ARROW VS POP CANS (bonus: Super SlowMo)

This is me and that is a Nevada high country mule deer. When I started dreaming about western hunting a true high country hunt was right at the top of my list and I got just what I was asking for plus a whole lot more. Welcome to the Nevada ass kicker hunt. I came all the way down 14 hours from my hood to beautiful Nevada. Look at beautiful Nevada. Now there's a couple things that really fire me up. The opportunity to fill my freezer with wild clean grass-fed meat is at the top of my list and when you combine that with the chance to explore a new mountain range archery tag in my pocket, well this is a recipe for one heck of a time. There are no guarantees though. Mountains are unforgiving and will prove to test both myself and my friend Lucas who graciously offered to come along and document the trip. This is the Nevada high country. We've been here for four days. I said I was going to turn the camera on as soon as we got some action. Well here's our action. We have lightning. Come along. It's going to be an adventure. I'll promise you that and that I'll promise you. In my fifth year applying to Nevada I drew my fifth choice. Five points burned to go hunt this hunt. Anticipations would run high as we were rolling into a brand new unit and you never know what's over the next hill or what you could turn up. That's part of the excitement of a big hunt like this. We'd get down there a couple days early to make sure we had time to scour the area and look for deer and our three-day search yielded just a handful of deer. Hopes were low at this point and we rolled into opening day with no real plan, just hope. We woke up opening morning to a flat tire. Flat tire opening morning. So we limped the truck in 60 miles to the nearest town and sweet talk and finessed the local tire shop to do an on-the-run patch for us. Super grateful we were able to get that done but it was opening day we hadn't hunted yet and we had to get back into the mountains. We're just waiting in a little rainstorm more of a lightning storm. I've always heard about Nevada's lightning and thunderstorms and we're in such a weird spot where it's hovering right on the peaks. We're not sure if it's moving towards us. We're kind of stuck in that gray area where it's like should I stay or should I go now. Slowly being patient or whatever because we literally just hiked up here I don't know it's like 800 feet or something you think. Yeah basically straight up here and hiked up here to find lightning or thunder or whatever. Climbing a thousand vertical feet amidst a looming thunderstorm proved to be worthwhile as our luck was about to change. Middle of this freaking storm we just found our first bachelor group of bucks. They're kind of up here. We'll get you guys some like phone scope footage or something but they have antlers right? Yeah pretty exciting. I don't know how long we can hang up here tonight but it leaves us something to chase tomorrow. As it turns out you're not supposed to hunt in a lightning storm but we had found bucks and that is just what we needed to get our hopes back up and have a plan for tomorrow. This is just like the camp program. We can actually spot a little bit towards the hills here. What are you working on Lucas? I'm making me a hot drink. Hot drink. Anyway my battery is like back now. It was pretty depleted being all over this unit and not seeing deer and the biggest thing right now is at least we have some clues like elevation, deer high, kind of what they're looking for for feed. See if we can stir up tomorrow. I'm excited. A little lightning flash there. A little bit of chicken kung pao. I like it. Lucas where do you stand? Fantastic. Camp food can't do no better. That's pretty good. I've been cooking up all the meals. Slavin' all day. Gotta keep the camera guy happy. Yep good food keep him happy. We're gonna finish these meals, wind her down, wake up we got bucks to chase. We're gonna head up the hill and we got bucks to chase today. It's pretty exciting. See what we can stir up. Let's hit it. This is me. That's my truck and we're about say half of the way up. It's pretty steep going up but once we get up there it kind of flattens out we can move around so we just get our ass kicked a little on the way up. Let me head up. Those deer are just in the same basin we left them. Thank you. We're gonna get up here and just gloss them a little bit. See what they do. Try to be patient. Play chess not checkers. Pretty exciting that they're still here. That kind of makes my day. Yeah let's go see what we can stir up. Now we got to observe these bucks. We watched them feed in the morning. We watched them go to their first bed. We watched them go to their second bed and from that point I thought I could get up and around and I am going to make my first stock of the year. I was going to take a big wide loop about another 800 feet up run the ridge across about another half a mile. As I got to the edge it was just a day late and a dollar short kind of deal. These deer were just on the edge of my shot bubble. 