Land of the Giants: Idaho Mule Deer Part 2 | S6E05 | MeatEater

for going on 20 years i've been a mule deer meat hunter putting one or two in the freezer every fall and enjoying the flash year round but over the years it's occurred to me and nagged at me that i had observed thousands of mule deer without ever seeing the cagey old truly big bucks that had to be out there somewhere i have never seen like with a gun in my hand the mule deer i'm after eventually it got to where i couldn't think of anything else when i was in mule deer country they're out there i want to find one once i get like like you're going to turn into a bird watcher yeah i'm stephen runella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal it's about who we are and what we're made of i live to hunt and hunt to live i am a meat-eater it's a beautiful late october morning the start of only the third day of a hunt with my buddy ryan callahan we're in the mountains of central idaho along a migration corridor used by mule deer as they move from alpine summering range to desert winter ground i've come here to find the unfindable a giant mule deer buck it's something i've been looking for for many years but each time like charlie brown trying to kick his football unmet with crushing disappointment we hiked in from the trailhead two days ago ryan brought me into his favorite secret spot just as the bucks were starting to get real interested in the does ahead of the breeding season right off the bat we spotted a dandy but our overzealousness cost us and we drove the deer out of the country just like that walked out of our lives after a frustrating day and a half we spotted a black bear late yesterday i'd love to get that while going after it callahan stumbled onto a small group of muleys and shot himself a nice buck that night we dined on boiled tongue while ryan recounted the story of his successful hunt it was the best possible huh now we're back at it we're gonna use our binoculars and spotting scopes to tear this place a new one and hopefully find a true monster it's our third morning out here me and callahan are halfway into our big idaho mule deer blowout our first i saw a couple dandy bucks some of the dandiest bucks i ever seen the problem is the area we saw those have some other dudes working it real hard there's deer everywhere this morning i've seen three bucks up here one buck down here one buck over here that i'm looking at now i don't even know why i'm looking at him he thinks he's pretty cool but he's not there's so many does around now the outfit everybody always used to say with this many decoys you just know there's some old gnarly bug just a patience game i want to point out that kelly he's single he listened to posh mountain town he's a homeowner he has a job fit single so ladies out there should be looking up kelly and don't reason he can't go out and find a ladies he's remodeling his place so you got to bring the fight to him but if i was a worthwhile honorable woman i'd be going after him he's a good guy [Music] i'ma go grab steve [Music] you should come look at this all good things it's i mean it's noticeably bigger than everything else i've seen this morning but you should make a call i think you should sneak right past our tent to the edge of the chamber yeah and just glass those draws okay coming up and i'll come around that edge and pick you up okay [Music] yeah you see that like blonde like cox comb right right there that came wrapping over the top of that and they're like right here it's an open phase and the big i mean there was already a group of does and some smaller bucks there then the group of three bucks came in and one of them's where is it looking at like i said we should try and take a look i think that green tree right there why don't you go below this rock i'll stay here and watch us [Music] [Music] [Music] a bunch of toes five does two bucks one of the boxes of fork you wanted the boxes of three three by three [Music] double three by threes cross three edge at 282 yards just stay on those [Music] oh there's a good one in there he's got dual kickers if you're into that sort of thing one two three four five six he's five on his right side six on his left there's two kind of box there's bugs i'm not that interested in and this box i'm really interested in i'm real interested in that buck he's pretty much i like that buck a whole bunch i'm going after that buck this is just what you hope for on a spot and stock hunt you find your animal a ways off and you get a situation where it's not too likely to move during the time it takes you to get over there maybe it's bedded down or quietly feeding or in this case infatuated with a slow moving dough a million things are going through my head during the long period when i'm out of sight of the buck dropping down and then climbing up towards a ridge line that should put me within reasonable shooting range part of me wants to run up there but the better part of me knows that getting to that ridge when i'm out of breath and shaking would be bad business because it leads to bad shooting of course there's plenty of things that could go wrong and by now i've seen them all a coyote runs them off another hunter gets on him the doe gets annoyed with the buck and takes off with the buck and toe or the buck gets a good width of the dough determined she's not ready to rock and heads off for new adventures but i know those things are all beyond my control at this point i'm just trying to focus on composure he's totally ignoring that doe that he's been chasing all morning long he's got to be 350 yards away stay there just remembered the doe was there she keeps flicking her tail and he can't resist when my brothers and i were kids our old man put stickers on the inside of the upper limb of our bows that said stay calm pick a spot while closing in on this buck i'm imagining that sticker control your breath squash your excitement check your expectations be a good predator you can get excited later all right shed a few layers get ready to start packing some meat [Music] uh holy i cannot believe it oh shock that's great that's really something i've spent so much time looking at me over there hunting me over there and eating meal deer chopping up mule deer over all those years chasing these things and looking at them i've really grown to admire them more than any other animal out there 20 years i've been just one i'm wanting to run into a buck like this man i like these things so much [Music] nice hunting spot you got callahan where are you taking me next year [Laughter] oh i got a spot up here i want to show you can't turn it back in you want a bigger one no i'm pretty happy you got in a steep enough spot left hand what do you think man i'm ecstatic man that looks like he gets heavier up top isn't that amazing yeah that is amazing oh look at his face oh he's a giant look at his body it's like a cow out how far the shot 392. was it if he was 10 yards true i wouldn't shout yeah