The debate has been going on since I squirted out of my sleeping bag. I finish the last drop of cold coffee and as I flip flop back and forth like a politician pandering for your vote.

I mean your just adding weight making an already strenuous hike all that more difficult. Besides the damn things are awkward.

The sky starts to show signs of waking up, turning a slightly lesser deep grade of purple. Shit or get off the pot.

Com’on man. You’re an athlete!

To hell with it. I strap in a pair of rattling antlers to the outside of my pack and heft it on. I instantly feel the extra weight added and question my judgement. Now these are no ordinary rattling horns, oh no. I’ve received odd looks from encroaching hunters passing by my deer stand as they look up to see what appears to be a set of elk antlers dangling from my bow hanger.

Now technically a Coues deer is a whitetail so the same rules should apply right? I had never rattled in a Coues deer nor have I heard it being done before. But these little tweekers are notoriously skittish and I figured I’d up my chances of success if I could convince them to come to me.

I stuff the remnants of my gear and move out for higher ground, pushing up from the river bottom into the finger ridges of Arizona’s backcountry. When in doubt go up.

Struggling to get my creaking legs to function properly, I avoid cactuses with the grace of a drunken orangutan as I head up the mountain. From time to time I stop and peak ahead with my glass in hopes of finding some brown fur attached to some browner antlers in the predawn light.

I aim for a cliffed out ridge and make for the top. The sun peeks over the edge of the earth with the endless chore of starting the day. I put it in park, plop my butt on the ground and settle in for the morning glassing session.

Predawn glassing can be great, but when that sun hits the hillside it might as well be adding animal location waypoints to my GPS.

Huh... Mule deer. Wasn’t expecting them up here.

A thick beamed four by four peacocks its way across the hillside, thrashing at bushes that dare to stand in his path.

His harem of does meanander a bit taking little notice of him and settle in for a morning snooze. Waiting for the buck to bed, I find a stick close at hand and start to clean the sweater that has formed on my teeth.

After prepping my teeth for a Colgate commercial and seeing the buck’s head nodding, I hump on my pack and take a long about way to the backside of the ridge they’re using as home base for the morning.

Being that they are near the only patch of trees on the whole mountainside I feel good about my chances of finding them.

The sweat stings my eyes as I push deeper into the backcountry and higher up the hillside.

Next year I’m only truck hunting. I’m over this backcountry horseshit.

A common promise to myself that I know will never come to fruition.

I crawl up the rolling ridge wishing for a steeper angle that would hide me better. The wind seems to have held out so far, but I know that the transition over a ridge can be unpredictable.

My pack comes off for the home stretch as I go to my belly for the last fifty yards. I make it to the bush where I guessed at a forty yard shot.

Empty.

A swing and a miss. I stand up in time to see the whole herd clearing out the other side of the canyon. I don’t know how the hell I did it, but once again a blown stalk.

I head back to where my pack lays grinning at me in the dirt. It knows to many of my embarrassing secrets; the amount of antler I’ve watched bounce away from me.

Don’t give me that look. Do your job, hold my gear and don’t give me any lip.

I continue my way up in elevation. When in doubt, go… well no need to be redundant.

I follow the ridge up, not caring about skylining myself in the midday heat. At this point I’m looking for any shade on the mountain knowing that this is where any rational deer might spend the heat of this sweltering afternoon.

According to my map there is a nice looking bowl with some potential a mile or so ahead. Twenty minutes and several thorns later I get a good peek at it.

Trees. Now we’re talking.

I pull out the spotter and get settled for a long sit. Within seconds I have an explosion of gear surrounding me. It’s a disaster really. What I would imagine if the local REI were hit with a missle.

My glass no sooner hits my face when a deer pops into view.

Well that was fast.

I watch as two small coues bucks dick around by some does. I know that there has to be a dominant buck nearby. If this is the varsity team, the does have some slim pickings for genetics.

And as if summoned by my logic, he materializes like a ghost. He pushes his way closer to the JV team and scatters the wannabes to the wind.

That’s my boy. That’s the one I want.

I scoop gear into my backpack while making a plan. There’s enough trees in the bowl to slide in to a reasonable distance. Then perhaps I’ll put the elephant tusks I’ve been lugging around to work. I carried the damn things all the way up here, I might as well make use of them.

Once again I sneak behind the ridge to use as cover. I find my mark and slip over top into the bowl.

The overhead sun projects shadows from the cedars as black as ink, allowing me to slip in with ease. I tuck into a particularly thick bush full well knowing that if the buck takes the assumed path he’ll be blinded by the sun and oblivious to me lurking in the shadows.

