Mule Deer Fanatic

October 2009 Colorado Deer Story

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We would be happy to hear from you about your mule deer hunts for 2009
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Happy Hunting and may the Force be with you, and

Remember to shoot STRAIGHT

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Bear attack in Utah

Last week I took a vacation to film mule deer in Southern Utah. The first night in camp, my friend and I had a bear visit us. Long story short, my friend insisted on leaving, but before and after that, some interesting events transpired.

About 3:00am on Thursday, August 6, my 72 year-old friend awoke and was having a difficult time breathing because of the change in altitude. He asked me to get him a chair to sit in. As I stumbled out of the tent, he followed up with a comment about hearing an animal outside the tent. I responded, “it’s probably a cow”. No sooner was I out the tent door and in the moonlight, than I could see a bear in our camp. I told Byron we had a bear. Sometime in the next few minutes, while I was involved with the bear, Byron escaped the tent to get in the truck.

I spoke to the bear and asked him to leave, but to no avail. While I was trying to keep track of the bear and assess his activities in our camp he would back off and then move in again. I got my spotlight and shined it on the bear which seemed to have no effect whatsoever on his desire to be in camp with us. I grabbed the video camera and filmed with one hand while holding the spotlight with the other. At the end of the taping session he was within 20 feet, and I again asked him (it) to leave. No success.

I started the fourwheeler, turned on the headlights and went after the bear. Reluctantly, it yielded to the four wheeler. I got in the truck with Byron and we decided to sleep there ’til daybreak. Byron was soon sleeping and breathing easily. At daybreak, I snuck out of the truck to go do some early morning filming. I left Byron asleep. When I returned, Byron was a little excited. He said he had been awakened by the truck rocking back and forth only to see the bear’s nose on the window of the truck. He kicked at the window (I’m glad he didn’t break it), yelled, and honked the horn. It didn’t have much effect, so he rolled down the window and yelled at the bear. Finally, it left, and then I returned.

Byron was ready to leave and I obliged him by taking him half way home where he met a friend. I returned to the mountain. The bear had eaten a loaf of bread and two bottles of soda, all of which were sealed. I surmised that this bear was experienced. I made sure all food was secured inside the truck and left everything else as it had been. That night the bear returned. I threw rocks and sticks at it and drove it off.

At daybreak, I again left to film mule deer. Upon my return, to my grief, the bear had done considerable

Black Bear Circling Camp

damage to all my containers and their contents. I stayed up ’til 1:00 in the morning cleaning up the mess. Among the damaged items was my cookstove. The propane had somehow been turned on in the frucas and all the fuel was gone. Anything that could be destroyed had been destroyed except the tent and the lantern. That included a gas can which was carried out into the trees and chewed up.

On the next visit, the bear broke the lantern which was hanging quite high in a tree and tore down the tent, chewing holes in it and ripping the foam mattresses up. I was mad as heck. I wished I had a weapon. I got together some fist-sized rocks and some good solid clubs and decided to fight back. The following day the bear returned in broad daylight, and I was in camp. I threw rocks and sticks at it but it wouldn’t leave. It started circling camp, so I decided to video and take photos of it. I kept myself between the bear and camp. It made several mock charges at me. I believe that it would have made good had I shown any fear. After filming for a while, I decided to run over the bear with my four wheeler. I went bouncing out through the trees over rocks, logs, and brush and the bear stayed ahead of me. It then began paralleling the road so I followed. I hoped catch it in an open area along the road where I could run over it.

We went along slowly and then the bear came up to some cows which behaved as though they were going to collectively challenge the bear. Mr. Bruin made a rush toward the cattle and they ran away. Then two deer came bursting accross the road. It looked like my antagonist was going to go after the deer. I started to close the gap. Once he was where I had a clear shot at him, the bear kicked it into high gear. So did I. I smoked the clutch pushing the four wheeler as hard as it could go, but I couldn’t catch the bear.

After that, I had cows in camp instead of the bear and the cows were welcome guests. I waited every subsequent night for the bear to enter the tent. I was ready with a spotlight and clubs. He never came. I did get some good footage of mule deer bucks and assorted other wildlife which will be shown in an upcoming DVD series.

Buck I filmed

When I left, I stopped at Quinn Howe’s Shamrock to get some gas. I told him about the bear and he said the DWR had just hauled a bear up on the mountain that was causing trouble in another area. He thought I might have been the victim of their foresight

Big buck mounts in Quinn's Store

Since all of us enjoy stories and photos from great mule deer hunts – and since the 2008 season is upon us or is winding down, we would love to hear your stories and see your photos. Submit them by clicking on the Contact tab at the top of the page.  

Thanks and Happy Hunting

From the Witchita Eagle:

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This fall, the Satanta hunter, Todd Robinson, shot this typical mule deer buck, killed with a muzzleloader, netted 195 5/8 of typical antler.

Hours before he shot the big mule deer, he’d resigned himself to shooting a doe.Robinson had hunted hard for nine days in Unit 17, having passed up numerous small bucks.

Getting off work early on Sept. 27, the next-to-last day of the special muzzleloader season, sent him to where sand hills met farmed ground.

He spotted the buck in the distance with about 20 minutes of legal shooting time remaining.

“Everything just worked out,” he said. “I had the sun at my back and a light breeze in my face,” Robinson said. “The field had a little dip in it and I used it to get close.”

The 100-yard shot with a .50 Thompson/Center Encore was perfect.

“I knew he was big, but didn’t realize how big until I walked up on him,” he said. “It literally blows you away when you walk up on a deer that big.”

