Ep. 1: Missing the Biggest Buck of My Life and Becoming a Better Bowhunter

in within range, you draw back. As you draw back, the buck turns and looks at you. Okay, what do you do? Think about it for a second? Do you shoot? Do you wait? The buck standing broadside? You've ranged this right now? I think the right answer is I need more information, and that is a correct answer. But what I hope is from what I consider probably the best hunt I've had in my life, I learned a lot

of hard lessons. Now I had some a great end story with some great success, but there were some pretty hard lessons learned along the way. And I will think about this hunt for probably the rest of my life. It's my encounter with one of the greatest deer I have ever seen, and still to this day, and I've seen some pretty good deer. Now, I think the lessons learned at that moment I have carried through throughout hunts from two thousand five until now that have made me

overall a more successful hunter. And it is because of the encounters with this buck. So I want to tell you the story of what I consider the greatest dear of my life. Now, let me set the stage for you a little bit. The year is two thousand five now in the state of Nevada. In two thousand five, if mule deer hunting was a fine wine, this would

be the best wine you could get. This year, it was just a perfect storm of good antler growth, I would say, high deer populations, everything, just the stars just lined up. Now, I had drawn a deer tag in an area that I had hunted. I'd never actually personally had a tag in this unit. However, I've spent a lot of time in there with my buddy, who had had tags over the years. We scouted it. We found some good areas and I thought, man, I want to come back and hunt this tag next year with my

bow in this same County. I would say that year some of the biggest deer ever taken with the bow were taken. I think the new archery world record was shot that year by guy named Greg Crow, and he took that buck with his bow not too far from actually where I was hunting. So you just gotta I'm just setting your mind right to know that this year everything was lined up for one of the best hunts

you could probably ever have. And I would say that I'm telling a story about the biggest deer I've ever seen. Now you're probably wondering, well, have I seen pictures of this big deer? You have to listen to this story and hear what happens. I scouted this unit. I don't even know how many days, to be honest, quite a few. I think I made two or three scouting trips during the summer. I'd hindpoint in the area where I wanted to be, and there was a high concentration of bucks

in there. I'd seen multiple bachelor groups of ten bucks or more all years wide four by four's I had seen some just tremendous deer, and I thought to myself, all right, I've never seen so many good deer in my life. I'm gonna really hold out and try to find the best year I can. I've got. The entire season is shortly after high school. I took my college during the spring and summer semesters, so I didn't have

to go back to school yet. I had the entire month of August to hunt meal deer, and that was my plan. I arrived in the area quite a few days before opening day, glass and spotting bucks, just watching. What I was trying to do is watch their habits, watch their movements, try to figure them out. So if I if the buck that I decided I wanted to chase appeared on opening day, I would know how to get there. I would know potentially what that deer was gonna do. Now muled year, you might think you have

a pattern, but they do some erratic stuff. It's not necessarily like patterning a white tail. Early in the season, when they're in their velvet, they tend to feed in an area and be out in the open more. However,

they don't always bed in the same place. You might think they're gonna go left because they've gone left the last two days, and the next day they just go a completely different way and go bed on another mountain, so they can be fairly erratic, but I just wanted to understand what the general movements of these deer were before I even started hunting. On Opening day, I spotted what I considered a pretty good buck. If you know

deer scores or whatever, it's probably plus buck. I thought that that would be the biggest deer I've ever taken in my life. I'm gonna stalk this deer. As I'm stalking that dear, I end up midday finding another deer, and the other deer I found was by far the largest deer I've ever seen, and what would have been a potential world record mule deer. Now, for me, hunting is about a lot of things, primarily food, meet the adventure,

the challenge of it. But when I had seen that big buck, I thought, there is probably no greater challenge than to try to take that one deer one because it's so big. You know, there may not ever be another point in my life where I find a deer that rivals that deer, and the challenge of just hunting that one deer, I was welcoming it. I thought, this is going to be hard, but I'm up for this. Challenge. Well,

