Had an awesome experience yesterday. Let me start off by saying that Ive been bowhunting whitetails for 16 years in Texas and have yet to kill anything other than does and spikes, so this was quite a jump. I will try to keep this short...
My buddy was elk hunting Saturday evening looking over a valley and said that he had seen a large 5x5 mule deer. Since Im the only one who had a muley tag we started making plans on how to go after him. The next morning I sat with him looking over the same valley and after about 30 minutes I got up to pee. I walked about 10 yards up to the top of the ridge and after taking care of business, I decided to go look in a small valley behind us. Sure enough, there he was with a doe about 200 yards below us. I went and got my buddy and the stalk began. He stayed up high as I descended down to try to get within range. At one point I looked up at Chris and saw him hold up 2 fingers and then give the universal buck sign. Sure enough, as I came around a brush pile I saw that there were 2 large bucks. The first one still looked to be the bigger of the 2. The 2nd looked to be a good 4x5 and was out of velvet (we had seen 10+ bucks up til then, all in velvet). At this point I was about 100 yards from em. I crept up about 15 more yards to a patch of scrub brush that was about 15 feet high and 10 feet thick. I couldnt see em. I figured if I could slip through it they would walk out right in front of me. The brush was super thick so I had to basically crawl through. As I made my way through the brush that I thought was 10 ft thick turned into about 30 yards... I thought for sure they were going to hear me coming through it and jet. As I finally saw daylight on the otherside I could see a deer standing there looking at me. It was the doe. I crawled the last few feet and saw she was all by herself at 50 yards. Crap.
After about a minute the bucks came out from behind a brush pile. The big 5x5 was walking slightly away and up hill and the 5x4 went right at the doe. The 5x5 stopped and I ranged him at 69 yards. Ive been practicing all summer with long shots and had determined that 70 was my max. I had put a HHA single pin adjustible sight on and had gone from being decent at 30 yards with my old sights to being really good at 50. I ranged the other buck at 57. I decided that that was the safer shot. He turned hard quartering away. I put my pin back towards his guts (the angle called for that) and I let it fly.... Whack.. Right in the middle of his thigh..F@&*! I actually yelled that outloud. They all trotted up hill and I noticed he was bleeding heavy from the entrace wound. "Maybe I hit his femoral artery" I thought and hoped. They trotted over a ridge and I waited on Chris to come down.
I explained the shot to him and he got my hopes up. we walked up to the top of the ridge and saw the 5x5 and doe standing about 75 yards from us. This really got my hopes up. They walked off and we waited about 20 minutes before moving up. There was good blood but we were creeping up looking more for him incase he needed another arrow. STOP! Cris held up his hand and looked through his binocs. "There he is!" He was bedded down 40 yards in front of us. His head was kinda up and facing away from us. We watched him for 20 minutes and never saw signs of movement. We crept up to 20 yards and I pulled back and said "Throw something". I saw a pair of binoculars wizz past me ( I meant a rock or something but hey) and hit him in the rear. No movement. The celebration began. We walked up after some hugs and high fives and then got real excited. The 5x4 turned into a 7x7. He had all kinds of points that we didnt notice before. He also had bloody antlers and velvet hanging off. Awesome. When we gutted him we found that the arrow had entered his thigh and gone all the way up and piereced his heart and poked out the opposite side. Unreal. We scored him at 168.5 and 26" inside spread. What a hunt. Sorry, I couldnt keep the story short.

awesome deer and story - congrats -

WOW

awesome!! Nice buck.

Awesome buck !!!! congrats

Awesome story. Well done! Colorado I assume?

Outstanding

Awesome

DANG!!!! Congrats!!!!!!

Great job very pretty buck man !

Yes, near Montrose

Very nice!!!! Congratulations.

Congrats. A great trophy.

Very nice buck

Greatness!

Congratulations, great hunt!

Congrats on a superb deer, love me some mulies

Great buck!

Congrats on a great buck!

Yep that's awesome!! Congrats!!

That was a great story, and a trophy mulie. Congrats my Friend!

Awesome! Great bit of luck with that shot. Great buck and story.

Great deer. How did you get it out of the brush to the truck?