on this episode of on the hunt I'm in Montana hunting mu deer late season now this tag I drew it's a it's a good tag it's a limited unit um The Season's long it's uh five weeks basically from the middle of uh October almost to the end of November um but to capitalize on the MU dear rut so I'm trying to find a nice big buck I decided to come the last five days of the season um when it should be the coldest and the the deer should be rutting the most um this morning started off at First Light Glass in this big giant Basin here and uh it's been slow three Do's two of them kind of were frisky and ran off the hillside one stuck around feeding for a while looking like she was looking for like there was another deer around I don't know so Optics heavy hunt I'm going spend a lot of time just peering through my spot and scope and my binos um it's not a super open unit uh I'm looking at some of the more Open Country uh a lot of the other stuff here uh the openings just get smaller and smaller which is it's fine but uh it's hard to Glass um hard to find them so crossing my fingers there's going to be a big buck that shows up [Music] all right just just three Do's I'm not saying that's the only deer in this Basin but uh it's the only deer that want to be out feeding this morning so I'm going to go and pound some pavement with the truck and uh I'll be going towards more glass and spots but I'll certainly be hunting out of the truck what that means a lot of times just like stopping at a pullover getting out glassing the hillside for 5 15 minutes and then Moving on but um just trying to cover as much ground as possible and uh find the the few deer that are here [Music] visibility is a little Limited in these conditions they don't look like it's snowing too bad but when it's all the snow is compounded in your glass over a thousand yards it gets pretty foggy I was getting sick of driving around not seeing nothing so I decided I would walk around and see see if that would change something so I I had marked this area when I scouted here about a month ago and uh out of the whole unit this is the area that had like the most classic mu deer country that I saw like Bunch grass and Sage all over these big hillsides hopefully this will the snow will keep coming as the temp drops it'll start to stick and tomorrow morning I'll have really nice glassing conditions and and be able to pick up any deer at any distance almost any reasonable distance [Music] this is really testing my uh my fortitude here my visibility is about 50 yards right now my hope and plan is is to just get to this high point where it's going to be a great glassing spot if it clears so I get up there and just hang out and cross my fingers that the uh this fog rolls out of here [Music] [Music] lost a big part of the day due to the cloud that I walked into but uh I figured out that I can get up the road I need to get up to to go hunt that country I know how long it's going to take me to get up there I know the route that I want to take I know the glass knobs that I want to hit tomorrow morning um I know what my view is going to look like I know where I should be um so it's good Recon so yeah continue crossing fingers and hunting [Music] [Music] hard morning 3 of my monster buck hunt here in Montana in which I have yet to Glass up a mule deer um I was told it was going to be a tough hunt low density unit but a chance for Giants um turns out all that has been correct the chance for Giants that's still to be to prove itself you can see I'm bundled up it's 16° this morning um so hopefully the deer are going to be on their feet there's going to be a b old Buck rting a dough right over [Music] [Music] there well that's good [Music] deer finally all right I watched those three Do's for a minute and uh they stayed three Do's meaning no buck showed up and the F they're out I don't see any other deer anywhere just makes me feel like if there were deer in here that I could see they I would have seen them by now so I need to change my angle my perspective a little bit um and I want to walk a little bit so I can p up a little bit all right I'm in the soup again I was hoping that I'd come up here and things are going to change it was going to clear but obviously this the top of this Ridge is in a cloud again with 2 and 1/2 days left I can't risk just being up here where I can't see more than 100 yard so I think the best bet is just to I'm going to have to drive all the way down and just attack this whole Zone from the bottom up so learning stuff but I don't know kind of feel like I just burned up an hour of good time but it's cold today so the deer should be on their feet all day so enough talking let go hunt he's a solid 4x4 like he's and I think he's like it always look bigger from the back right but well um that's exciting uh turned into nine or 10 deer and uh uh yeah looks like there's a nice mature buck in there he's I don't know he's not a giant by any means but it's got nice Mass nice solid 4x4 it's about all all I could tell it's 400 p.m. I got 90 minutes till dark there's probably not enough time today to get in on him but um there's enough time to figure out exactly what would be the best way to refine him in the morning and and and get a much closer look as tough as this hun Spin and having multiple people said hey you might want to shoot the first decent B you see that's a decent B that fits that build to a te what I'm going to do now I've probably got an hour or so of light left is I'm going to go to the bottom of the hill and then drive around and check on my access um but what's exciting is that a group of do's that big plus another group of do's literally on the next Hillside with all these doees here um in the next 12 hours who knows what could show up so that's pretty cool and again that's the the cool part about hunting and getting a tag like this that's limited took me I don't know five or seven years to draw it is that um there's there's the chance of a great big giant there's no guarantees as you can see so far it's been a tough hunt but there's like this chance right and if you have runting do you have runting activity um the chance of that monster buck showing up goes way up came down here to check on the creek crossing and uh saw a nice looking Hillside up here with the glass up and four more deer it's much more the kind of deer hunting that I like I've decided 100% I'm going to go in after this buck in the morning um don't know if I'm going to come go across the creek and go up here there's another access I'm going to check out I might be able to go go that route but uh biggest reason is this is the last weekend for Montana's deer season or just big game rifle season and uh Sunday is the last day and uh if I could come tomorrow which is Saturday and get home tomorrow night I could take my daughter deer hunting on Sunday and um she would be pked [Music] this is great you know we looking at maps you can never really quite tell what the look is going to be like until