I've got that. I watched the dear bed he betted in what I considered a spot that would be a good spot for a stock of that first day, that opening morning, I stalk in the wind is okay. I'm not gonna say it was great, but it's okay. The deer is betted out on a point. There's this this small hill that came up in between these two mountains, and he had betted just below in the tall sage. There was a mahogany tree that was casting a little bit of shade. However, as the day moved on, I

kind of expected this buck to move. Yet he never moved when the shade got out, and I think it was because of the stage was tall enough where it provided enough shade, and then there was a pretty good breeze blowing toward that buck. Now, the best approach would have been for me to pop up a little further up the ridge. However, I think he would have winded

me from there. So I decided to make an approach where I went essentially paralleled the ridge behind him and then would pop up over and he should be bedded right below me. And I was gonna plan to stock to that mahogany tree where the shade it was actually putting shade on him earlier in the day. I get over there, I take my shoes off, I make my long stock. I get you know where I could start to see. I started glassing the brush and I see his antler tips. This buck is huge. I range it

and it's about sixty yards. I arrange the tree. The tree's thirty yards in front of me or so, so I get low. I pretty much put my bow in my back army crawl in. At this point the wind the days getting later, and the winds are starting to get a little shifty. I crawled to that tree. I range his antler's thirty three yards. I think perfect. I am going to wait here until this buck stands up. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting nothing. The wind's getting

a little shifty. I'm getting a little nervous. I'm shooting downhill at this point, or will be when he stands up, And I think to myself, I've got I think it was probably it was a seven pin sight, and I thought I might as well make this a slam dunk. I've been sitting here for an hour. Probably I might as well get to an even thirty yards. Thinking back, that scene stupid, but you have to remember that time

my bow wasn't as fast as they are now. The difference in three yards could be a hit or a miss. So I decided to crawl up three more yards, which I've been sitting here for hours. As I start my crawl, I'm about one yard into this crawl, I feel the wind hit the back of my neck. A quick swirl. The buck's head whips up. The bucks stands there broadside, and I'm caught off guard. He's standing looking around because the wind just swirled. He had no clue which way

that scent. He just picked up a little bit of scent. But I draw back. The buck must have heard me. I was not set up very well. He takes off, bouncing away, and there goes the buck of my dreams. Now, at this point, I've been thirty yards or close around thirty yards to this giant deer. He disappeared, he ran off. I was unable to relocate him. Now for the rest of the hunt, all I can think about is this big buck, and probably pretty much, truthfully, for the rest

of my life. But I'm thinking about this dear, I'm seeing other great bucks, but in my mind, I know nothing else will do. Is this, dear or no, dear. I will go home empty if I don't get another chance at this buck, is what I'm thinking. I think it was about two weeks later of hard hunting. When I started out hunting. I had my dad was with me and one of my good buddies, Art, and they all had to go back to work. I said, now I'm staying out here. I'm going to just continue hunting

for this big buck. So a few weeks goes by. I think I was hunting a little over a week by myself, maybe more. Those guys come back. It's a weekend. We all. I'm showing them all the good deer that I'm saying. I'm like, yeah, I think my dad had a tag with me as well, so I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, you should try stalk in one of those bucks. And I'd have these deer just named in patterned and

never seen that big buck again. So we're glassing up in this giant basin at the top of the mountain, and lo and behold there is that big buck with about ten other bucks that are bigger than most of the deer i'd seen the previous week. It's just it's just a group of older age class animals in the highest basin in the unit. Altogether, it's like there used to be this picture. They called it a Magnificent seven,

and I think it was just photoshop. There was the seven giant bucks on this skyline, and it just it looked unreal because I think it was unreal. It's just a product of photoshop. But this was a similar scenario. I decide, Okay, I'm gonna go up there. It's about a three mile hike into where these deer are, maybe four a lot of elevation gain. Now I watched the bucks bed. I load up my packet. I stuffed my sleeping bag in a harp, a little bit of food.

