Ep. 1: Missing the Biggest Buck of My Life and Becoming a Better Bowhunter
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Hunters and anglers rely on Seafoam to keep their engines running the way it should the entire season. Pick up a can of Seafoam today at your local auto parts store or visit seafoamworks.com to learn more. As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance.

Before we get started, what I want you to do is picture yourself at the top of a mountain after two weeks of hunting. You are on the biggest deer of your life. You do an epic stalk. I'm talking top shelf epic. You get in within range. You draw back. As you draw back, the buck turns and looks at you. Okay? What do you do? Think about it for a second. Do you shoot? Do you wait? The buck's standing broadside. The buck's

You've ranged this, right? Now, I think the right answer is I need more information. And that is a correct answer. But what I hope is from what I consider probably the best hunt I've had in my life, I learned a lot of hard lessons. Now, I had some a great end story with some great success, but there were some pretty hard lessons learned along the way.

And I will think about this hunt for probably the rest of my life. It's my encounter with one of the greatest deer I have ever seen. And still to this day. And I've seen some pretty good deer. Now, I think the lessons learned at that moment, I have carried through throughout hunts from 2005 until now that have made me overall a more successful hunter. And it is because of the encounters with this buck.

So I want to tell you the story of what I consider the greatest year of my life. Now let me set the stage for you a little bit. The year is 2005. Now in the state of Nevada in 2005, if mule deer hunting was a fine wine, this would be the best wine you could get. This year, it was just a perfect storm of good antler growth,

I would say high deer populations. Everything just, the stars just lined up. Now, I had drawn a deer tag in an area that I'd hunted. I'd never actually personally had a tag in this unit. However, I've spent a lot of time in there with my buddy who had had tags over the years. We scouted it. We found some good areas. And I thought, man, I want to come back and hunt this tag next year with my bow. In this same county...

I would say that year, some of the biggest deer ever taken with a bow were taken. I think the new archery world record was shot that year by a guy named Greg Crow. And he took that buck with his bow not too far from actually where I was hunting. So you just got to, I'm just setting your mind right to know that this year, everything was lined up for this.

One of the best hunts you could probably ever have. And I would say that I'm telling a story about the biggest deer I've ever seen. Now, you're probably wondering, well, have I seen pictures of this big deer? You have to listen to this story and hear what happens. I scouted this unit. I don't even know how many days, to be honest, quite a few. I think I made two or three scouting trips during the summer.

I'd pinpointed the area where I wanted to be. And there was a high concentration of bucks in there. I'd seen multiple bachelor groups of 10 bucks or more, all ears wide, four by fours. I had seen some just tremendous deer. And I thought to myself, all right,

I've never seen so many good deer in my life. I'm going to really hold out and try to find the best deer I can. I've got the entire season. It was shortly after high school. I took my college during the spring and summer semesters. So I didn't have to go back to school yet. I had the entire month of August to hunt mule deer. And that was my plan.

I arrived in the area quite a few days before opening day, glassing, spotting bucks, just watching. What I was trying to do is watch their habits, watch their movements, try to figure them out. So if the buck that I decided I wanted to chase appeared on opening day, I would know how to get there. I would know potentially what that deer was going to do. Now, mule deer, they're

You might think you have them patterned, but they do some erratic stuff. It's not necessarily like patterning a whitetail. Early in the season when they're in their velvet, they tend to feed in an area and be out in the open more. However, they don't always bed in the same place. You might think they're going to go left because they've gone left the last two days, and the next day they just go a completely different way and go bed on another mountain. So they can be fairly erratic. But I just wanted to understand what the general movements of these deer were before I even started hunting.

On opening day, I spotted what I considered a pretty good buck. If you know deer scores or whatever, it's probably 180 inch plus buck. That would be the biggest deer I've ever taken in my life. I'm going to stock this deer. As I'm stocking that deer, I end up midday finding another deer. And the other deer I found was by far the largest deer I'd ever seen. And what would have been a potential world record mule deer. Now,

For me, hunting is about a lot of things. Primarily food, meat, the adventure, the challenge of it. But when I had seen that big buck, I thought there is probably no greater challenge than to try to take that one deer. One, because it's so big, you know, there may not ever be another point in my life where I find a deer that rivals that deer.

