I’d been seeing a neat looking wide racked buck in a basin I liked to hunt. Unfortunately I had a hard time stalking him within photo range. I wanted some decent shots so I kept visiting the basin each morning of my hunt. This particular basin sits on the southeast flank of the mountain, so it’s a great morning light type of photo area.

My persistence was rewarded on a beautiful clear morning when I came around a ridge towards the basin and saw two sets of antlers, the wide buck and a nice four point.

I couldn’t have asked for a better photo setup, the bucks were slightly above me in great light. A short stalk, and enough curiosity and confusion on the part of these pretty bucks allowed me to take some of my favorite velvet buck shots.

One year later I encountered the same scenario while trying to find and photograph big velvet bucks; however locating and stalking a good buck close enough to photograph was more difficult. I kept glassing a big buck in the same basin I’d shot the wide buck in the previous year, and again my initial attempts to get close to the deer failed. This particular basin is a good place to find deer, but the oak brush makes staking them quite a challenge. While glassing, I located this great looking typical buck. The big buck was feeding with six or eight other bucks, as usual they were in an area that didn’t look very promising for a stalk, but I had to try anyway. Actually, I tried several stalks on the feeding bucks, bad attempts in the noisy brush, each time I had to tell myself there was no hurry. I decided the best thing to do would be to back off and watch them, maybe I could form a better plan. I watched the deer feeding for awhile and figured they might end up on the east rim of the basin. Without any other ideas I hurried to the place were I thought I’d be in the bucks path. I picked a spot for an ambush with a couple decent shooting lanes, got my camera set up and hoped for the best.

The first deer on the scene wore wide velvet covered antlers and he was feeding right towards me! Words cannot describe the immense feeling of excitement that comes from being in the right place at the right time, it just dosn’t happen to me often enough that I will ever get used to it. At this point I needed to stay steady until the shooting stopped, I did stay steady enough to capture these images of a great buck, but just barely.

This buck looked allot like the wide three by four from the previous year, but without any telling signature points it was hard to say. I wasn’t sure if it was the same buck or not until I looked closer at the photos of him from both years and saw what looks like a scar above his left eye.

I love seeing the same big wild bucks several years running, it is a real testament to these great animals.

As we were heading down a dirt road to a turn around spot my dad mentioned that perhaps we should go glass of the rim a nearby canyon.  This sounded good to all, and we made our way the short distance to the lip of a deep canyon.

We sat there only a short while when my brother and I, as usually happens, got ants in our pants.  We decided I would walk down the east side of the canyon, my brother would go down the bottom, and my dad would stay and watch from where he was on the rim.  Immediately after splitting up my brother split like a mountain goat down the canyon and I wandered along the lip.  After a short time I lost hope and motivation and made my way back to my dad.  I hadn’t seen a thing so imagine my surprise when my dad excitedly proclaimed, “did you see that buck”?  “No”, I answered, “was it big”? Turns out my dad had seen the buck about a half mile away as it exited the canyon as soon as my brother hit the bottom.  As I pressed him for details on the buck he just kept saying, “all I know is it was big”.

As we sat there discussing and waiting for my brother I saw a doe run over a distant hill, my dad and I pulled our glasses up just in time to see the huge buck pop over the hill right behind the doe.  Still to far away to pick out much detail we watched as the buck chased the doe down into a wooded draw and never re-emerge. After about a half hour the buck never re-emerged so we figured he had bedded down and the hunt for a photo was on.

When my brother returned we explained what was going on and his excitement was evident as him and I set out while my dad stayed behind and stood watch.  What followed was the most painfully slow stalk I have ever been a part of.  The country was wide open around the wooded draw so we had to scoot on our butts for what seemed an eternity.  Finally we were able to locate the buck laying under a tree about 200 yards away.  I slowly raised my binoculars and took a quick peek.  I told my brother it was a huge buck with 4 on one side but the other side was in a tree  branch so I couldn’t tell what it had.  What happened next made my heart stop cold.

As we were sitting there trying to decide how to close the rest of the distance the buck went from a dead sleep to a trot down into the thick of the trees.  This in itself  was enough to cause my heart stop but what really almost killed me was the fact that when the deer trotted off the branch covering the left antler was no branch at all but rather a mess of points and cheaters like I had never seen before.  It was then that I decided it is much less stressful to try and close the gap on a deer that you have an idea is big  rather than a deer that you know is the biggest you have ever seen.  With the weight of the situation weighing on our minds we did the only thing we could do and that was to continue to sneak in the direction the buck disappeared.

A short while later would find us pinned under a juniper tree having a stare down with a doe who was onto us.  We sat frozen, I with my camera out and pointed in the direction of the doe and my brother directly behind me with the video camera trained in the same direction.  There we sat, motionless, as doe after doe and fawn after fawn even a few small bucks filed up to stand next to the doe.  Now what happened next will forever be imprinted in my mind.  While we sat, legs burning from trying to hold our positions, we saw a mess of points appear out of the wash below. Just the tips at first, then a little more and a little more as the monster buck made his way up, head down, to stand with the other deer.   There he was, the buck I had dreamt about, got out of bed at 4:30 in the morning for, spent my life’s savings on my first camera for, walked a million miles for.  A lifetime of dreaming and chasing around in the hills and there he was 30 yards in front of me.

The next few minutes were a blur as the only thing to break the silence was the shutter of my camera as I fired as fast as I possibly could. The experience lasted only a few minutes but the celebration lasted days.  When the buck finally left for good back down the draw he had come up, it began: the whooping, the hollering and the high fives.  My brother and I celebrated like two grown men probably shouldn’t but we had dreamt countless times about the very experience we had just had.  We then ran back to where my dad was and excitedly started showing him the photos on the cameras LCD.  It was a thrill to see my dads face as he was able to see just how big the buck he had found really was.

It was my dad who instilled in me a passion for hunting and more importantly a passion for the outdoors so it was awesome to share this experience with him along with my brother whom I have been dragging out in the hills since he was a youngster.  Now the tables have turned and he drags me around out in the hills but no matter, we share countless fantastic memories, this experience likely being at the top of the list.