I've got a Fannie pack just so when I dropped my main pack, I have some water and some other things with me. So I started up the trail. Hike up the trails pretty high elevation. We're talking around ten thousand plus feet and I started the hike at so that's a major climb. It's a four thousand foot vertical gain. I started this spot in the mid morning. I'm just hoping that they're still there by the time I get there.

I get into position up, I dropped my pack. I load up my little Fannie pack with a flashlight and some water, maybe a snack just in case. Start glassing and I spot the deer bedded the big buck and his friends. So I start my crawl, crawling, crawling. It's about a two hour crawl across this big plateau flat because I can kind of I'm kind of in the open, so I'm putting this big rock between me and the deer, crawling to that rock, moving from rock to rock, bush

to bush. It starts to get on dark. I'm now at this point, probably eighty yards from this big buck and the other year. So he gets up and starts feeding. I'm just thinking myself, come my way, please, come my way. He starts feeding, starts feeding my way. The way this is this country's bill is it's a big open basin, but there's a few little cliffs in there, and he's feeding right to the cliff just off to my right. I start crawling. As soon as he gets out of sight.

I run up to the cliff edge, moving as fast and as quiet as I can. I get to the edge and I spot him. I pop up. He's directly below me. It is steep downhill. I'm on the edge of the cliff shooting down. I'll be shooting down at this book. I ranged the buck. I think it's fifty five yards perfect. I've been shooting all summer. I could shoot a bottle cap at fifty five yards, no problem. I draw back, and as I draw back, that buck turns his head and looks at me, and I just

see this giant rack moving. He looks at me. I set all my pin square on his body, take the shot, and the buck doesn't Neo Matrix dodging the bullet, drops his back, ducks the string and the arrow flies right over his back. He jumps out and starts running down the hill and stops about a hundred and eighty yards out. My heart sank. Now you gotta remember this is a group with a bunch of other good bucks. I think to myself, I have hunted hard. I'm all the way

up here. And as I do that, one of the other bucks in the group, which is probably not the smallest buck, but definitely not. He's in the lower half end of the buck. He's probably the third from the bottom as far as size. Walks out and stops and stares downhill at the buck that just ran off, and he these thirty something yards, probably thirty I think it was thirty three yards. He's looking away, and I think to myself, I'm not coming off this mountain without a deer.

I draw back, I said on my pen, I take the shot. I hit him right behind the shoulder. The buck runs maybe ten yards, falls over stone dead and tumbles down the mountain a little ways. Now as I walked down there, of course all the other deer just watching this one buck, and I can nearly walk up to these other deer, which in any other circumstances would

have run away immediately. And I'm pretty excited because this dear, even though it wasn't the biggest deer in the group, is the best year I had ever taken with any weapon, gun or bow, and definitely the best buck I had taken with the bow. He was passed these years. Giant four by four hundred and seventy two inch type buck.

Just a great deer, and I was pretty excited. Now it's starting to get evening, I get to the deer, I decided to, you know, take care of him, get the deer out, and I figure, well, I'm up here. It was a long ways in there, so I go back, get my pack and all my stuff, pull my sleeping bag out, set my tarp up. It's a little I didn't want anything to eat the meat, and there's nowhere to hang the deer. So I ended up just thinking, okay,

I'll just sleep essentially with this deer. That way, if any coyotes or whatever around, they aren't going to get the meat. So I set my tarp on the ground, throw my sleeping bag down. It was so steep though, I kept slipping off, so I ended up taking my para cord and it was actually just that almost like clothesline type chord, tying myself to a rock, making a little anchor, sleeping on the mountain right there with the buck.