you get up here like how much you're going to be able to see how much it's going to be hidden but just from peing over here a little bit I can tell you it's uh it's a good look it's pretty open I've got just enough change and uh topography you know between The Ridges that um it let me just scan everything so as I climb I'm keep peeking over because eventually when I climb high know I certainly won't be able to see the bottom this a prime example of how I'm always talking about watch The Horizon watch The Horizon and I'm not talking about like the little Horizon against the sky I think there's six or seven elk in that bunch and had I just been droing along not watching for that I probably would have gotten too close or too high and exposed my body I Circle wide around the elk and keep looking for Mu deer butts right so I found them luckily those elk didn't spook them those elk ran right through this Basin luckily those deer didn't pay any attention to they're about 500 y down below me it looks like reg at least right now they're feeding up the draw um um I'm a big fan of uh close shots and long shots you know 500 yards well within my game villes but I can take a shot at four or three why not where I'm at right now roll or the Horizon it's about 20 yard in front of me but I got to move to the right and get to it a little bit sooner to a nice break that'll allow me to um you know put my gun on a BYT and be able to shoot and not have any grass or any obstructions and then those deer will feed up in my direction no sooner do I get situated the buck beds down with the branch obstructing his vitals I'm going to have to wait for him to stand up and come out from behind that tree sh [Music] [Music] just kind of yeah are you on I'm on [Music] sow you got to be kidding me the buck stood there broadside plenty long enough for a shot even after we adjusted the camera but at 500 yards I'm going to make dang sure I feel confident about taking the shot I wasn't quite settled before the buck boogied I'm going to let you use your imagination is to the explanes that I've uttered in the last 10 minutes I can tell you what did happen is that I got one those really uh empty shitty stomach feelings right now kind of goes along with being dejected I was watching him for whatever 15 minutes 20 minutes beded and all sudden he gets up and and we had to make sure that he was in the frame to shoot him I had the shot but I hesitated then we got him in the frame I got back on him and immediately he just starts running he just disappears into the bottom and all the other do the do's all go with him too I don't know what's worse missing a shot or uh not even be to get a shot off when you're all set up like that oh I really just want to throw in the towel right now go home that's brutal [Music] all right the nauseating feeling that was in my St stomach is mostly left I poked around a little bit hoping to catch glimps of where they went I couldn't find him um after I calmed down a little bit and uh just accepted my fate I figured it'd be a good idea just to kind of back back out of the Zone where they were to where I can kind of see where I where I spotted last night and I can see the hillsides on the far side of the drainage they were in this morning so I I don't think they're bumped that bad that they left the county or even left this hill um again if I had to guess I bet you they're within a thousand yards of me right now it's like 1 in the afternoon um they should be on their feet by 3:00 at the latest so I'm hoping they'll pop up here if I don't see them by 3:34 I'm going to head back to that bowl where I last saw him after 2 hours my patient wear's thin and I decide to make a move I loop around the Basin I last saw them in and find them not 300 yards from where I thought they spooked I'll never know exactly what happened that morning but it seems to me I miss interpreted the actions of the deer they've most likely been beded here all day all I had to do was get a different [Music] angle know 33 do 447 stay low we're trying to get behind this next tree here [Music] all right he's put pushing all those dos okay they're out of sight they're kind of low but they might be able to catch up to him maybe I had him at 500 or so but I had you know some grass blocking my muzzle I was in a funky position it it wasn't good enough for 500 yards but it looks like he just chased him around the over the ridge toop someone my stu oh we can catch up to I got a dough 500 I got one butt but it's behind some Bond roses pretty good on it yeah no I mean like he's still behind a tree I don't see him walking hopefully he'll come back out to that D come on he took a half a step oh there's another half step the pressure is on although it's self-imposed because I technically have another day to hunt I want to get this Buck killed now there are less than 10 minutes of legal shooting light left the light has faded to the point that I have to back off of my sculpt magnification to let more light in I just need him to take two steps in the right direction a dough just walked in front of him an uphill in the opening I don't have vitals yet [Applause] he's down I don't know if he's down down but he collapsed and just went go down the hill all right well nice work dude that was a big time team effort I know you guys watching are always thinking just one dude on I'm kidding you're not I know you know there's a photographer you know there's a videographer but uh that was a team effort we were watching all the do and uh Dave picked up the buck I was able to get set up and I had the range dialed and with like 10 minutes of light left he came right out into the opening all right well I'm not celebrating yet just got to go over there and check check on him now but good job Dave team effort there ah what a day full full day um very grateful to be staying over this bu right now what you didn't see is that he was still alive that shot was a little bit High and so as I said earlier it dumped him you put that shock in that spine and he he looked de than the doornail when I walked up to him but then we could just see a little bit of breath in there and so I uh I put another round into his neck um so not quite just right but I'm stoked on it and uh he's a pretty Buck just a classic 4x4 mu deer long ey guards for a mu deer it was super fun to hunt them in the mountains like this and hunt them in some steep mountains holy moly but I'm tickled um and I'm even more tickled so I can probably get home midm morning tomorrow and tomorrow is the last day of Montana uh big game rifle season and I'll take my daughter um take my daughter white tail deer hunting she showed a heck of a lot of enthusiasm last week in Wisconsin about the hunt and was pretty bummed out that she didn't get one she missed one and um so it' be cool to give her another opportunity [Music] [Music] what you think what do you got to say for yourself uh I'm like freaking out I can't believe I just do that I'm so [Music] happy y [Music]