No, I am not dead. I have been back from my trip hunting Mule Deer in North Dakota for a little over a week but have been busy trying to catch up with things. It was an amazing adventure that I will never forget. The story is far too long to tell on here but I will try to sum it up in a nutshell. Here is how it went down;
We packed the truck and trailer to capacity and left on September 1st at 7am from my parents' home in Croswell, Michigan. We decided to go through the upper peninsula and travel through Wisconsin and Minnesota instead of fighting with traffic in Chicago. Little did we know 20 hours into the trip a Twins game would be just ending and we hit the traffic around St. Paul. We ended up making it to Fargo, ND where we hit the Loaf and Jug gas station where we gassed up for the 4th or 5th time before going about 40 more miles and taking a power nap at a rest stop. After about 2.5 hours of restless sleep we hit the road again in dense fog. It would be the ONLY precipitation we would get all week.
Our first view of the Badlands happened as we hit highway 85 North just before Medora. We had to stop and snap some shots as it was the greatest thing we had ever seen.
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| Our first taste of Badlands! |
If you have never seen the Badlands before it is definitely something straight out of Red Dead Redemption. It is something everyone should experience sometime in their life. We headed into one of the biggest non-motorized areas of public land we could find to try to find a decent place to camp. My fiancee had seen on the internet that a man had strangled his wife to death and was hiding right where we were. We saw many and talked to a few police officers and fish and game personnel that were driving around looking for the guy. They gave us a picture of him in case we saw him.
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| Dirk Huber - Choking Hazard |
We never did run into him but early in the week we were passed by about 10 police vehicles moving pretty quick so we assume he was picked up. We drove around for most of the first day we were in North Dakota and saw no deer. I did however spot my first Antelope and I was pretty excited. By the end of the trip however with hundreds of false mule deer sightings that ended up being speed goats I was not amused with them any longer. We saw way more antelope than deer and there is no season on them this year due to "low numbers." Kind of hard to believe.
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| Pronghorn Bucks Everywhere |
We made camp near an oil rig that had an open flame longer than our truck that lit up the valleys that surrounded camp at night. This was our night light even though the stars and moon could have been mistaken for day light some nights.
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| Our camp at night. |
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| Inside the tent. |
The whole area was awesome so many places to hunt and for game to hide.
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| Our view from camp. |
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The temps were in the high 80s all ten days and it felt more like 120s cooking in the rocks. Mornings were decently cold which made it hard to get out of bed.
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| Dying in the heat after one of our 9 mile hikes. |
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| Enjoying my sleeping bag in the cold morning. |
We glassed some valleys behind the camp the first night unsuccessfully and it took about 3 or 4 days before we got the hang of glassing, finding deer and what time the deer moved. We had a lot of help from the elk hunters we talked to!
We saw a lot of coyotes, prairie dogs, one bull elk, tons of antelope and bison oh and a badger as well. Not to mention 4 different snakes but no rattlers or cougars. Just some cougar mother and cub tracks that were pretty fresh.
The first deer we saw was from the truck. It was about a two year old 8 point whitetail in velvet. Probably 70 yards from the road just taking a stroll. We finally jumped a doe on the way out of one glassing spot and that got us a little pumped but we both did not find what we expected with this hunt. We had no idea of the climbing and hiking. I was told it would be a lot and our inexperience probably made us go a little farther (MILES) out of our way than necessary a few times. I had also pictured more deer. We saw no small bucks and only a few does. We probably saw roughly 5 mule deer bucks all of which were wall hangers even in Jim Shockey's trophy room. One night we finally said we would hike deep into the valleys in front of camp where a kid said he and his dad had seen some deer. We would sit there until dark glassing and then hike out. It was a long hike and even a longer sit and I started to feel hopeless as I stood up to stretch. But, I looked out over the valley and all of a sudden I saw a deer. Now to this point I had had this feeling about 10,000 times and Joe had slammed on his brakes at least that many times because everything in this country looks like a deer. But, this time it was for real. We glassed him and it was what we thought was a 4x3 buck. He had super tall tines and he fed about 700-1000 yards away from us. We watched him until dark then backed out and headed to camp. I don't know if our boots touched the mountain until we hit camp. Since this hunt was my idea Joe let me have the first stalk so the plan was to get up at 3am to get to that glassing spot before daylight and find him in the morning, watch him bed then go in for the kill. In the morning we had to walk a little farther. Joe spotted him walking away from camp into the deeper valleys so we hit the next peak and then the next. Finally we stopped in a clump of pines and decided to wait for him to come out, all day if needed. Luckily, I somehow spotted him deep in the crack of the end of a valley and we watched him bed. That is when the shaking started. As we watched him bedded we realized he was actually a 5x4 since he had eye guards. We're not ones for naming deer but we had to with him. He became the TALL TINE NINE and my nemesis.
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| TALL TINE NINE |
Well I won't draw out the story of the stalk. I literally climbed two rock facings just to get to within 231 yards of this beast as he spotted me. There was a hole behind him that we didn't know he had view of. There was no wind all week so I was the only movement in the entire world to this deer and he bolted. We gave chase and actually jumped him bedded again at 60 yards and he ran out of our lives after that.
Joe ended up taking a nice doe out of a coulee that I ran decoy on. Our plan worked perfectly and he nailed her at 41 yards. I had another big deer a 5x5 bedded at 60 yards that I drew on but he bolted and never looked back.
We had fresh venison for the rest of our stay as we quartered her up and iced her down.
We put one more day in on the TALL TINE NINE but never found him. We did stalk about 4 does that last night and I gave a monster coyote a hair cut at 65 yards on the last night but I never filled my tag.
That was the extent of our trip. An awesome success and an experience that I wouldn't trade for the world, tag soup or not.
Some overlooked details of the story:
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| Joe's bumper covered in guts. |
1. The grasshoppers were horrible. At least a dozen would blast out of the grass with every step. I don't know if Joe's truck will ever come clean.
2. Cows are everywhere so if you plan on taking such a trip be prepared. I will post a how to video on how to clear a path someday.
3. We had a blow out on the trailer within the first half hour of our trip home. 99% of vehicles on the North Dakota roads are oil trucks. It made changing the driver side tire very interesting.
4. I will be back to try this again someday and I can't wait. Probably with a rifle next time though.