Then in the morning, getting up, finishing quartering out, and getting the meat all taken care of, and then packing the buck down. Now I had never been more excited. I had just taken the best year of my life. I had a great hunt, an incredible stock, and a shot at that giant deer. Now at the time that I got on that buck, I honestly didn't fully understand that line of sight was not the same as horizontal distance. So my range finder at that time was just line

of sight. It didn't angle compensate. Now, luckily, if you buy a range finder, now all the calculations are done for you, it's a lot easier. But at that time, you know, my range finder only gave me line of sight distance. And what that is is the horizontal distance is the only distance that truly affects the arrow because

it's based on the poll of gravity down. So if you imagine I'm shooting off of a perfectly vertical cliff, and I use my line of sight range finder and I ranged that deer at say seventy yards, Well, if that deer is only thirty yards from the base of the cliff, directly below where I'm standing, then I would use my thirty yard pin on that deer that the line of sight says seventy yards. Modern range finders now do that calculation for you. It's fairly difficult to figure

that out in the field. And if you want to know more about that, I mean, you just get a vortex range finder and it explains the whole horizontal distance as well as the line of sight distance, But at that time I didn't know the difference, so when I was aiming for the line of sight, that was one thing. There was a major mistake shooting at that buck. Now, another little mistake was that I think I probably shot it the inopportune time. The buck just happened to be

turning his head looking up. I got a little impatient and a little more excited than normal, because, knowing what I know now, that deer wasn't really looking at me. He was more just looking in my direction. I should have waited for him to move his head back to feeding or in a position where he's looking away. So I think that that played into it a little bit

as well. But the main thing was not understanding shooting downhill. Now, from that point forward, I added downhill practice, because the majority of your shots out west on spotting stock big game animals are gonna be downhill. You're in a mountain, generally the best approaches from above. So by practicing these downhill shots, I became a lot more lethal and a lot more proficient. But I'm going to go into a few tips on the ways that I make those downhill

shots count. Now, these lessons for shooting downhill are not just for archery hunting. Honestly, a lot of these techniques can be applied to rifle hunting, and it's not just for Western hunting. If you are a tree stand enter, all of your shots are gonna be at a down angle. So there's a lot of things that you might glean from this. Even though you might not be shooting as far as is say spot and stock hunt may need to or you don't have to deal with the slope

of a hill. The real at the basics, the mechanics of shooting downhill and uphill for that matter, are the same, no matter your weapon choice or where you prefer to hunt. I'll never forget my first cus deer hunt in Arizona archery hunt. I snuck in on a buck. It was below this band of cliffs feeding in the cactus. So I sneak out get to the cliff. It's pretty much

a straight down shot. I crawl out to the edge and my plan was I'm gonna draw kneeling, which is normally what I do out of sight so he couldn't see me, and then I'm gonna stand up and shoot. I go to draw my bow back and as I draw my bow back, my arrow falls off the string. I'm like, what the heck? I never had that happen before. So I put the arrow back on drawback again. As I draw back, I notice that it pops off again. The broadhead was clipping my riser and pulling the arrow

off the string. Like what the heck. I kind of look at it real quick, thinking, okay, maybe something's move something's wrong. Like everything looks good. So I'm like, well, let me just see. I put the arrow on, and I thought I was drawing back level, because when you shoot on flat ground, you just naturally balanced the bow to the horizon. You just kind of go perpendicular to the horizon. You see. Well, I look at my level on my site and it is just way off to

the left side. I was canting my bow so hard, yet I thought I was drawing at level. So I go to what feels like in a natural position, balance it out, drawback. Fine, I stand up, I bend down, I shoot, and I killed the buck that right there. It never entered my mind how much the slope of the hill affects I would say, not only the pull of gravity on your bow, but just where you think

your bow is level. When you're shooting downhill in the mountains, you aren't just shooting straight down from a flat spot most times, like you would say from a tree stand or if you were practicing, you're up on your roof shooting straight down. You also have to encount for the pitch of the hill because you're gonna be on a mountain. Sometimes the buck might be right below you, but there might be some slope where you are. Now, one thing that I've learned is the slope affects the pole on

