Beer Commercial Bucks
By: James McKew
Charlie sat sweating through his layers because, let’s face it, no matter how many laps you take around the neighborhood with a thirty-pound ruck strapped to your back, it’s nowhere near as exhausting as hiking uphill at nine-thousand feet.
He pulled over, sat on a boulder, and rested his bow. This was it, opening day, the grown man’s Christmas Morning. The first weekend in September, the night wasn’t cold, the aspens were still very green, and the dark morning sky was the same as when he was a kid.
The long hike made his pulse jump. He gasped for air like he was making hook shots at the basketball court, and his ego was still in a relatively positive place. Last night, he slept in his truck at a trailhead below; the tight space gave him a crick in his neck. He took a minute now to check the GPS on his phone; he still had a quarter mile further to go before cresting out. Back on his feet, he took a long pull from the rubber hose over his shoulder and got back to it, headlamp beam bouncing out ahead. Mentally, he was humming along to KC and the Sunshine Band, a song he didn’t want in his head but wouldn’t go away, and as the chorus played over and over, he crested the bowl at 9,300 feet.
The mountain before him was in silhouette with a hazy blue background. On the slopes, way above timberline, he could see a faint glow of snow patches that survived the hot summer. The bowl below him was rimmed in rock but had a grassy bottom. Taking this all in, Charley felt like he had stepped into a beer commercial, where black bears spoke English, butterflies eternally twittered, and he could drink freely from a crystal-clear stream.
Of course, he wasn’t an idiot. He avoided drinking directly from streams…it was the thought that counted…that and the fact that he was alone in the mountains. In a nation with 340 million people, he had this footprint of heaven all to himself.
He dropped his pack and got out his spotting scope. This was big country, and his eyes weren’t as good as when he was twenty. He dug out an energy bar with chocolate chips, chewed it slowly, enjoying the sugar rush, drank some water, and worked the scope across the meadows. Five seconds in, he picked up small grey dots at the edge of the trees. Heads down, they were grazing on the last of the summer wildflowers before moving further downhill.
Oh, man! He thought and instantly pictured antlers on the living room wall and the smell of venison chili bubbling in the crockpot. He spent the summer nailing foam-shaped animals at the archery range and was a dead-eye to sixty yards. Dawn was coming with just enough light to see his breath steaming. He thought that someone could make a million dollars bottling this stuff.
Searching closer, he picked out a buck on the far side and held his breath to steady the scope lens. It looked good, maybe a 4×4 or 5×5, but it is hard to tell. He followed it patiently, watched as the buck slowly grazed uphill, and finally settled under a pine tree. Perfect.
He got his phone out, saved a waypoint on that tree, and plotted how to approach without blowing up the entire meadow.
He thought it best to back out, so he did that, got under the crest and out of sight of the deer, and stood there a long minute admiring the view of the climb he made earlier: public land, National Forest, you got to love America. It was a heck of a hike to get here.
About a half mile below him, he caught a glimpse of color through the trees. A flashlight? Another hunter? Through his binoculars, he saw a rider on a mountain bike. Just a glimpse, and then he was gone. The good news was that an agreement was struck between the Forest Service and a conservation group to build trails across the mountains that skirted mule deer and elk summer grazing areas. The bikers and hikers got well-designed trails with dynamite views, and the wildlife could access their historic grounds in relative peace: a win-win for everyone.
Charlie turned his attention back to the mountain and decided to keep low and go around the meadow to the far side where the buck was bedded. Slow, quiet, cautious, he was a good two hours into the sneak when he reached where he spotted the buck before dawn.
Charlie stopped for a drink of water and was treated to a bald eagle sailing overhead. Down closer to where he was, green lichen clung to the north side of the rock he sat on. The lichen was everywhere on the stones, and he felt alive. It took a few extra minutes to catch his breath, and in that time, he noticed off to the southwest, the sky looked dirty, like maybe smoke from an Arizona fire was drifting in on him. It was hard enough to breathe up here without inhaling smoke ash.
He dropped his pack and crawled in on his belly, got within eyesight of the tree with the buck, and slowly raised his binos.
Yep, the buck was still there. The tips of his horns were just visible. Charlie looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past noon. Perfect. He inched closer and ranged the tree at eighty-five yards, still too far. Down low, inching along at eye-level with the earth, he saw little yellow flowers he never noticed before and watched a couple of chipmunks chase each other around, and before long, he was at forty-seven yards and stopped. This distance was reasonable. The wind was right. He lay on his back, an arrow nocked and ready on the bow. The plan was to wait until the buck made his noontime stand up, turn around, and lay down routine. In the middle of that, Charlie would sit up, aim, and shoot the buck clean…a shot he practiced all summer long.
Good Luck!
Good luck this winter and remember to send any success pictures or stories from the field to [email protected]. You could be featured on our website or in our magazine. If this article or any of our articles have helped you become a better hunter or conservation steward, become a member of the Mule Deer Foundation or Blacktail Deer Foundation for only $35 dollars a year. Click here to join: https://muledeer.org/product-category/membership/
James McKew
James McKew is an American outdoorsman and writer who lives in Colorado. Born in Covina, California, he was transplanted to Northern Nevada in 1974 and remained there until 2013. During his time in Nevada, he worked in a missile factory, was an EMT on a volunteer ambulance, was a land surveyor, and laid sprinkler pipes with undocumented lawn specialists. James focuses on the human experience, digging deeper into why people spend time outdoors.
