I’m not gonna lie, my kill to days hunted ratio for Coues deer is far from exemplary. To be honest it’s downright terrible. Sure I’ve put a few on the ground, but for the amount of years I’ve chased them a baker’s dozen of bucks would be more appropriate.

It never bothered me when I visited Coues country on my annual winter hunt down in Arizona. It was an excuse to leave the arctic temps of Denver and go walk around the arid mountains in a t-shirt and healthy slathering of sunscreen. The goal was simple, suntan first, a little meat for the freezer a far off second.

As a tourist, this policy was fine, however it needed to be rethought now that the family and I decided to call the Copper State home. Coues deer are more plentiful in my town than people… and by a wide margin. I needed to crack the code and learn how these mountain whitetail acted and more importantly how they would be susceptible to a bowhunter's need for close proximity.

And I needed to figure it out fast. I had a tall task ahead of me to fill my 2022 tag before the ball dropped in Time Square.

The August season came around but that was really just squeezed in between helping a buddy on a hunt and preparing for my own come September. I used it to fill in the time, but I didn’t take it too seriously.

That would leave the December pre-rut hunt to buckle down and put a win on the board.

Spot and stalk on these skittish creatures seemed to involve too much luck (or maybe I hate to admit it, skill) and I wanted something a little more reliable.

That’s when something a fella I met some years back said to me while hunting eeked its way back into my brain.

They’re a whitetail, a damn small one, but a whitetail nonetheless. Hunt them like one.

It was true. They may not pattern exactly the same as a whitetail would on the farmlands of the midwest. Coues live in endless public lands and often have 360 degrees of options when it comes to roaming about. Of course this could hold true for any animal, but in the midwest often cover dictates their travel corridors.

However when it came to finding a flaw in their game that would make them susceptible to hunting, they held a patternable trait that was very similar to their larger cousins. They scraped, they rubbed trees and they checked on what the other bucks and does were doing within the area. If they did that, they could be patterned.

Once I registered this in my brain, my early season scouting and upland hunting more often than not found its way to creek bottoms and benches, looking for the previous year’s scrapes or the new ones created by young bucks who didn’t get the memo about the timing of the rut.

I marked my maps with every scrape I came across and found a few spots with decent enough trees to potentially make it work.

As December pressed on it would be now or never. I had a few days to test my theory before the new year rendered my tag useless. The mule deer in my area had started rutting which meant the Coues deer would be a few short weeks behind. They might start getting curious about their old scrapes and I hoped to be there to put an arrow into one when they checked.

I set a platform on a major game trail not too far away from two scrapes. One had fresh tracks in it so I knew they were at least thinking about it.

I managed to get a platform ten feet off the ground in a cedar, which was an impressive feat considering my options. I opted to go with a saddle setup as the tree was a bit too thin for a standard deer stand.

Saddle hunting is a good option for small trees.

I had absolutely no idea which way the deer would be coming from so as long as my wind wasn’t blowing over the scrapes, I figured it was good enough.

The recent ban on trail cameras in Arizona left everything in the woods a mystery. There would be no sneak peak at the inventory and no idea the time of day they were moving through the area. Deer tracks in the immediate vicinity gave me some clues how much they were staying on trail and how much they were aimlessly roaming about.

Two sits later and I hadn’t seen a thing stirring. I left my setup and vowed to come back in a few days once family scattered after Christmas.

Sitting around the house and stuffing food in my face was never my thing. I pace around continuously while writing articles and editing photos, so you could imagine me shaking with energy as I was trapped indoors with thirteen family members roaming around our house. I needed to get out and breathe fresh air in a bad way.

I was released from my cage for a few hours, so I grabbed my pack and bow and made for the stand. I needed time to myself and there’s no better place than hanging from a tree with the hopes of some hapless buck walking by.

As I settled into my saddle I had that primal sense that at times still visited me. I was going to see something on this sit and if I didn’t screw up, I was going to release an arrow.

I had three hours until sunset, but I let out a few grunts and rattled the antlers just to see if there were any early takers. There weren’t, but that didn’t discourage me. There was still plenty of time.

I watched the sun, hazed over by a thin layer of clouds, weave its way through branches as it ached for concealment of the horizon.

I sat. I didn’t think. I just enjoyed the silence of being alone.

An ambitiously high mountain to the west gave the sun the early reprieve it sought and gave the area I was hunting a false sunset.

The deer didn’t seem to know the difference as ten minutes later I heard a few does blowing not too far off behind me. My wind wasn’t going that direction so I thought it odd. Something is disturbing them and it wasn’t me for once.

I gave the antlers hanging next to me a gentle rattle. A commotion uphill and across a little stream told me my timing was perfect.

I reached for my bow and waited.

Antler appeared in the stream. The head attached to them scanned back and forth looking for the culprits making the racket.

Holy hell. This could actually work. A freakin Coues was actually coming into my rattling.

He was a bit skeptical as to why the opponents to the battle he had heard were nowhere to be seen. If this were the heavily called after deer of the midwest in all likelihood this buck would have been throwing dirt in the air as he made for the hills.

This wasn’t the case however. He was still curious and made his way to the scrapes to see if the perpetrators left scent behind that could solve the mystery.

As his head ducked behind a pine I went to full draw. He sensed movement and paused, hiding anything worth shooting from sight.

The old Mexican standoff.

Figuring it must have just been a flutter of a bird, he stepped out to give me a perfect shot at eleven yards.

It worked… Holy hell it worked.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think it would, but sometimes when you have something that obvious sitting in front of you and you simply ignore it.

As I walked out of the woods with a full pack of meat I wondered how many other things in life I screwed up simply because I overlooked the obvious. Had success eluded me in other parts of life because I thought the complex way was always the better way?

As per usual, I was likely overthinking it. It worked and that’s all that really mattered. I was able to add more meat to the freezer and more importantly, a new trick in the arsenal that would hopefully help me do the same in the future.

// Fred Bohm