80-85 yards. I pulled back in a pretty heavy wind just to see what it felt like. What my pin float looked like and float was an understatement. My pin was all over the place so I decided to let down, regroup, try to leave these deer unbothered and come back for them the next day. That was far less dramatic. Today was cool. It was a lot. We hiked up to that peak. Got close. Definitely needed a little bit of luck on that stock and we had I would say quite a bit of luck. Maybe not enough. Got to full draw at 80 yards or something like that and my pin was floating pretty good so I didn't want to send it. A little depleted right now but we'll get back on it tomorrow. Salami, cheese, a little thin bread. I like it man. Pretty simple. Everything tastes better I think when you're back in the bush. Whatever it is it's turning into a blur. We're gonna head up to the opposite side of where we've been. Kind of dip in see some new territory. We'd hike up the opposing side of the mountain range the following day and learned a couple of valuable clues. Firstly there weren't any deer on that side of the mountain range. Take a look over there. Tell me what you see. Look over here. What do you see? Bush. Bush. Bush. Bush. We have literally had a face full of bush today. That's all we can find. Nothing but bush. Bush in the corner. Bush on top. Bush in the middle. Occasionally a deer. Deer with a face full of bush. We'll stay posted. With the spotter we could spot across and still see those bucks were where we left them and that meant we'd be back on them tomorrow first thing and it was on like Donkey Kong. That's a wrap on tonight. We saw some deer. Not all the deer we're hoping to see. That big buck kind of up and disappeared this afternoon but we know where we're going tomorrow. To the old bald knob. Try to really be aggressive from here on out. We're running out of days. Kind of put the put the full court press on. Make some moves. Hope to find something we can stalk in the morning. There's definitely one buck in there. Anyway we're gonna get down to camp. I went to bed that evening feeling restless. Mainly because of the lack of deer densities. I knew with only one group of bachelor bucks located we were gonna have to give it a good effort and that might be our only chance. The next morning we'd hike our asses back up the hill and hope our previous day's intel held true and we could be in position to make a move. We got a gift. Those bucks are back in the best possible being for me to go after them. I started jamming up the hill as quick as I could but these bucks went to bed early that day and that meant patiently waiting for the next opportunity even if it took all day. We are just waiting and see how Tim can make a play. I'm on the mule deer schedule out here catching some shade waiting for a time I can get a stalk on these deer. Got some stuff chirping at me. Let me put this camera on. I'll show you something. Cameras never do just a slope but dang it is steep out here. Look at that. It's big country. That's been a big part of the fun hunting out here being out here and I just want to take a second to appreciate something about hunting. Hunting takes you to places and spaces that you would never ever have a reason to find yourself. These wild places and spaces that no one no one has a reason to be here no one would be here no one is here except for us because we're pursuing wild game trying to fill our freezer and to me that's something really special about hunting that I very much appreciate and yeah it keeps me coming back it's awesome. I'm out here in the desert nothing but rocks for days so I made a little shelter with uh jackets I had in my pack tripod trekking pole trying to get out of the sun stay out of the sun. I've had enough of that this trip. What I do while I'm sitting here uh keeping an eye on this deer. I just wanted to give you guys a quick tour of my camp for the day here look at all this has moved out so I can move around and sit down basically hiding underneath the trees all my stuff sprawled out. Hopefully this buck will get out of his bed either feed towards Tim or go bed in this other draw where he can get a stalk on it so that's what we're hoping for. It's been a good little camp spot for the day. Bucks are on their feet and I'm gonna work on getting set up. It was at this moment that I was racing the bucks to get to where they had been feeding day and night. They had fed in the same vein and I was sidehilling my way to get there to try to intercept them and be ready to ambush as they moved into position. I expected the bucks to come from below me and my wind was perfect. The bucks of course came slightly above me and were feeding right to where I felt like I could get a really good shot at the bigger 3x3. The bigger 3x3 did what old crusty bucks do and he looked downhill saw something he didn't like turned around and fed away. At this moment I instantly ranged the smaller buck, ranged him at 50, slid my dial to 48 because of the high elevation, drew my bow back and tried to place one good arrow on this steep uphill shot. I just shot at that smaller buck. I'm gonna check for blood. I couldn't really tell his reaction looked like it but that big buck just freaking turned around. He didn't like something so let's see what we see here. That's my first blood which is a big relief. It's pretty good looking blood. Yeah I'm just gonna keep moseying here just to kind of detail out. Came from up there right down here. I didn't lose his blood but I wanted to hop onto this rock to see if what I could see and Lucas is down right by it right now. So I don't know I gotta get down there. This is incredible country and I feel very blessed to to have have gotten a deer in here. Cool. Lucas says it's a money shot. Good. Guys this is Nevada Mule Deer. My first Mule Deer buck. 14 hour drive. Unit we knew nothing about and a super challenging hunt. I'm incredibly grateful to have punched my tag. We have like one day left. I don't know man I don't have much more to say than that but this is this is about hanging out in wild spaces and wild places and adventure and the places that hunting will take you and filling your freezer with the most organic perfect protein. I'm into all those things. Yeah man we're gonna get this thing processed up and get out of here and we appreciate the heck out of you guys watching. See you at 2 a.m. I'll see you guys at daylight. I was leaving Nevada with both my cooler and my heart full. Hunting can mean a lot of different things but it is an integral part of our culture that I hope we can pass forward in a positive light. Subscribe to my channel I am chasing up that road to 100,000 subscribers and if you're in the field hunt every day like it's your last.