Usually in January my hunting season has been over for a while and all I think about is when warm weather will return so I will be able to get back out into the woods again. I have not ever given much thought about going to Arizona before to do a deer hunt, but after talking with a friend this fall that has done this kind of hunt several times I decided to give it a try. The hunt would be in late January for Coues deer in southeast Arizona. The good thing about this hunt is that a tag can be bought over the counter and also you can choose if you want to go after Coues or Mule Deer. I guess I chose to go after Coues since I had never pursued them before, actually I had never even seen one before this hunt. The deer would be rutting in a late January and I convinced Justin to get some time off work so we could go down together. Before I knew it we had all our gear loaded in the truck and were on the road to Arizona. Sixteen hours of driving later we parked at the spot where we would set up camp and where we would live for the next week.

After we got camp set up we went out on a nearby ridge to see what we could find. It didn’t take long and we had deer spotted. The first one we saw was a small buck that was cruising around like he was looking for a doe. We continued to watch the little buck and eventually he met up with a doe and large buck. Being new to looking at Coues deer, which are fairly small animals, judging his exact size was hard but I knew this was a great buck and was honored to just see an animal like that. The deer went up and over a ridge and out of sight as the sun went down. That would be that last we would see of the big buck.

The next morning we headed uphill again to do some glassing. We ended up finding some deer in some of the thick timber and I headed off to try a stalk. I ended up getting to about a hundred yards from the deer when they busted out and it was over. Right then we knew that sneaking up on these deer in this type of terrain and vegetation would be nearly impossible. The rest of the day was spent looking through binoculars and spotting scopes, which became a major part of the hunt. Coues deer are small animals and the grey color made these deer fairly hard to spot. There were times when we were looking through our scopes with 20-25 power at hillsides only a few hundred yards away, and I know we were not seeing some of the deer that were there.

The next couple days we covered a lot ground and were seeing deer but were not having much luck in getting close to them.

One afternoon while glassing Justin spotted a Javelina out feeding on the ridge opposite us. I had a tag for Javelina as well and since we didn’t see any deer in the immediate area I went after it. By the time I got to where it was feeding it had moved off and I could not find where it had went to so I headed back to our glassing spot and met back up with Justin. Right away after I got back I spotted some more Javelina down the ridge from where I had just been. They seemed to be running around all over the hillside so I grabbed my bow again and I was off to try again. By then the sun was going down and the wind started to go downhill so I went below them and stalked them from below. I was able to sneak right up on two of them as they were feeding on a large yucca type plant. I ranged them at twenty yards and drew my bow. I had a good shot at the left one so I settled my pin and let the arrow go. With that I had my first Javelina ever, and a nice boar at that.

By the last couple days of our six days to hunt we had somewhat learned how to better hunt for the deer. We had pretty much given up on just stalking up on them. What we ended up doing that seemed to work better was to go to certain areas where the deer were rutting and then we just would sit and hope they would come near us. Another way was to stalk to within a hundred yards or so and then hope the deer move around and get closer. Doing this took some patience and also getting the wind to be right was very important, which seemed to be fairly unpredictable in this area. Also, while sitting and waiting it gave us some time to enjoy the scenery and things around us.

While sitting one morning I had a good eight point buck chase a doe near me, but not quite close enough for a bow shot. It was a cloudy day and sprinkled rain off and on and the deer stayed out in the open country all day. This allowed me to try a couple of stalks, and I got to within range of does a couple of times, but my tag was for antlered deer only so I had to let them go.

On the last morning of the hunt I spotted a buck and doe in some thick cedar trees. The buck was chasing the doe around, but staying in one general area so I knew I had to try to get in there and do it quickly. I moved in as quietly as I could and eventually spotted a doe moving around through the brush. It was coming right towards me so I stood still and readied my bow as I hoped a buck would be behind her. As the doe got to within twenty yards another doe with the buck following came running toward me and the first doe. The buck and doe made a turn and ended up going out of sight for a little while before coming back at a run. I was able to grunt and get him stopped at what I figured to be thirty yards. I took a quick shot but completely missed. Not sure what exactly happened, all I knew is that I had just messed up the only opportunity I was likely to get.

I hiked back to where I had left most of my gear and then waited for Justin as he was supposed to meet up with me after his morning hunt. He had seen some deer that morning and had made some attempts at getting on a couple bucks but it just didn’t happen for him. We gathered our things and started back toward camp with a feeling of being beat. Just when we last expected it a young buck came out of nowhere in front of us, trotted across the road we were on and into the timber on the other side. He must have been on the trail of a doe since he didn’t really notice us. I was able to manuever around to where I could see him walking away through the trees and at that time he noticed me and turned to look back. The shot was quartering away but I felt good about the 35 yard shot so I took it. The arrow hit right where I wanted. It entered just behind the last rib and exited out the buck’s chest in front of the offside shoulder. He disappeared into the timber and we didn’t see him go down so we gave him thirty minutes before trailing him.