your bow. What it wants to do is it wants to pull your bow downhill. And your mind sees the horizon out there, and you think that put my bow perpendicular to that should be level. What you don't realize is the way that your bow is canting. It might look level to you, yet because you're standing on a pitch of a hill, it's actually not level. So what I do. The first thing I do when I go to draw my bow back on a mountain is I

lean the top of my bow uphill. Now it feels unnatural at first, but what happens is when I draw back with the top of my bow uphill. As I draw back and settle. Gravity starts to pull the top down, and what that should do is allow me to level and stop it where I need to level, but not fight against it in an unnatural way. Because if I have the top of my limb downhill already, I draw back, which might feel better when I draw back. Now I realized my bow isn't level and I'm forcing it against

gravity the other way. What that's doing is putting in some weird hand torque. It's not natural, and when I take that shot, it's not going to be as good as a shot because I'm putting undue stress in my grip and the way that I'm trying to force that bow the wrong way. Now, when you shoot on flat ground, you're just drawing back. You're getting to your anchor point

and you're shooting. I think a mistake that I have made in the past, and I think a lot of people make, is what you'll do is you'll see the animal below you. You draw towards the animal. Well, when you do that at an angle, your anchor point might not be the same as you've been practicing on flat ground all the time. So as you draw back, what I like to do is I'll draw back level and then I'll bend it my hips, keeping my same anchor point as I go to shoot that animal. Now, I

think some people overexaggerate this. They go straight and then they really really bend down. I just think you need to do it in a way that keeps your anchor point. Now, if you draw, if you practice all the time drawing back and anchoring, that's okay because you'll get that same anchor point. But you got to remember you want everything

to be the way that you practiced. So if you're practicing a lot on level ground drawback like you're on level ground, then don't just move your arm down because that's not keeping your same anchor point in the way that you're looking through your peep You now just bend the hips and let your front arm follow as you aim towards that animal. Now, another thing that I've learned when shooting downhill is I've made this mistake a lot

of times the animals below me. I draw back, I level, everything's good, I bend at the hips, I go down past the deer, and then I try to aim up at the deer. So what I'm saying is my pin. Let's say my pin now, goes below where I want to hit, and I'm trying to push the boat up into the kill zone that pin. The trouble with this is and it's it's hard to fight because gravity is pulling your bow down and you're trying to force your

bow up. Well, what that does is as you release, you're putting so much pressure that it pushes your hand up when you shoot. And I have had a few instances where I've done this and just shot right over the deer's back. Now I can think of the times that I've missed downhill. I don't think that I've ever

missed shooting below an animal. It always goes over the back, over the back, And that's because these little things that are if you just think about it, if you're trying to aim up on an animal that's below you, you're really fighting it to get that pin settled where you want. And when you let go, all your energy now that you only have one hand on that boat is going up and as soon as you release the string, you're just gonna shoot high. So what I'll do is I'll

drawback level, start aiming down. I'll get close to the back of the deer, and then I just keep bending my hips down and settle from the top down. I try not to go below. Now if I get low, I'll just kind of move back up higher and then try to settle down on the animal. As opposed to being low and pushing my pin up to where I want to shoot. I'll get my pin above exactly where I want to hit and let it slightly lower to the spot that I'm aiming at. I think the most

important thing with downhill shooting is just practice. Now I'm fortunate I can just go to the mountain and shoot downhill pretty much daily if I want not. Everybody has that luxury. Now, if you have somewhere you can practice, if you practice it in your backyard, if that's allowed. There's been times where I have shot off my balcony to get some downhill shots in. I've literally shot off

my roof. I've shot off of a ladder. I mean, as long as it's legal to shoot wherever you're shooting, and you can shoot off your roof, you can shoot off. Just be careful, don't fall. Don't call me and say, hey, I fell off my roof. Your tips sucks. But get that practice in. I know, guys that tree stand hunt all the time, and they practice shooting out of a tree stand they put up in their backyard or a

