You are welcome, Cindy- and thank you for all the encouragement. It was the next best thing to having you here.
Made it to Green River, Utah before that 4:30 am wake up call caught up with me. Found some Mexican food at the Tamarisk Restaurant on Main. The first meal I’ve had that wasn’t out of camp or a backpack in 10 days and man-o-man was it good.
Had a chance to reflect on the hunt over the last few hundred miles. This is what I learned:
1) It doesn’t matter if you’re hunting with a rifle, bow, or muzzleloader, you have to let the deer do the moving. Big bucks give you no time to shoot if they know you are there.
2) This time of year, be prepared to wait a buck out of his bed 6 or more hours. Later in the fall and closer to the rut, they seem to get up sooner, but really there is no formula when it comes to big deer.
3) Only stalk in to the outer limits of your effective range. Any closer and your margin for error is decreased. If you can shoot a muzzleloader 100 yards, then don’t get closer than about 90. Sure enough the wind will change, you’ll cough, or something and big deer don’t wait for you to shoot.
4) You can’t shoot too much. I’ve probably put over a 1,000 rounds through muzzleloaders over the years and I still miss! Shoot, shoot, and shoot some more.
Also, for the record, this was only my 3rd buck hunt with a muzzleloader and my first early season hunt. The other two were rut hunts in Idaho 10 years ago. I’ve killed zero bucks so far with a muzzleloader. Here's a wrap up video. I will get you some better video of both bucks I shot at when I get home. It's digiscoped through the Rokslide HD camera, but you can see them pretty good and definitely better than in my "kill" photos
[video=vimeo;49576513]http://vimeo.com/49576513[/video]