#Wyoming region x mule deer Patch

We drank some water and shared a few laughs, then he came to the same conclusion that I pondered on the ridge earlier that morning: “You know, son, the country looks every bit as good as it did when I came in here with Roger the first time in 1973. Not just the same canyon or same hillside, but the same rock where I had skinned that buck so many years ago! Soon thereafter, Dad arrived. That’s when it hit me: This was the exact same spot where I had killed my third Emigrant buck, as a 15-year old freshman in high school. The buck crumpled.Īfter hustling down through the talus, I found the buck piled up, antlers glistening in the brilliant morning light. I locked in, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The buck looked back down the canyon, in Dad’s direction, then went back to browsing. A nice three-pointer stepped out into a talus opening above the brush patch. I slid the pack off and nestled my 6mm rifle in the V of the pack.

#Wyoming region x mule deer Patch

That’s when a movement caught my eye down in the cherry patch a hundred yards below. Thirty minutes later my legs were screaming from the strenuous hike up the ridge, but I was in place, ready to take the brisk walk across the flat bench and settle in with a good rest and wait for Dad to make his push. The first streak of sunlight over the talus reminded me that it was time to get moving. The meadow was a spongy thicket of willows, alders lined the draws, the chokecherry brush patches were robust, and the aspen patches had plenty of young shoots. On the far horizon, Soda, the majestic alpine bowl at the top of the world that would always exist in my heart as the yardstick for quality mule deer summer range.Īfter all these years of hunting the high country in the Emigrant Wilderness of the Sierras, one thing was crystal clear: Nothing had changed up here above timberline. Up over the ridgeline was Buck Basin, the site of several memorable hunts.

Across the massive canyon, at eye level, was the meadow of Gunsight Pass, where I had killed my first buck, as a wide-eyed boy in this big country for the first time, nearly thirty years ago. The morning’s hunt was intimately familiar, even ritualistic. From there, it was an easy jaunt across the bench high on the mountain and I would be in perfect position before Dad started his drive through the willow and alder thickets below. My legs were burning from the thousand-foot climb from our camp in the meadow, but it was daylight and I still had another half-hour hike up through the boulders.

The view up the steep ridge in the morning’s first light was a classic snapshot of the central Sierra Nevada mountains: blue sky, faint stars, snow caps, and talus rock. Stewardship agreements are increasing the pace and scale of active forest management, a key to mule deer and black-tailed deer habitat conservation in California.