The buck carried antlers with five tines per side and an outside spread of 31 inches. The beams carry exceptional mass from beginning to end.

The buck easily topped the previous state record, a buck of 189 5/8 inches shot in Unit 2 in 2000. Robinson’s buck also ranks second for Kansas’ all-firearms category, trailing a Unit 17 buck of 202 2/8 shot in 1999 with a centerfire rifle.

By LAREN WEBER
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A lot is required of a police officer – protecting residents in the community, investigating crimes, and arresting those who break the law.

To that list, two Toledo police officers felt called to add delivering a fawn by C-section and giving it nose-to-mouth resuscitation.

Early yesterday, the officers responded to Hill Avenue and Melody Lane in the south end on a report of an injured deer in the street blocking traffic. Sgt. Todd Miller and Officer Joe Taylor arrived at the scene about 3:10 a.m. and found a severely injured doe lying in the middle of the street The sergeant said it appeared the doe had been hit by a car. One of its back legs was broken and it had head injuries. The doe wasn’t able to stand and could barely hold up its head, Sergeant Miller said. The sergeant, an avid hunter, said it was unlikely the deer would survive, so he instructed Officer Taylor to shoot it. Upon doing so, there was a movement inside the doe’s womb. “You could see the baby kicking inside it,” Sergeant Miller said. Looking at the doe, Sergeant Miller said it appeared as though it was close to full term, increasing the fawn’s chance of survival. “The least we could do was try,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do.” Using his hunting skills, the sergeant cut open the doe’s abdomen and removed the male fawn, which had trouble breathing after the delivery. Officer Taylor, also a hunter, put his mouth over the fawn’s nasal and mouth passages and began breathing into them. Shortly after, the fawn began breathing on its own, Sergeant Miller said. “The deer eventually started to sit up and clean off its fur,” he said. Toledo police Capt. Ron Navarro said the officers “went above and beyond the call of duty.”. Appropriately, Officer Taylor named the fawn Lucky. He then took it to Nature’s Nursery in Waterville, where it initially was given little more than a 50 percent chance of survival. Despite the officers’ efforts, however, the fawn didn’t make it. Laura Zitzelberger, operations director at the wildlife rehabilitation center, said it died just before 8 a.m. yesterday. She put the animal in a room heated to more than 90 degrees and wrapped it in a heated blanket, but the fawn’s body temperature did not rise to normal levels. Ms. Zitzelberger said the fawn was well developed and about the size of a normal newborn. “There was no outward reason that I could see why we couldn’t get its body temperature back up,” she said. Still, Ms. Zitzelberger commended the officers for their efforts. “I think it’s great they went the extra mile to try to do this,” she said. “I would have loved – just because of all [the] efforts – to have been able to save this fawn.”

Mr. Michael Turk, of DC – yes that’s DC, formerly of New Mexico, wrote me to explain a deer tracking project using a GPS device and a free map service. One of the animals they are tracking is a buck named Thor. Thor looks a little like a whitetail, but is really a mule deer – you can tell by the size. He looks pretty suave with his collar, don’t you think? How would you like to track a big buck, like this, for a while?
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The man who invented this tracking approach identifies himself as “Siberian Tracker”. I think he is pretty clever. Here is what he says about it,

“Mail to Map/SMS-to-Map/Mail to GE service: new twist in (r)Evolution

The idea of creating a simple “Mail-to-Map” service came when I was tracking White-Tailed Deer in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. The GPS coordinates were send by the collared deer as a SMS/Text Message via GSM/cell-phone networks to a server in Sweden, and then relayed to my e-mail account. I was surprised to find out that there was no way for me to gain access to the server, so the creation of dynamic kml/kmz files straight from the server was out of the question. All what I was left with was a set of e-mails with 8 coordinates in each.

Here is my first attempt for a solution, which reads coordinates in e-mail and relays coordinates in real-time to the Google-Earth/Google Map service. I believe this is the fist successful solution of Mail-to-Map service which is based entirely on free web services.”

To see the map go here: http://www.potapov-nature.com/forBA/deer/deer-pert.html

As for Mr. Turk, he was a successful Mule Deer hunter in SE New Mexico, where his family owns a sizeable ranch, by harvesting this 10pt. (Eastern Count) buck mule deer. The buck has an extra cheater which is not visible in the picture. This buck was harvested in 2007. According to Mr. Turk, the herd numbers were down, but his party managed to harvest several nice bucks.

Thank you for the information, Mr. Turk.

From the Denver Post:

It isn’t easy being pink – unless you’re able to stick a broadhead into a trophy mule deer.

This pink thing has a distinct focal point in the flamboyant personage of Keli Van Cleave. The first thing one notices about Van Cleave, who alternately resides in Superior and a suitcase, is that color. Her company, Pink Outdoors, pretty much says it all about a schtick that starts with a unique pattern of camouflage clothing and continues right down to the shafts of her arrows

“It may sound crazy,” she says of the seeming incongruity of pink camouflage, “but it works because animals are colorblind. Camo is just a breakup.”

Once an observer gets past the color thing, it’s evident Van Cleave is the real outdoor deal. She has taken the largest typical mule deer in velvet ever in Colorado by a woman with a bow. The rack scored 202 1/4.

Of course, she was wearing pink camo at the time. She added, “I’ve shown you can be in the outdoors and still look good.”

Growing up close to nature in Grand County, Van Cleave came by her skills naturally. She began bow- hunting at age 12, in large part because that’s what you do in an outdoor family that didn’t allow television in the house.

“My father had us in the outdoors all the time. I got my hunting genes from my father, but my pink genes from my mother,” she said of what has been a dual path to national attention.