And the challenge of just hunting that one deer, I was welcoming it. I thought this is going to be hard, but I'm up for this challenge. Well, I've got the, I watched the deer bed. He bedded in what I considered a spot that would be a good spot for a stalk that first day, that opening morning. I stalk in, the wind is okay. I'm not going to say it was great, but it was okay. The deer was bedded out on a point. There's this small hill that came up

in between these two mountains. And he had bedded just below in the tall sage. There was a mahogany tree that was casting a little bit of shade. However, as the day moved on, I kind of expected this buck to move, yet he never moved when the shade got out. And I think it was because the sage was tall enough where it provided enough shade. And then there was a pretty good breeze blowing toward that buck. Now, the best approach would have been for me to

pop up a little further up the ridge. However, I think he would have winded me from there. So I decided to make an approach where I went essentially paralleled the ridge behind him and then would pop up over and he should be bedded right below me. And I was going to plan to stalk to that mahogany tree where the shade, it was actually putting shade on him earlier in the day.

I get over there. I take my shoes off. I make my long stalk. I get, you know, where I could start to see. I start glassing the brush and I see his antler tips. This buck is huge. I range it and it's about 60 yards. I range the tree. The tree's 30 yards in front of me or so. So I get low. I pretty much put my bow on my back, army crawl in. At this point, the wind, the day's getting later and the winds are starting to get a little shifty.

I crawl to that tree. I range his antlers 33 yards. I think, perfect. I am going to wait here until this buck stands up. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Nothing. The wind's getting a little shifty. I'm getting a little nervous. I'm shooting downhill at this point, or will be when he stands up. And I think to myself, I've got a, I think it was probably a, it was a seven pin sight. And I thought,

I might as well make this a slam dunk. I've been sitting here for an hour probably. I might as well get to an even 30 yards. Thinking back, that seems stupid. But you have to remember that time my bow wasn't as fast as they are now. The difference in three yards could be a hit or a miss. So I decide to crawl up three more yards, which I've been sitting here for hours. As I start my crawl, I'm about one yard into this crawl.

I feel the wind hit the back of my neck. A quick swirl. The buck's head whips up. The buck stands there broadside and I'm caught off guard. He's standing looking around because the wind just swirled. He had no clue which way that sent. He just picked up a little bit of scent. But I draw back. The buck must have heard me. I was not set up very well. He takes off bouncing away and there goes the buck of my dreams.

Now, at this point, I've been 30 yards or close, around 30 yards, to this giant deer. He disappeared. He ran off. I was unable to relocate him. Now, for the rest of the hunt, all I can think about is this big buck. And probably pretty much truthfully for the rest of my life. But...

Thinking about this deer, I'm seeing other great bucks. But in my mind, I know nothing else will do. It's this deer or no deer. I will go home empty if I don't get another chance at this buck is what I'm thinking. I think it was about two weeks later of hard hunting. When I started out hunting, I had my dad was with me and one of my good buddies, Art. And they all had to go back to work. I said, nah, I'm staying out here. I'm going to just continue hunting for this big buck.

So a few weeks goes by. I think I was hunting a little over a week by myself, maybe more. Those guys come back. It's a weekend. We all, I'm showing them all the good deer that I'm seeing. I'm like, yeah, I think my dad had a tag with me as well. So I'm like, oh yeah, you know, you should try stalking one of those bucks. And I'd have these deer just named and patterned and never seen that big buck again. So we're glassing up in this giant basin at the top of the mountain. And lo and behold, there is that big buck.

With about 10 other bucks that are bigger than most of the deer I'd seen the previous week. It's just a group of older age class animals in the highest basin in the unit all together. It's like...

There used to be this picture, they called it the Magnificent Seven, and I think it was just Photoshopped. It was these seven giant bucks on this skyline, and it just, it looked unreal because I think it was unreal. It's just a product of Photoshop. But this was a similar scenario. I decided, okay, I'm going to go up there. It's about a three-mile hike into where these deer are, maybe four. A lot of elevation gain.

Now I watch the buck's bed. I load up my packet. I stuff my sleeping bag in a tarp, a little bit of food. I've got a fanny pack just so when I drop my main pack, I have some water and some other things with me. So I start up the trail. I hike up the trail. It's pretty high elevation. We're talking around 10,000 plus feet. And I started the hike at 6,500.

So that's a major climb. It's a 4,000 foot vertical gain. I start, this was spotted in mid-morning. I'm just hoping that they're still there by the time I get there. I get into position up. I drop my pack. I load up my little fanny pack with a flashlight and some water, maybe a snack just in case. Start glassing and I spot the deer bedded, the big buck and his friends. So I start my crawl. Just crawling, crawling, crawling.

It's about a two hour crawl across this big plateau flat because I'm kind of in the open. So I'm putting this big rock between me and the deer, crawling to that rock, moving from rock to rock, bush to bush. It starts to get on dark. I'm now at this point, probably 80 yards from this big buck and the other deer. So he gets up and starts feeding. I'm just thinking to myself, come my way, please come my way.

