2003 Montana Mule Deer
by Jack Downing

SCI relationships have been good to me. My son and I attended a fund raising banquet at SCI Maine several years ago and we sat a table with others who were total strangers at the time. Talk turned to hunting mule deer and I was to find out that the fellow sitting next to me had owned 87,000 acres of land in the “Missouri Breaks” of Montana. He had since sold much of it, but retained exclusive hunting rights to his former property. When I heard this, I got all excited as hunting “The Breaks” had become a dream of mine years before when I was working as a guide in Alaska. Jack Atcheson, the booking agent from Montana, was a client of mine on a caribou hunt and I asked him where his favorite place was to hunt mule deer. Without hesitation his answer was- “The Breaks”.

My new acquaintance, who has since become one of my best friends, was looking for a place in Alabama for him and his son to hunt deer in January. A was able to set them up with a friend of mine and they came and Will, his son, was able to take a very nice Alabama whitetail. It was at this time my son, John, and I began applying for Montana mule deer tags. In 2003 on our third try and with enough bonus points we were successful.

John met me in Jackson, Wyoming where I had just finished a great Shiras moose hunt and we drove my truck to Billings, Montana and did the grocery shopping before heading four hours north to the remote ranch. We opened the ranch house and had made our selves comfortable when the three others arrived just after dark. They had flown in that day from New Hampshire. We all kicked in $200 for expenses and that was to be the total cost for a two week mule deer adventure.

We drove the vast area to good spots and saw plenty of deer and elk. We were seeing up to five “shooter bucks” per day. On day # 2 we took a 30” 4 x 4 and each day thereafter we took a 4 x 4, 5 x 7 and I was able to harvest a symetrical 5 x 5 on day #4. Will had seen a heavy 34” buck early in the hunt and held out for a week before taking a pretty 4 x4.

I now have several great new friends and a dream has been fulfilled. An open invite to return has been offered to me whenever I can draw another tag. One of these hunters will accompany me to the Arctic in 2005 for Peary Caribou and musk ox and another will go to Africa with me this coming June. Isn’t it great how this trading of hunts works out? By the way, my friend wants to hunt Alabama for a week in January with his son and trade for a mule deer hunt in Montana. Contact me if you have a hunting area in Alabama and would like to duplicate this great hunt.

While there I was able to see some whitetails down along the river that would knock your socks off. Not being ashamed to talk hunting, I asked several ranchers for permission to hunt and the response was “If you’ve got a tag, come on over as there are too many of those damn things and they’re eating all my hay”! If I’m ever lucky enough to draw another Montana deer tag I will have to decide whether to help one of these ranchers out and go kill one of his big whitetails or put my raft into the Missouri River and float some of the best remote whitetail habitats in this country for a week.
Decisions decisions!
nybody interested? Jd3rd@hotmail.com