As I walked up on the buck it seemed unreal. It just goes to show that even if you think something is over you really shouldn’t give up, even though I pretty much had. Things can go from bad to great in a matter seconds. Unfortunately Justin was not able to harvest a deer on this trip, but it was not due to lack of trying.

If you are looking for a hunt that will challenge you, try hunting Coues deer with a bow spot and stalk style. Out of the hunts that I have done, and I think I have done some challenging ones, Coues deer were the hardest for me to get an arrow through. This type of hunt is not very physically demanding but would make a great bowhunter even better and I would recommend everyone try it.

-Ethan Starck

During the fall I work for an outfitter guiding elk and deer hunters in northwest Wyoming. This September some things happened on an archery hunt that puts the ethics of bowhunters in question. In short, the three hunters in camp put an arrow through an elk, none of the elk were recovered. I will describe the three situations below in more detail. After reading this please comment on what you think about each situation and what you would have done differently, if anything.

Elk #1 – I was 75 yards behind my hunter cow calling while a small five point bull comes straight toward the hunter. The elk stopped at five yards and stood there for about a minute then spooked. I cow called and stopped the bull and the hunter took a fifteen yard, quartering away shot. As the elk ran off I could see the fletching of the arrow still sticking out the entrance side, but it had got about two feet of penetration. I knew the shot was high, but not sure on exactly how high. We waited an hour and then went to look for blood, which we found about a hundred yards from where the shot was taken. The blood trail was fairly good and I could follow it at a walk. We went another 500 yards and the blood started to thin out. At this point I am on my hands and knees following tracks and looking for specks of blood. At this point I decided we needed to give the bull some time because I figured the hit was not as good as we originally thought. I now think that instead of a high lung shot, the elk is probably hit in the backstraps and into the top of the off side shoulder. We give the bull four hours and went back with two more people to look more. We followed tracks and would find little spots of blood every 20-30 yards. From the shot we had followed the blood and tracks about 1500 yards when we lost the trail. At this point we spread out and searched the area we figured the elk went to but never found any more sign. We looked for several hours before it got dark and we called it a loss. The next day my hunter and I went out hunting and hunted the last few days of the hunt without getting another shot at an elk.

Elk #2 – The hunter and guide put a stalk on a herd of elk and got to within 65 yards of the herd bull, a 340 class six point. The hunter said he could make the shot so he drew back and took the shot. They said that they watched the arrow go straight about half the way and then the arrow dived to the right and hit the bull in the hip. They said the wind was not blowing where they were, but must have been gusting through the little draw the bull was in because that is what caused the arrow to go off target. The arrow got very little penetration and obviously was stuck in solid bone. They watched the bull gather up his cows and leave. They knew the hit was not lethal so they did not attempt to track the bull. They continued to hunt and two days after shooting the bull they saw him bugling his head off with his group of cows. He seemed to be just fine, except he probably will forever have a broadhead imbedded in his hip bone.

Elk #3 – Another spot and stalk situation where the hunter was able to get to 30 yards and take a quartering away shot from above the elk. They thought the shot was good but knew very little penetration was achieved suggesting the shot was in the shoulder. They saw the bull run off and the arrow fall out. They recovered the arrow and left the area for a few hours. Three inches of the arrow was broke off, so with the broadhead the length broke off would have been about four inches. The section of arrow they had was bloody for about four inches. Some people said this meant they got eight inches of penetration, but I didn’t agree. I think they got three or four inches and the reason the arrow was bloody is because the little time it spent in the animal blood was spread over the arrow, but was outside the body. They looked for the elk for a day and half but found little to no blood and never found the elk.

In 2011 I shot an elk and when I was cutting out the backstrap I discovered a broadhead that someone had shot the bull with at least one year before. It made me wonder how much effort did that hunter put into looking for that elk, what did he do? I have wounded animals myself and personally it makes me wonder if I should even be bowhunting. For myself I had a rule that if I put an arrow through an animal my hunt was over whether I recovered the animal or not. I am curious as to what others think about wounding animals and what you would do in these scenarios.

One more thing, all three hunters above and the elk that I shot had been shot with a G5 Montec broadhead. This is just a coincidence I suppose, but after this I definitely wouldn’t recommend that broadhead.

