are in wheat, milo, or corn. The dominant plants in the grazing lands are various shortgrass prairie grasses, prickly pear cactus, and yucca.

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I wound up hunting for five days. Each morning I would hike out to a location with a good vantage point and a favorable wind. Usually sometime shortly after first light I would spot a group of deer leaving the crop fields and headed into the grazing land to bed/loaf for the day. If there was a buck in the group I was interested in getting a closer look at, I would watch where they went and sneak in for a better look, if not, I would keep looking for other deer. During the middle of the day, most of the deer would be bedded in the yuccas and much harder to locate with my binoculars. The deer almost always bedded with the wind and a hill at their back and directed their eyes and ears downwind across the draw. In the evening, there would again be some movement of animals starting to head back out the the crop fields for the night. I was generally seeing about 20 deer per day, and about 1/4 of those were bucks, but most were just fork horns or little three-points. On the third day of my hunt, I was making a stalk on a group of deer when I got busted by one of the does. The deer took off, then stopped at 220 yards and looked back. One of them was a smallish 4-point, which I decided was good enough. I promptly sailed a bullet right over his back and scared him into the next county. The fourth day, I located a really nice (by my standards) three point buck in the afternoon, but ran out of shooting time before I could get in range for a shot. I went back to the same spot the following morning, and although his does were still there, he was gone. About 2 pm on the 5th day, I glassed up a group of 8 deer about a mile away feeding on the edge of a green wheat field. I couldn't tell if any were bucks, but figured what the heck and hiked to the next ridge for a closer look. When I relocated the herd, I was able to get them skylined and could see that one was a buck with antlers outside of his ears. I noted some landmarks and saw where I could sneak up a draw and get within easy range, but when I got there, the deer had fed about 100 yards further out into the field, and some were bedded in the green wheat. There was just enough of a roll to the field that I could not get a shot of the animals without standing up and exposing myself. I could see the buck's antlers just above the horizon and knew I'd like to take him if the opportunity arose. This went on for about an hour or so. Finally, the buck stood up again and began feeding, but they weren't moving anywhere. I had no chance at a shot from my hideout in the yuccas and the sun was beginning to set. I figured I might as try something drastic and either get the deer or spook them, so I stood up, walked a few yards up to the fence and steadied my rifle on the tripod I use of glassing. One of the does was showing some moderate concern about my presence, but the rest just kept feeding (this would never work with whitetails). I settled the crosshairs on the buck's vitals and dropped him in his tracks. He's a 3-point with a brow tine on one side, kinda a whitetail-ish looking rack but I'm pretty happy with him. I gutted him and hung him in a tree in the draw overnight, then came back the next day to debone him and pack him out. I really enjoyed this style of hunting and hope to get more opportunities to do it in the future.

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Nice hunting Andrew, and a great story too. Your descriptions of the terrain and style of hunting are good, let's one get a feel for the country
 
Very nicely done, Andrew, and loved reading your post, as it offered lots of interesting details about your hunt. I hunted out west for the first time this year and look forward to doing it again in the years to come.

How did your deer turn out as table fare?
 
Thanks. So far I've eaten a couple pieces of the loin and the heart. No off flavor to speak of. I was surprised that he still had a little bit of a fat cap on his rump post-rut. He didn't smell rutty either.
 
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