Sometimes You Just Get Lucky by Sheldon Cieslak

As I was driving down the prairie trail I reflected back on how the 2010 North Dakota deer rifle season was preceded with the usual excited anticipation, just like years past. 

We began the season with a very successful opening weekend. My son Jordan had filled both his antlerless mule deer and whitetail tags and I filled both of my antlerless whitetail tags. We went home Sunday and by Monday we had all four deer cut, wrapped and in the freezer. Tuesday I headed back West and arrived before sundown. 

Before sunrise on Wednesday, I was driving down the previous mentioned trail. I had my first muley buck tag in years and since we already had a good supply of venison, I was determined to spend a lot of time over the next twelve days, hunting for a good buck.

            I had to chuckle to myself about my goal. How times have changed. The memories are still fresh from years of long ago when I was younger, when I hoped I would just draw a rifle tag. (Yes there was a time when a person would be willing to take any tag in any part of the state and there still were not enough licenses for everybody who applied) If a person drew an antlered deer license and was successful in filling the tag, it was an added bonus if the buck had both antlers and more than four total points.

            Today I would hunt like I have for years, drive down a trail and when its just light enough to see with out the headlights, I’ll park below a ridge out of sight and still hunt as far as I can in one day and still get back to the truck before dark. I always pay attention to the wind, and take great pains to not spook any deer. When I glass for bedded deer I always keep in mind that mule deer usually bed down so they can see down wind and use their nose to protect their back side. 

I really enjoy hunting this way and the only possible draw back is getting the deer out. On more than one occasions, I have had to leave the deer overnight and then pack it out to the truck the next day by the use of a pack frame or calf sled. 

Standing outside the truck I took a waypoint on my GPS, it was a few minutes before 8AM. There was a light snow falling, it wasn’t overly wet but it was sticking to everything, including the grass. I slowly made my way down a draw, taking in the magnificent scenery. In the beauty and solitude of the badlands it’s easy for my mind to stray and I had to remind myself several times of the task at hand. 

After about a slow hour of progress, the draw led me to the head of a dry creek. I glassed down the drainage for a bit and saw two mule deer bucks. I decided to hunt this creek another time and I continued down the draw which had now curved back to the West. 

I stopped to glass the area and noticed several fresh deer trails on the bottom of the valley floor. With the fresh sticky snow, the trails were easy to see. As my eyes wandered up the draw I noticed what looked like a small bull berry tree about 400 yards away that just seemed out of place. I brought up my binoculars and immediately saw it was a bedded mule deer buck. I quickly sunk to my knees and watched the deer. 

I spent about 20 minutes sitting there watching the buck. He was mostly looking straight at me; his antlers weren’t very high and looked about 20 inches wide. Several times he would turn his head for a second or two and I would get a different look. In these instances he seemed wider then 20 inches and I could see some antler tines. All I could make out was three points on the right antler and four short ones on the left side, possibly some broken.  

It was hard to get a real good look at him since my glasses would fog over when I looked through my binoculars and I had nothing to steady myself on. At one point I started to take my day pack off to get at my video camera and take some footage, but decided against it because everything would get wet from the falling snow.  

I decided to back away and leave the area. I was careful to get out of sight and down wind so I wouldn’t spook him or any other deer.

As I starting walking to another area I was going to hunt, I noticed a rise that I could go up and be right above the deer. I thought maybe there was another deer in the area and it would be bigger. As I got to the crest I got on my hands and knees and covered the last thirty yards. The plan was to cover the last ten yards doing a belly crawl but because of a rock formation I didn’t have to. It was a perfect set up. 

As I peeked over the top of the rock I spotted the buck now standing in the bottom of the draw with a doe. They were about two hundred yards away and it was the same deer. Across from the two deer standing on a hill was another doe; I would have to make sure she didn’t detect me. 

Although I was closer, the buck still looked the same width and I still could make out only about seven total points.  Once in a while he would turn but I still could not get a good look, my glasses were still icing up.

            Eventually, two fawns appeared out of the bottom and they started walking towards the doe on the hill. The buck was trying hard to get the other doe interested in him but she wouldn’t play along. The other three deer were about to go over the crest of the opposite hill when the buck turned and looked at them, then looked back at the doe. He then turned around and started walking towards the other three deer. When the buck was about half way up the hill I decided to lie over the top of the rock and look at him with through my rifle scope. I would be more exposed to the deer by doing this but if they see me now it wouldn’t be a big deal since I was not interested in harvesting this animal.

            When I located the deer in my scope, I thought I saw more points than I could count.  The antlers looked much wider then I previously thought. About seven seconds later my 7 MM was empty of all four rounds and the deer was lying dead in the grass 250 yards away.

            My first thought was “what did I do?” The years have taught me that if you spend some serious time observing an animal and you don’t think it’s big enough, it’s not going to get any bigger the last couple of seconds before it disappears from your sight, possibly forever. I had twelve days left to hunt, I’m out of tags and I shot a deer much smaller than I had hoped for.

I dug around in the grass and found my four empties and put them in my pocket. I slowly made the walk towards the buck and as I made my way up the opposite side I started to feel a little embarrassed.  I had just ended the life of one of nature’s greatest creatures and I’m feeling upset because I didn’t think it was big enough. It was a good hunt and if it would have been the last week end of the season I would have been very happy with the deer.

            By the time I found an antler sticking out of the unusually tall grass I was feeling a little better. I didn’t get a good look at the deer until I was a couple of feet away. I imagine my eyes got big and I know my jaw dropped open and I won’t comment on what came out of my mouth. I was hurriedly digging for my cell phone, camera, camcorder, and pocket tape measure and counting points all at the same time. 

When I regained my composer, somewhat, I counted nine points per side. He had the standard 4x4 main frame with brow tines and behind each fork was another point; the left side had two forks and the right side four points. The main frame was little over 20 inches on the inside and the outside spread was over 27 inches. To say I was happy would be an understatement

            While snapping pictures I noticed it was only a few minutes after 10 a.m. After the cameras were put away, I made the trek back to the truck to get the sled. Before 2 p.m., I had the deer back to the trail. I kept looking at the deer and I couldn’t make up my mind how big it was.

After loading the deer up I went to visit some friends. Several people looked at the deer and commented on the size, two even asked for a picture. In the evening, a friend of mine who is a local farmer and rancher hung the buck up in his shed. We decided to try to score the deer. The first time we came up with a score of 144. We didn’t think that was right so we tried again and came up with a score of 192, this couldn’t be right We thought about it a bit and decided to put the tape away and let some one who knows what they are doing score the antlers. 

When I got back home I took the deer to a local taxidermist. I had called him earlier and told him that if I decide not to get the deer mounted he could have the cape since the deer might be around the same size as the one I got several years back that scored around 150. 

When I walked though the door of the taxidermist he gave me puzzled look. He got out a tape, pencil and paper and stated measuring and writing down numbers. He did this twice and both times came up with a score a bit over 200 inches. I about fell over. In all aspects this was the easiest mule deer buck hunt I ever had and  by a great margin I shot the biggest deer of my life and I didn’t even know it. Some times a person just gets lucky.

  Sheldon’s buck had over 49” of non-typical points and grossed