Well, the cape is at the taxidermist!
Hunted hard on opening day in New Mexico, ended up putting 9 miles on my boots according to my gps. Passed on a pretty good buck right at end of shooting light, wide as his ears (generally considered 24" for a mulie) and pretty tall, but not very heavy and I could only count 3 tines on one side so I ended up passing on him.
After 2 hours the next morning without seeing a thing I was second guessing myself pretty bad on passing that buck the night before. I had been sitting on an hill that had a good view all around and nothing.
I decided to start walking instead of just sitting there and about 300 yards to the west I bumped 3 does out of their beds. The predominate wind is from the southwest and pretty much all the deer I had bumped from their beds were on hillsides facing north. I checked out a spot that I had seen from my hill that looked good, but didn't see much sign there. Went over the ridge and saw a spot on a north facing hillside that looked pretty deery. Some good brush at just about the right spot. Started walking toward it and about 100 yards away from the brush, HE popped up out of some grass.
He was only about 50 yards away and it was pretty easy to tell right away he was a shooter. He was looking straight at me, but I didn't want to wait for a better angle, because once an older buck like this one starts moving, they generally don't stop until they are long gone. I just dropped to a knee, pulled up and shot. He just stood there. I automatically chamber another round everytime I fire so I shot again and hit him solid. He struggled for a few seconds and then went down. I was suprised that I missed from 50 yards, but chalked it up to nerves.
I called my wife and told her I had a big buck down, but I didn't know how big. 5 minutes later I walked over to him and he was BIG! 6x6. Tailgate tape job has him at 181 7/8! Biggest deer I've ever killed by far. (My 2007 Muley was 145")
I caped him out and quartered him and his quarters, backstraps and some other misc meat didn't fit in one cooler! He was easily over 250lbs on the hoof. He's at the taxidermist now, but he said he would let me have the antlers back and his jawbones until he gets the cape back from the tannery. I'll score him again when I get the antlers back and then I'll post it for the team. Netting out for the mule deer at 86% he should score a little over 156" for the team.
The only negative was that since I was hunting by myself I was using my backpack for a tripod and my camera on a timer. On the viewfinder the pictures looked okay, but turns out the camera was focusing on some blades of grass right in front of the camera and not on me and the deer. I think the pictures are good enough for the contest, but I sure wish they turned out better. The ones I took of the deer by itself turned out good though.
Okay, enough for the novel, here are the pictures!
Here he is back at the house before heading to the taxidermist.
Oh well, I'm still pretty excited. I'll be hunting my own property for whitetails later this week, but I don't think there are any deer bigger than 156" on my place, so this one will probably be my entry into the contest.