The story of Big Hank, the alpine mulie!

[Bentoven1]

I’m loving this ! It’s got me on the edge of my seat!

[Mark-R]

So now I'm in a rush to get set up and I'll tell you why. I haven't talked about the wind yet.
During our approach I used my wind checker every so often and got different results. Sometimes it went straight up the mountain, sometimes it went straight towards the deer.
But with enough terrain breaking things up I took a chance. But now I'm really close, checking the wind and it's consistently going up towards the deer. Faaack!
So I bust some branches to make a rest for the rifle and have a space for the scope to see through.
I'm quickly working myself into a good position because I have feeling this isn't going to last long.

Now I'm looking for Big Hank through the scope.
Here's my setup at 1:32pm



I check the wind again. Still going straight towards the deer.
Now If I remember correctly looking at the terrain earlier, there is a set of cliffs to the left of him.
What I'm hoping is that if he smells us, his only escape will be to step out into the chute before climbing up.

1:42pm. I'm looking at him through the scope and I see his rack suddenly perk up, square up and fixate on us. He either saw me ****ing around in my tree or smelled us.
A few seconds later, he stands up and I see his head and top of body. He's looking straight down at us.
IT'S GAME ON.

Within a few seconds, he walks out into the chute.
In that moment, total focus takes over.

BOOM!!!


With a good hold on the rifle, I managed to see his body kinda tense up through the scope. I'm pretty sure I hit him.
I jack the next round in right away.

He takes a few more steps into the chute, does a 180 and freezes there looking into space.
In my mind, I'm shooting till he's down.
BOOM!!!
He steps back behind the bushes but I can still kinda see his vitals.
BOOM!!!
He takes off and then I hear the sounds of crashing through the branches.
Except this time, it doesn't quite sound like he's escaping. It sounded more like he tumbled down the mountain.
Only one way to find out.

I turn around and my wife is in shock that this all happened so fast. Tears are rolling down her face from excitement, but also, she feels bad for Big Hank's little buddy.
I hug and kiss her, look at her and say "I can't believe this just happened".

We put on our packs and head up the chute. He was bedded at treeline above me.

[Mark-R]

We finally arrive up where Big Hank was bedded and we start looking over the scene.

Right where I made the first shot we see a good sign on the ground.


I walk into his bedding area, lots more blood. I keep walking and then no more blood.
So I then start pushing through the scrub pine below and not long after I spot a hoof sticking up.
I tell my wife "He's here!"

As he lays. Notice you can see a bit of valley bottom in the top left of the photo.



Big Hank


We soak in the moment and take a few more pictures.

When I was a young kid, my uncle hunted moose and had this old saying that sticks with me: "when you're animal is down, your hunt begins!".
I look at my wife and tell her this story, half jokingly. We have a lot of work to do.
I start figuring out how and where I'm gonna tie off his rack, quarter him up and get all the game bags back up top because below us it gets steeper and cliffs out.

Contemplating the work that lays ahead.


It's a shitty spot for sure to do this in but we have no choice. This deer is much heavier than anything I've tried to haul around.
2 hours go by, I'm a sweaty mess and we're pretty much done. We have all the good meat in game bags and hauled them up.

[Mark-R]

Time to put these backpacks to work.


We're loaded up nice heavy and start heading back down the valley.



To make it out of this basin we have to climb "the wall". It's just a really steep slope but we're struggling with the weight already.
So we stop and debone the meat which definitely helped because we still have hours of packing out.

Up the wall.


Once over the wall it's mostly down hill back to the truck but still about 4 hours away.
We finally make it to the truck at 10pm, which made for a 7 hour pack out.
That took a lot of effort. We are completely spent and sore. We left all our camping gear in the alpine and just wanted to get the meat out.
Once the meat is in the cooler, we figured we'd either sleep in the truck or hike back in that night... yeah right.

We open the cheap Coleman cooler and the ice is completely melted.
We then decide screw this, let's drive for a few hours straight home and get him in the fridge.
We'll get all the butchering done, rest up for a couple days. Then we'll come back for a nice overnight hike and get the rest of our gear off the mountain.

This plan worked out great. All our stuff was still there, our food was still hanging in the tree and our packs were much lighter and our bodies have recovered a bit.
We hiked out the next day and said goodbye to this amazing place for now.

Until next year!

The end.

[whitlers]

That is an epic story and what a stud of a buck! Good on yah!

[GoOutside]

Absolutely awesome buddy. Thanks for sharing.

[Ride Red]

Awesome story and incredible country; congrats!!!

[LBM]

Congrats to you and your wife on a beautiful looking buck and great pictures
you will have something to remember for ever.
Did you keep the velvet on the antlers?

[338win mag]

Epic adventure, thanks for taking us along!

[BeerMan]

Great story and pics.