I marvel at my cleverness as I drop my pack and get out the two ship anchors I use for rattling.

Bow laid out in front of me I clang the antlers together. I’m not sure if it’ll send him charging in or running in terror.

I place the antlers to the side and take my bow into my hands. The minutes fade away.

And there he is.

Like a gymnast on a balance beam he walks a straight line never veering from his path. The problem is that that path leads to the bush off to my side that is as thick as a Brillo Pad.

I’m pinned and I know it. If I reposition he’ll bail. If I let him continue on his trajectory I’m screwed. His head disappears behind a thick branch and I draw. Maybe some unwarranted luck will come my way and he’ll recalibrate his path to stand in front of my site.

No such luck, he continues on as my arm starts to shake under the stress of the fully drawn bow. Perhaps less vanity days at the gym replaced with more practical exercises is in order.

Holy hell he’s getting close.

Sweat beads down my forehead as the stress of the moment and the strain of my bow becomes almost unbearable.

He doesn’t stop and getting a full view of his bladed rack with a kicker or two doesn’t help my situation.

Within moments he’s five yards away on the opposite side of what might as well be a brick wall. He pauses, finally understanding that I am not what I originally appeared to be.

He turfs the ground sending a wave of dirt my direction, making safety before I can blink an eye.

And there you have it. Why the hell would you put yourself behind any obstruction? This isn’t the first time you’ve blown it in this exact scenario. You’d think you learned… I hope that damn backpack didn’t see what just happened. You’ll never hear the end of it.

So it goes. If I got overly mad at myself every time I screw up I’d have quit this game long ago. Perhaps that’s what makes a successful hunter; the willingness to be completely ignorant of one’s shortcomings.

I grab my gear to have a peruse of the bowl I’m loitering in.

It’s a beautiful day and there’s no use feeling sorry for myself. Besides there’s no one out here to hear my whining, so what’s the use?

An explosion of fur yards in front of my pulls me back from from my musings. I had totally forgotten about the other two bucks wandering around and managed to stumble right into a bedded one.

He takes off and for whatever reason decides to hook around and see what spooked him to begin with.

He stands perfectly broadside with his head behind a tree, not seeing me standing out in the open like the idiot I am.

My rangefinder tells me he’s at a doable 45 yards. I know I don’t have long to debate, he’s not the big one I was after but…

Carbon is in the air before I come to a conclusion of the situation. I guess instincts told me this was the right move.

He bounds off after giving me tell tale donkey kick of a mortally wounded animal.

I walk over to sniff the arrow and look at the blood. He’s dead, it’s just a matter of how far.

The tracking job starts slow as I pick my way through the steep terrain, but eventually the blood trail picks up. I’m feeling pretty good about myself, thinking of the lectures I will offer on blood tracking at the various ivy league colleges when I get back home. Then the trail goes cold.

How could it just stop?

I search the ground for the remnants of a needle and suture, but I come up empty.

I scan the direction the trail was going, knowing that they don’t often change it once injured. I continue to look down hill when I receive my first clue.

The rocks are disturbed and some dead branches on the ground appear to be pushed to the side. But they’re thirty yards below me so the math isn’t adding up.

I slide my way down the steep hillside and to the area of the disturbance.

Good Lord, this guy is an acrobat.

We typically rely on past experience to make sense of current situations, but this one was a new one to me. This I hadn’t seen before.

The spear like tips of a massive yucca plant is stained with blood. Not how you would normally see however. Not the sides but directly on top the protruding spears look like a painter’s mixing dowl, covered half way with a brilliant red paint.

Further down the hill is another disturbance, then another, all at great intervals. The scene comes to a conclusion at the bottom of a brushy tree where my coues deer is wrapped around the trunk. Back broken and with multiple body punctures, he looks like a torn up piece of seaweed clinging to a rock from the currents of the tide.

At least the meat will be tenderized…

Pulling him out by his hind legs to a semi-flat spot I get a good look at his antlers.

Jackpot.

They are perfect. I imagine these beauties in my hands, rattling my teeth as they come colliding together. I imagine the scores of whitetail that will succumb to irresistible purr of their elegant calling.

Even more than that, I image how light my pack will be without those God awful heaps of bone I’ve been lugging around.

“Don’t worry, you’ll make fine chew toys for the dogs,” I say to the antlers on my pack.

A double victory in the backcountry of Arizona.

// Fred Bohm