like my 400 yard cap this place is amazing man if i was going to never take me either [Music] normally i just take the skull and meet from a mule deer but with this one i'm gonna keep the cape so i can sell it to a taxidermist he's such a big animal like just big healthy ears all clean huge thick neck the neck is yeah that you know a guy that wants his deer to look like it looked you know when he shot a big old buck would very well want that cape average mule deer capes are a dime a dozen and there's really no demand but the cape of a mature buck like this can be gold to a taxidermist he can turn it around and use it for another client who's got a shot up or otherwise mishandled cape of his own deer have real thin hair under here it's just thin thin fur in there and i've had taxiderm say to me it's very hard to stitch that and get it to look legit so it's best not to be messing up here in this area and not to be messing up this little colic of hair it runs down here because you can't stitch it up in a way that looks natural one of the trickiest parts is getting the hide out from around the antler bases don't cut it they say that you can thin the hide too much if you if you're cutting with a knife you want to actually pry it loose i'm using just a regular screwdriver on the multi-tool and you can actually pry that hide off and it comes off real clean okay so here's one that's all clean like this piece is all natural no cuts that's like the parts that are actually joined up you almost kind of see like a lip if you're gonna have a deer mounted you know it's best to have that so that someone's not trying to do repair work and winds up looking like a hack job look at this fat man you just don't see no that fat i mean that's just like extra extra fat i would say it's a safe assumption he wasn't chasing does and being all aggressive a week ago he was just getting fat he goes into the rut in the best shape he'll be in all year and he comes out of the rut in the worst shape he'll be all year they're going into the winter in such bad shape that it just doesn't really happen to males to get that old they don't get old like those they go from being top of their game to dead [Music] there's a couple cuts to get left in the woods rib meat neck meat shank meat tends to get left in the woods by people who don't realize that it's such high quality meat if it's prepared right you're not legally obligated to retain the neck ribs and shank but you should it's just like you just got to find the right ways to cook them i've never prepared neck from someone who wasn't astounded by how good it was if done right [Music] over the last few years and i've been sitting around drinking with my buddies i've joked that i'd happily burn all my hunting gear and take up something pointless like golf in exchange for just one big old muley like blues legend robert johnson selling his soul to the devil in exchange for mastery of the guitar my thinking was that you need to pay for what you want and some things go beyond the normal currencies that we deal with in daily life but here now with this buck i see that the real pain needs to happen though it's hard to identify the limits of my indebtedness i owe something to callahan for sure and absolutely to these mountains and i owe something to the animals to their long-term well-being these are debts not easily paid but i'll damn sure try with a successful hunt behind us ryan and i have some time to kick back at a friend's place near our hunt area having the luxury of a nice kitchen and grill instead of just a campfire means i can cook up a whole mule deer rump roast one of my favorite preparations with rum roaster just muscle groups in the back leg is to do simple roasts what i'm going to do right now is i'm going to cook this piece of mule deer rum in a pellet grill where i can set the temperature and i think i have a fixed temp so i got 500 degrees put the meat in there and just let it go it's the simplest way to do things if you have a grill that's compatible with that kind of cooking since i'm cooking on the grill i'm just gonna put some oil on a plate roll it around in there i have coarse ground pepper and sea salt and i'm gonna sprinkle a very liberal coating onto this thing it seems like a lot of salt and pepper on there but you're only getting whatever salt and peppers on the little ring like little rind on the outside of it that piece of meat is now ready to go on the grill so i'm cooking my roast on a wood pellet grill in a way you could think of it like a oven with smoke in that it has a thermostat on it and it's very easily controlled so it's kind of as simple as doing a roast in your oven but you get a lot of extra flavor from the smoke from this point i'm going to forget about this thing probably for the next 15 minutes and just go about my business in a different kind of grill like if you're cooking in a regular propane grill or charcoal grill where you have a more direct heat on there you want to monitor it more and don't leave the area and run the risk of having a lot of flame lapping at the meat and over charring as it starts to get done you'll notice that when you press it it'll run like a like a watery blood or almost like an oily watery blood and right now it's kind of a bloody blood so i know it needs a few more minutes [Music] once your roast is at the right temperature for how well done you like it be sure and let it rest for about 10 minutes before you slice into it this gives the juices time to reabsorb back into the meat and to not run out all over the plate look at that oh that's gorgeous man red rim i feel like i'm down in texas right now look at that i mean to me that's close to beef at this point yeah [Music] i feel like this year we kind of like witnessed something that you maybe won't see is that i'm talking like public land anyone can go there who wants to go and hunt yep it's the kind of license that anyone can go by resident non-resident whatever that in three days i saw three of the nicest bucks that i've seen in 20 years of chasing mule deer says to me that i witnessed a special set of circumstances time of year climate right yep is not likely to be replicated you know yo leo like should have been here yesterday i was there yesterday i was there i'd be like you know in fact i was here yesterday and it was nice thank you it's like i would have been here i'm glad you weren't but you should have for once in my life on mule deer i was there yesterday yeah man on the day you were supposed to show up it felt just good i mean you've seen it i have terrible timing our timing lined up the season lined up the dates lined up i was there yesterday [Music] [Music] you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 590,979

Rating: 4.9549184 out of 5

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella, hunting, mule deer, deer hunting, idaho, idaho hunting, rifle hunting, big game hunting

Id: Pep-itpzMuI

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021