3 x 4 mule deer

[Okanagan]

3x4 with eye guards.  Modest rack with a hawg of a body.

Odd weekend for me.  Didn't take off Friday because of too much work.  Was feeling sick Sat morning.  By Sunday all I had left was one day instead of my planned overnight hike to a buck ridge.  So I went to a closer place with easy access.  This buck was a gift.

Fresh snow at dawn, but almost zero tracks and no deer nor moose.  One fresh lynx track but season isn’t open yet.  Three doe & fawn combo tracks and one BIG buck track striding out on a mission to find does.  It was hours old and likely he was miles away at the rate they travel in that mode.  By noon the snow had melted all except up near timberline and I decided to leave that entire area and hit another on my way home.  Was boogying to make one calling stand on my way out in the most likely place I’d seen, when this buck and two does crossed the logging road in front of me 400 yards before I got to the calling spot.

I followed on a parallel little ridge as he went up through Christmas trees and tried to call him into circling me.  After 3 minutes I saw his face through a hole in a clump of Christmas trees at 170 yards.  No possible rest so I dialled to 9 power, got into the sling and did my thyroid wobble onto his shoulder.  Nice “WHOP” at the shot, and he fell without moving.  OK, I missed his shoulder, but will take the neck as consolation.  Would not want to bet I would make that shot offhand standing up on my hind legs.  Exit side showing below.  165 Hornady Interbond from 30-06.








250 yard heavy drag to the road. 

[HaMeR]

Yeah he sure looks like a brute!! Congratulations on a fine mulie buck!! 

[FOsteology]

Healthy looking buck!

Must have been "fun" dragging him 250 yards! lol

Congrats!

[Okanagan]

Healthy looking buck!

Must have been "fun" dragging him 250 yards! lol

Congrats!

Thanks.  Yep,  slow sweaty drag.  That's how us codgers get heart attacks.    It was all slightly downhill and no bad logs or I would have cut him up and carried him down on my frame pack.  The last 4x4 I got was smaller than this one but I could not get him into my Suzuki by myself and had to cut him in half.  On this one, a man and his wife drove up at the perfect time and helped me load the buck, in sleety rain.  The only vehicle that went by.

The deer in this area have some huge body weights, and this fellow would have been a doozer in another couple of years. 

[Hawks Feather]

Nice looking mule deer and it will sure help fill your freezer.  The body size is bigger than most of the whitetail that we have.  On the up side, our deer are corn fed.   

Jerry

[KySongDog]

Very nice!  Congrats!   

That rack might be modest for a mulie but it sure is nice compared to the white tail we have. 

[iahntr]

Nice ! 

[Hidehunter]

Sweet!!  Those pics sure do make me wana take another trip out west.

[eleaf]

He didn't happen to have a bad limp in the right front leg, did he?   

I busted one about that size in WY on Oct 10. In the left shoulder, out through the right, breaking it and rendering it useless. But we lost him in the sage flats, despite searching for him for 5 hours. I wouldn't be surprised if we walked 5 feet from him and never saw him.   

Nice buck!   

[eleaf]

Very nice!  Congrats!   

That rack might be modest for a mulie but it sure is nice compared to the white tail we have.

Real nice.

When I was in WY I had an "Any Deer" tag. If it was a deer, I could shoot it. Whit tail, mulie, buck or doe it didn't matter. So I was hunting both. I saw a 3x3 white tail, but decided to let him go because he was just too small. The next day I saw a 3x3 mulie that absolutely DWARFED the 3x3 white tail from the day before.

I would have shot that 3x3 mulie and brought him home, but right behind him was a 4x4 that I shot, hit, broke his shoulder, and lost.   

[nastygunz]

Thick as a brick, I wish we had them hoggs up here

[Okanagan]

Thanks for the good words.  I just shot him and enjoyed the hunt:   can't take credit for his size nor much else!

Here's a loin chop off of this deer, unusually fat for this late in the Fall.  He is astoundingly tender and flavorful.  Big surprise at this time of year with his big neck but a nice bonus.



eleaf, his shoulder was fine.  He was 300 vertical feet below open timberline, not a sage bush for many miles, and about 600 miles northwest from mid-Wyoming! 

[Carolina Coyote]

What is your estimate of what that Mule weighted , he looks heavy.  cc

[Okanagan]

Gutted and unskinned, he went at least between 230 and 240.  250 is more likely.  You are welcome to doubt that size if you want but I have weighed a number of bucks from that region as have friends of mine and the really big ones go well over 300 lbs. gutted and unskinned.    They don't have antlers like Colorado but BC bucks routinely have some of the heaviest body weights of mule deer in North America. 

[Carolina Coyote]

 I don't doubt the weight he looks heavy to me, I was just wondering what the Mulies  weighted. The Whitetails here don't see a whole lot over two hundred lbs live weight. cc

[Okanagan]

Your whitetail are pretty good sized compared to some.  I was visiting Texas a couple of years ago when a friend killed a dandy big buck that was about the size of a German shepherd, and not even a big shepherd.  There is a huge variety of sizes and body weights between deer from region to region.

We have some small blacktails on some of the Gulf Islands between the mainland here and Vancouver Island, and they aren't very big on Vancouver Island.  About Dec. 1 one year a young friend shot a legal YOY doe.  It was hanging skinned when we loaded the boat to leave our camp on a Gulf Island.  I grabbed it by the neck, cut the cord and carried it one handed up over a pile of driftwood shore logs to our boat.  It wasn't very big!  My grandson killed a spike on Vancouver Island last Fall that produced 36 lbs. of boneless meat.

By contrast my second biggest mule deer we boned out and packed for three miles and what we carried out weighed exactly 120 lbs.  Never weighed my biggest one.  Friends who regularly kill mature big mulies in mid Montana say that they are not nearly that heavy on average.  A lot will go 165-185 gutted with exceptionally big ones going over 220.

Whitetails in Canada also get big.  I don't have as much experience but a skinned and trimmed fork horn I shot weighed 142 lbs. hanging at the butcher shop ready to be cut up. 

Some of the mule deer/blacktail hybrid bucks are really heavy.  We hunt them up a trail near timberline so only have boned out weights, but the big old mature bucks (the only kind really worth shooting that far back in) have gone from 92 to 115 lbs, and that last one had a LOT of bloodshot ham trimmed away.  I will admit that I killed a fork horn up the same trail that produced 48 lbs. of boneless meat -- much easier to carry!

[FOsteology]

I'll have know we Texans prefer our deer like our women. Petite, with large racks. 

It is amazing the differences in body size and general physical appearance of deer the further North one goes. The brutes up North (especially in Saskatchewan) are unreal.

[Carolina Coyote]

The area we hunt here there is a lot of cultivation and I think that is the reason for the bigger Bucks and Does,I have killed several 200 lb Bucks the biggest 212 lb, i have heard some bigger have been killed but I have not seen one, with the guys I hunt with we kill a lot of Deer and none over the 212 but that don't mean they are not out there. i saw one last week that I think will go over that but that is guessing. I am Hunting all this week and maybe I can get a shot at him. Good luck on your hunts this year. cc

[Okanagan]

I'll have know we Texans prefer our deer like our women. Petite, with large racks. 

[Frogman]

Okanagan,

That's a nice deer!  Good shooting and thanks for the story and pictures!

Jim