He starts feeding and starts feeding my way. The way this country is built is it's a big open basin, but there's a few little cliffs in there. And he's feeding right to the cliff just off to my right. I start crawling. As soon as he gets out of sight, I run up to the cliff edge, moving as fast and as quiet as I can.

I get to the edge and I spot him. I pop up. He's directly below me. It is steep downhill. I'm on the edge of the cliff shooting down. I'll be shooting down at this buck. I range the buck. I think he's 55 yards. Perfect. I've been shooting all summer. I could shoot a bottle cap at 55 yards. No problem. I draw back. And as I draw back, that buck turns his head and looks at me. And I just see this giant rack moving. He looks at me.

I set on my pin, square on his body, take the shot, and the buck does a neo-matrix, dodging the bullet, drops his back, ducks the string, and the arrow flies right over his back. He jumps out and starts running down the hill and stops at about 180 yards out. My heart sank. Now, you got to remember, this is a group with a bunch of other good bucks. I think to myself, I have hunted hard.

I'm all the way up here. And as I do that, one of the other bucks in the group, which is probably not the smallest buck, but definitely not. He's in the lower half end of the buck. He's probably the third from the bottom as far as size. Walks out and stops and stares downhill at the buck that just ran off. And he's 30 something yards, probably 30. I think it was 33 yards. He's looking away. And I think to myself, I'm not coming off this mountain without a deer.

I draw back. I set on my pin. I take the shot. I hit him right behind the shoulder. The buck runs maybe 10 yards, falls over stone dead and tumbles down the mountain a little ways. Now, as I walk down there, of course, all the other deer just watching this one buck and I can nearly walk up to these other deer, which in any other circumstances would have run away immediately. I

And I'm pretty excited because this deer, even though it wasn't the biggest deer in the group, is the best deer I had ever taken with any weapon, gun or bow. And definitely the best buck I'd taken with a bow. He was past his years, giant 4x4, 175 inch to 180 inch type buck. Just a great deer. And I was pretty excited. Now it's starting to get evening. I get to the deer. I decide to, you know, take care of him, get the deer out.

and I figure, well, I'm up here. It was a long ways in there. So I go back, get my pack and all my stuff, pull my sleeping bag out, set my tarp up. It's a little, I didn't want anything to eat the meat and there was nowhere to hang the deer. So I ended up just thinking, okay, I'll just sleep essentially with this deer. That way, if any coyotes or whatever around, they aren't going to get the meat. So I set my tarp on the ground and

Throw my sleeping bag down. It was so steep though. I kept slipping off. So I ended up taking my paracord and it was actually just that almost like clothesline type cord, tying myself to a rock, making a little anchor, sleeping on the mountain right there with the buck. Then in the morning, getting up, finishing, quartering out, getting the meat all taken care of, and then packing the buck down.

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Go to fishingbooker.com today. That's fishingbooker.com. Now, I had never been more excited. I had just taken the best deer in my life. I had a great hunt, an incredible stock, and a shot at that giant deer.

Now, at the time that I got on that buck, I honestly didn't fully understand that line of sight was not the same as horizontal distance. So my range finder at that time was just line of sight. It didn't angle compensate. Now, luckily, if you buy a range finder now, all the calculations are done for you. It's a lot easier. But at that time, you know, my range finder only gave me line of sight distance.

And what that is, is the horizontal distance is the only distance that truly affects the arrow because it's based on the pull of gravity down. So if you imagine I'm shooting off of a perfectly vertical cliff and I use my line of sight range finder and I range that deer at say 70 yards. Well, if that deer is only 30 yards from the base of the cliff directly below where I'm standing, then

Then I would use my 30 yard pin on that deer that the line of sight says 70 yards. Modern range finders now do that calculation for you.

it's fairly difficult to figure that out in the field. And if you want to know more about that, I mean, you just get a vortex range finder and it explains the whole horizontal distance as well as the line of sight distance. But at that time, I didn't know the difference. So when I was aiming for the line of sight, that was one thing that was a major mistake shooting at that buck.

Now, another little mistake was that I think I probably shot at the inopportune time. The buck just happened to be turning his head looking up. I got a little impatient and a little more excited than normal.

Because knowing what I know now, that deer wasn't really looking at me. He was more just looking in my direction. I should have waited for him to move his head back to feeding or in a position where he was looking away. So I think that that played into it a little bit as well. But the main thing was not understanding shooting downhill. Now from that point forward, I added downhill practice to

Because the majority of your shots out west on spot and stalk big game animals are going to be downhill. You're in a mountain. Generally, the best approach is from above. So by practicing these downhill shots, I became a lot more lethal and a lot more proficient. But I'm going to go into a few tips on the ways that I make those downhill shots count.