-Ethan Starck
starckbros@adventurousbowhunter.com

I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in a ranching family, and there isn’t much that enjoy more than spending time on my parents cattle ranch in eastern Wyoming. We are lucky to be in an area that has abundant wildlife including whitetail and mule deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, turkeys and lots of other small game. Mule deer being my favorite big game animal, I have taken a special interest in the ones on the ranch. When we first acquired the ranch the deer herd had been hunted heavily in the past and there was hardly any age structure. We knew that if we wanted to have some larger deer on the property we would have to let them get older. We decided to harvest mature deer only, and we figured that meant a mule deer that was 4.5 years old or older. To help improve the quality of deer I also tried to plant some food plots. This didn’t work out so well as it is a pretty dry climate, an average of about 15 inches of rain per year, and the stuff I planted didn’t grow very well. Luckily there are dryland hay fields that have alfalfa in them that provide the deer with nutrition so I gave up on food plots and focused strictly on age for the first several years. Now that there are several deer around 5 years old on the property and plenty of ones younger to take their place in future years I have decided to start working on the genetics part of the management by culling out older bucks that aren’t as big as I would like. This may be a lost cause since most of the neighboring properties aren’t practicing the same deer management that we are, but I have to try.

The above picture was taken in early July while scouting and shows two management bucks; the one on the left and the one-third from the left. The buck second from the left is exactly the type of buck that I want to see more of. The reason the two mentioned are management bucks is because they are both mature and just haven’t grown quite big enough antlers. The one is a 2×3 and the other is a 3×4, and I would like to have 4x4s or better. I wouldn’t consider the buck on the right as a management buck since I think he is only 3 years old, and he may grow significantly from this year to next.

When I returned home from my Colorado deer hunt I did a little scouting to make sure the deer were still on their summer patterns. I confirmed that they were, and also that some of the bucks had already lost their velvet, a sign that things were about to start changing.

I hunted a few different days without getting a shot. I wasn’t too worried about it as I knew that I just had to be patient and not push the deer too much. I have found one of the best ways to hunt these deer is to intercept them going from where they bed to where they feed. This means hunting early in the morning or in the evenings. On September 7th I was late getting out and as I drove towards where I wanted to go I spotted a group of deer already out in the pasture. I looked at them through my binoculars and confirmed that it was the group of bucks and few does (brown dots). There is a picture below that diagrams my hunt and I will use it to show what happened. I kept driving down the road and then spotted a deer in a different spot that was headed towards the other deer (brown dot and line). I looked at him and confirmed that it was a deer I wanted to harvest, and since there was no way to stalk the others I decided to go after him. I parked my vehicle (black X) and started my stalk. I got down in a draw that would put me out of sight of all the deer and hurried to where I thought the buck would travel (black line). I was able to peek up out of the draw to confirm the deer was headed my way. From past experience I had a good idea of exactly where the buck would travel so I sat underneath a pine tree that was 35 yards from the trail. Now all I had to do was wait, which was pretty hard. I kept wanting to get up and make sure the deer was still coming, but I just had to trust my gut and sit there until dark or he came by. He popped out at 60 yards and stood there looking down into the draw where I was. After about a minute he felt comfortable and dropped down onto the trail I had hoped he would. As he walked by becoming broadside I was able to draw my bow without him noticing. He was still walking so I let out a soft grunt to stop him (white dots). I took the shot and the arrow zipped through both lungs and then stuck in the dirt bank behind him. He then ran about 75 yards (red line) when he then stopped and tipped over dead.

I saw and knew the buck was down so I hurried back to my pickup to get my camera and also drive to my buck to load him up. This is the first deer in several years that I have actually been able to drive to, and I had to almost re-learn how to gut a deer since I wasn’t going to bone this one out.

-Ethan Starck

I was born in Colorado and spent the first six years of my life there before we moved to Wyoming. There is something about going back there that always feels like going home, especially when I go to the mountains. My great-grandfather and grandpa on my mother’s side farmed on the Front Range and also ran cattle on a forest permit. Up near where they ran cattle in the high country is a spot where they hunted for deer and elk. That makes me part of the fourth generation that has hunted the area. It is a large basin that has ancient spruce trees in the bottom and at the top it is treeless alpine tundra. The first time I went there I was about five years old when we went there to go camping. I instantly fell in love with the spot and there is no doubt it is my favorite place in the world, and when I started hunting for mule deer there in 2009 it meant even more to me.