ladder stand. Like that's a great idea. Just have some incline when you're shooting at a target to get that practice, to get the draw cycle down, to get that aiming down, to practice moving down onto the targets opposed to pushing up, even though you probably should aim down all the time. I think the practice, you might surprise yourself at the type of shots where your arrow hits, even though you have a range finder that gives you not your line

of sight but your true ballistic range. You say you're I. I shoot a double pin, which acts like pretty much a single pin, so I can set my pin exactly for the yardage that my range finder reads. Now, in practice, I find that the steeper the angle, the more exaggerated and lower I have to aim. And the reason is isn't because okay, maybe the true range is correct and that arrow will hit where I want it to for that site. But what's different is my perception of the target.

If I'm at a forty five degree angle looking off of a cliff at a deer, its vitals are not looking the same as a broadside target. What I see through my eyes is completely different than a deer that is just flat standing there. I can pick that spot on its vitals where I want. When I'm shooting down, I really see the top of its back and some of its side. So I have to consciously tell myself aim a little lower. That way my arrow will actually

impact slightly higher than where I'm aiming. And this you just have to figure out through practice practice at different angles and different distances, because it changes and is more exaggerated the further out you go and the steeper you go. You know, one thing that people always talk about is, okay, now that we've got these range finders that give us

our true ballistic range. There's been times where I've been in the mountains and I've ranged something and it goes, Man, that looks so far away and you range it yards, Well, it's the line of sight might be eighty year, a hundred yards depending on the angle you go. Well, that's only a forty five yards shot. Yes, gravity is affecting your arrow as a forty five yard shot, but you still have to execute a shot as good as you would at the actual line of sight. Even though gravity

only pulls your arrow a certain distance. You're just compensating for the drop. But what you see is a hundred yard shot. If it's a hundred yards line of sight, that's the type of shot you need to execute. If you can't make a hundred yards shot, even though your arrow only drops for forty five yards, there's less margin of air as far as the drop in the arrow.

But you have to be as steady as you would for a hundred yard shot because you still have other factors like wind resistance, cross winds, as well as the target looks a long ways away because it is a long ways away. Now, gravity might not affect your arrow the same as your line of sight, but you still have to execute that shot like it's a further shot. And I think a lot of people forget that. So they go to a they go to shoot off a cliff, They range it like forty yards, that's within my range,

and then they miss and like, how did I miss that? Well? You missed because you're treating it like you're shooting at something that's forty yards, not something that's a hundred yards, like your line of SIGHTE. Yeah, you might only use your forty yard pin but you really have to focus in and execute a shot that might be further than your ability. So that's something you have to factor in when you're in the mountains. How far can I actually

shoot downhill? And that only comes with practice, you know. I just really wanted to talk about this because I think that once you grasp shooting downhill, you're going to be more successful. The reason is because most of the opportunity I have mountain hunting is downhill shots. Stocks are more successful coming in from the top. A lot of animals bed in a way where they're facing downhill. So if you get the right can issues and you can pop over ridge shoot down a cliff, you're gonna be

overall more successful hunting big game. Hopefully you enjoyed our first podcast. I really just want to thank everybody for listening through it. I really appreciate you. Feel free to reach out via social media, send me some feedback, give me some ideas on questions you'd like answered, as well as maybe some stories you'd like to hear. I'm open to any kind of suggestions. Give us a good rating

wherever you're listening. That will that always helps. I think next week I want to tackle the topic that I get asked quite often, and it's regarding bear country. What do I do in bear country? How do I stay safe in bear country? What do I do with a bear attacks? I think I can answer a lot of those questions as well as I love to share a few stories of close encounters I've had with both black bears, brown bears, grizzly bears. So next week we'll talk all

things bears. I think you'll really enjoy it, and as always, thank you very much. I really appreciate you, and stay frosty all right, talk to you later. M