My dad, brother, and I recently took a trip to Montana on a deer hunt. The hunt posed many challenges and we fell short of successfully harvesting anything, but overall it was a great learning experience for my brother and I.
We arrived late in northern Montana on September 21st with our first day hunting being the 22nd. That first morning we headed out to the unknown country in which we would be hunting until the morning of the 26th (short trip). Only seeing this BLM land from topo maps, we didn’t know what to really expect. When we arrived we noticed the land was very vast. It didn’t take long until my dad said, “This looks like rifle country.”
The land consisted of rolling mountains/hill with thin aspens on the high grounds. On the slopes of some mountain ranges there were cooleys filled with thickets, while the rest of the land consisted of CRP. Our game plan the first day was just to try and educate ourselves of the lay of land while trying to spot and identify what kind of activity was taking place. Our tags allowed us to either take a Mule Deer or Whitetail. My brother Gabe and I had never hunted for mule deer before, only whitetails in Michigan and Kansas. We needed to learn and learn quickly about their behavior. That first day we stayed on high ground and glassed with only spotting one mule doe, but figured they liked to stay in or stay close to the thickets located in the cooleys on the face of the mountains. In the afternoon we transitioned to the low to easily cover more ground. We felt this was the quickest way to educate ourselves. That night I went back to some different high ground over looking an alfalfa field. I observed 27 mule deer and 3 whitetails at a distance feeding in an alfalfa field that consisted of 3 decent shooters. Hoping that this was a pattern, I moved in there on the third day morning and night hunt resulting in only seeing one doe. With that result, I concluded that these deer where not holding a pattern, which cost me another full day. During this time, Gabe and my dad hunted a few miles away and spotted a mix of whitetails and mule deer in the distance.
In between our second day hunts we headed back in the afternoon into the small town that we were staying to get some supplies and hang some stands on the Milk River. While in town “The Crush” RV drove by us. It was kind of cool seeing it and knowing that Lee and Tiffany were hunting out there near us during the same time. When we got to the river we found a couple of good areas when scouting it and decided to hang three stands to hunt the following morning. On day three of the hunt the temperature was approaching 96 degrees. This made for a slow morning hunt on the river which made us head back to the hills for the evening hunt. Due to the temperature reaching 101 degrees at night, it was even slower than the morning. The frustrating thing about it was when we would get back to the truck at night and drive out of the property our headlights would hit multiple big bucks, both muley and whitetail. Seeing them just rubbed it in, but also let us know they were out there.
On the fourth day, our final full day, we headed back to the high hills and glassed the different thickets in the cooleys. I spotted a mule deer working the edge of a thicket about a mile and a half away. We kept eyes on him until we saw him bed. Once he bedded we made our way to his home. Blowing a stalked the day before due to no wind, we noticed that the deer worked straight up from the cooley to high ground for safety. Because of this, we decided the best possible strategy was to try and push him to one of us. With that in mind, Gabe got down the light wind and worked above the cooley while I waited for him to get in position. Once he positioned himself on top of the ridge above where the deer was bedded he was about 100 yards out. I then started my slow walk right to where the deer was bedded with a slight angle in hopes of pushing him Gabe’s way. I got about 150 yards out when the buck rose from his bed and jumped out of the thicket and stopped on a wide open spine. He stared at me while I tried to signal to Gabe where he was. I didn’t realize this at the time but Gabe had another spine in his line of sight that prevented him from seeing the buck. After a 10 second stare off with this buck he bound away and was heading right towards Gabe. When I looked at Gabe he was glassing me to see what the update was. I was excitedly trying to signal he’s coming and draw your bow. Well it was too late and the buck was heading right towards him until they both finally noticed each other at 40 yards. The buck then redirected his escape and Gabe never got the bow drawn. It was a plan that almost worked perfect.
On our final morning hunt we spotted a pretty nice muley buck in a thicket with 3 does feeding around him. We observed them for 15 minutes while coming up with a game plan. We knew this was going to be the last hunt and this had to be it. The wind finally had picked up on this morning and we felt we had a great shot at a true sneak approach. Even with that, one of us was still going to take the high ground incase of a spooked deer. Gabe decided he was going to take the high ground on the northeast side (1 o’clock) of the buck, and I was going to come in on the west side (9 o’clock) of him. The wind was coming out of the east (3 o’clock). We made our way down the mountain that we were glassing from when we first spotted the deer and regrouped at the bottom after I took a nice spill down the last 10 feet. Once Gabe confirmed I wasn’t going to cry we stuck to plan and moved on. I then gave him a 5 minute head start to gain ground and get on top of the mountain that the buck was bedded. I then started to slowly work across the middle of the mountain. I made my way over the first spine and was coming up over the second one when I spotted the buck and noticed he had gotten out of his bed and began feeding in the cooley. He was moving very slow but was working right towards me at 9 o’clock. This would have been perfect but there was a huge problem, which was that Gabe had no idea he was out feeding and he was probably going to be busted by him. I had two wishes, the buck either hurried my way before Gabe came up over the top or Gabe was deep enough on the other side that the buck didn’t hear or smell him. Unfortunately, the buck picked him off working the top and bolted out of the coolie in our opposite direction at 3’oclock.
When the stalk came to an end we realized the trip was over; we were coming home empty handed. It was kind of funny though, because we were both pretty excited when recapping our hunts on the walk out. In 4 ½ days of DIY hunting on public land, going after an animal and entering an environment neither of us have ever experienced before, we felt a whole new level of confidence. We overcame record high temps, nocturnal deer, no wind, and hundreds of cows just to name a few. Even with all that, we were still able to get very close a few times, just never got that little bit of luck needed to seal the deal and make this successful hunt just a little more successful. It will be interesting to watch “The Crush” next year and see how ol Lee and Tiff faired.
Can’t wait to see this land again in November, watch out! Fuzz
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