My 2012 hunt in Colorado started with a scouting trip in early August. I went to a couple of areas I have never been before, but in the end I didn’t find any deer so I ended up hunting the old faithful spot. One of my cousins that still lives in Colorado, Ray, was going to come in and hunt for opening weekend with me. He just recently got into bowhunting and had yet to harvest a big game animal.

I hiked the eight miles in a couple of days before the season opened to look around and see what deer I could find. When I topped through the pass into the basin I could see a tent where I planned on camping, and I had a feeling that I knew who it was. When I walked into camp Roy Grace was putting up a tarp for a little rain shelter. I had also met Roy there in 2009 and after shaking hands and greeting each other he offered to let me camp with him and even hunt together since he was there by himself. I got my pack unloaded and my camp set up and then it started to drizzle rain. We didn’t feel like being out in the rain so we stayed in and didn’t get to do any glassing that afternoon.

The next day was clear and we were able to glass up about 15 bucks throughout the basin, two of them were really nice. One was a big framed deer with huge back forks, but crabbed fonts. The other was a wide mainframe four point with a few extra inlines on each side. Roy estimated him to score around the 195 mark. There were a couple smaller bucks that I would also shoot. The one that I wanted was a buck that looked like a normal four point, but he had an extra point between his brow tine and what seemed like his G2. We called him the Dagger buck. We watched most of the deer for the entire day and then that afternoon Ray hiked into camp, opening day was the next morning.

We all got up before first light and I took Ray with me to go after Dagger and the bucks he was with. Roy was going to go to our glassing spot and try to find a buck to put a stalk on later in the day. I knew where the bucks Ray and I wanted went to the day before, so I sort of had an idea where they would be that morning, I was a little off. While still dark we ran into them and bumped them up onto a hillside where we located them once it got light out. They were feeding towards the timber so Ray and I went around to try and intercept them. We got around them, but then they fed in a different direction so we went after them. The group ended up splitting with Dagger, a little fork horn, and a doe heading one way while a group of bucks stayed and fed on some willow. Ray stalked in on them, but ran out of cover at 80 yards, so he didn’t get a shot. The bucks ended up going down into the timber so we decided to leave them alone and go see what Roy was up to. He had located the deer from the day before, but neither of the big bucks was in a good stalking location.

I started to glass behind us where Dagger had disappeared to, and to my surprise I found him standing in the shade of a couple spruce trees. He was only 400 yards away and was in a near perfect position for a stalk. I asked Ray if he wanted to go after him, but when he said I should go I didn’t argue with him and I started my stalk. I had a shallow draw to hide me for the first few hundred yards and then I started to go up a little rocky knoll where I planned to go to and should be right above the buck. I was slowly walking barefoot when a doe came feeding out from behind the knoll. I crouched down and crawled another ten yards to get within fifty of her, and then the buck stepped out. I ranged him at 54 yards, but he was always behind the doe. I sat crouched there for a couple of minutes without a shot, but then the buck cleared. I drew back and honestly I can’t fully remember this part but I guess I aimed true because at the shot I heard the arrow hit and then as the buck ran off I saw the arrow sticking out the off side. I watched through my binoculars as the buck ran about 80 yards before he started to wobble and then tipped over. It is hard to describe that moment, and having Ray and Roy watching it all from a distance made it even more special.

I went back to the guys and then to camp since it wasn’t too far away to get my camera and stuff to take care of the deer. When we arrived at camp Roy happened to see a buck bedded in the timber below us. He and Ray stalked to within 60 yards of the buck and Ray took the shot. The buck was bedded when he took the shot and had moved by the time the arrow got there, resulting in a hit that was far back. We knew we had to give the buck time so we went back to mine. After pictures we got the deer all boned out and hung in the shade. That afternoon we went and started to look for Ray’s deer. We found several beds with little amounts of blood, but nothing much. I told Ray to just wait until morning when we could just search the area, and in the meantime I would pack my deer out.

I got my deer packed out, and didn’t get back into until mid-morning the next day, but when I got there I heard the good news that Roy had found Ray’s deer. Ray had the deer already boned out and ready to go so we packed all of our gear and Ray had the meat as well, and we headed out. It was definitely a short hunt, but it all worked out and was a great hunt. I don’t know when the next time I get to go back there will be, but I can hardly wait.

Roy ended up leaving without filling his tag, but for him it was the big buck or nothing so he wasn’t at all disappointed. He did have some unneeded excitement though. Like almost getting struck by lightning, seriously injuring his knee, and then to top it off he got charged by a cow moose that he fought off with his trekking poles. He did make it out alive, but I doubt his wife will ever let him go on hunt alone ever again. Thanks Roy for being there and becoming a good friend.

-Ethan Starck