The 2nd weekend of November some of us decided to go to the family cabin for some time away. I grabbed the rifle for ‘just in case’ but had no real plans to go out hunting. We left early Friday to stay two nights and planned on coming home Sunday evening. Sunday afternoon we discovered we would be there indefinitely due to the coquihalla hwy landslides and brutal hwy conditions elsewhere….our cabin is north of quilchena. Long story short we were stuck there 12 days. On my 8th day there my brother in law and I went out for a drive to see what we could see for animal sign. I wasn’t optimistic but it had recently snowed 8” and there was sign all over the roads. Spent 4 hrs driving around the back country 30km passed the cabin and saw nothing but a wide variety of tracks…moose bear cougar bobcat deer…even a beaver trail down the road! Evening was approaching and we headed back to the cabin for a pit stop about 15minutes and left again for the last light of the afternoon. Not 2 minutes down the road we came upon a cut block and standing in the middle of it is this guy not 50 yards away. I managed to ignore my knee jerk reaction of slamming on the brakes and proceeded to role down the road as my brother counted out the points. Ken says, “one,two,three, four…HES DEAD!” I jump out the truck and smoked his front shoulder with the .308. The next 4hrs was spent in -5 temps butchering this muley. I learned a lot that night and was glad I watched Steve Rinellas “how to gut a deer video” multiple times. I am the first hunter in my family and didn’t have a dad or uncle to show me how it’s done so thank you Steve! I was exhausted but couldn’t be happier elbow deep in this deer. Looking forward to next year. Going to be hard to find another one like him though.