John Dudley: Mule Deer Hunt

John Dudley joins the podcast to give a detailed account of his successful Mule Deer Hunt in Eastern Colorado.

With days of zero wind we went back to traditional mulie hunting of long hours glassing open and bedding country. Thankful that @aron_snyder came over to glass with me on the morning that my buck was spotted. This bucks safe place area was super deceptive!! Although this looks like a flat tumbleweed pasture it was actually a diverse section with a lot of unseen pockets and rolls and drainages unseen to the eye. The section was filled with 2 year old corn stalks under the dead grass, volunteer dried wheat, thorns, sand burs, dried switchgrass and head deep entanglements of tumbleweeds. It was a mess. What made it worse is when I got close enough for a shot after hours of of a stalk I just couldn’t see the bucks vitals and arrow deflection was no doubt a problem. Getting archery close to this buck once with all the other eyes in the field or bedded animals you didn’t expect was hard enough. But I had to do it THREE times over two days. The key here was just be so methodical and take advantage of the brief pockets of wind gust. Honestly this is where I praise Yoga and ability to balance while crouched and on one leg for a long period of time while I would be slowly trying to weave my foot that was up in the air down to the ground through the mess without making a noise. I’m proud of this one because it was a level 10 chess match.

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