Now these lessons for shooting downhill are not just for archery hunting. Honestly, a lot of these techniques can be applied to rifle hunting and it's not just for Western hunting. If you are a tree stand hunter, all of your shots are going to be at a down angle. So there's a lot of things that you might glean from this, even though you might not be shooting as far as, as say a spot and stock hunt may need to, or you don't have to deal with the slope of the hill.

The real, the basics, the mechanics of shooting downhill and uphill for that matter are the same, no matter your weapon choice or where you prefer to hunt. I'll never forget my first coos deer hunt in Arizona, archery hunt. I snuck in on a buck. It was below this band of cliffs feeding in the cactus. So I sneak out, get to the cliff. It's pretty much a straight down shot.

I crawl out to the edge and my plan was I'm going to draw kneeling, which is normally what I do out of sight. So he couldn't see me. And then I'm going to stand up and shoot. I go to draw my bow back. And as I draw my bow back, my arrow falls off the string. I'm like, what the heck? Never had that happen before. So I put the arrow back on draw back again. As I draw back, I notice that it, it,

pops off again, the broadhead was clipping my riser and pulling the arrow off the string. Like, what the heck? I kind of look at it real quick thinking, okay, maybe something's moved, something's wrong. Everything looks good. So I'm like, well, let me just see. I put the arrow on and I thought I was drawing back level because when you shoot on flat ground, you just naturally balance the bow to the horizon. Right?

You just kind of go perpendicular to the horizon you see. Well, I look at my level on my sight and it is just way off to the left side. I was canting my bow so hard yet I thought I was drawing it level. So I go to what feels like an unnatural position, balance it out, draw back fine. I stand up, I bend down, I shoot and I kill the buck. That right there, it never entered my mind how much the slope of the hill is

affects, I would say, not only the pull of gravity on your bow, but just where you think your bow is level.

When you're shooting downhill in the mountains, you aren't just shooting straight down from a flat spot most times, like you would, say, from a tree stand or if you were practicing, you're up on your roof shooting straight down. You also have to account for the pitch of the hill because you're going to be on a mountain. Sometimes the buck might be right below you, but there might be some slope where you are.

Now, one thing that I've learned is the slope affects the pull on your bow. What it wants to do is it wants to pull your bow downhill and your mind sees the horizon out there and you think, ah, put my bow perpendicular to that should be level. What you don't realize is the way that your bow is canting, it might look level to you yet because you're standing on a pitch of a hill, it's actually not level.

So what I do, the first thing I do when I go to draw my bow back on a mountain is I lean the top of my bow uphill. Now it feels unnatural at first, but what happens is when I draw back with the

top of my bow uphill, as I draw back and settle, gravity starts to pull the top down. And what that should do is allow me to level and stop it where I need to level, but not fight against it in an unnatural way. Because if I have the top of my limb downhill already, I draw back, which might feel better. When I draw back, now I realize my bow isn't level and

And I'm forcing it against gravity the other way. What that's doing is putting in some weird hand torque. It's not natural. And when I take that shot, it's not going to be as good of a shot because I'm putting undue stress in my grip and the way that I'm trying to force that bow the wrong way. Now, when you shoot on flat ground, you're just drawing back. You're getting to your anchor point and you're shooting.

I think a mistake that I have made in the past, and I think a lot of people make, is what you'll do is you'll see the animal below you. You draw toward the animal. Well, when you do that at an angle, your anchor point might not be the same as you've been practicing on flat ground all the time. So as you draw back, what I like to do is I'll draw back level,

And then I'll bend at my hips, keeping my same anchor point as I go to shoot that animal. Now, I think some people over exaggerate this. They go straight and then they really, really bend down. I just think you need to do it in a way that keeps your anchor point. Now, if you draw, if you practice all the time drawing back and anchoring, that's okay because you'll get that same anchor point. But you got to remember,

you want everything to be the way that you practice. So if you're practicing a lot on level ground, draw back like you're on level ground, then don't just move your arm down because that's not keeping your same anchor point in the way that you're looking through your peep. You now just bend the hips and let your front arm follow as you aim toward that animal. Now, another thing that I have learned when shooting downhill is I've made this mistake a lot of times. The animal's below me,

I draw back, I level, everything's good. I bend at the hips. I go down past the deer and then I try to aim up at the deer. So what I'm saying is my pin, let's say my pin now goes below where I want to hit and I'm trying to push the bow up into the kill zone, that pin. The trouble with this is, and it's hard to fight because gravity is pulling your bow down

and you're trying to force your bow up. Well, what that does is as you release, you're putting so much pressure that it pushes your hand up when you shoot. And I have had a few instances where I've done this and just shot right over the deer's back. Now, I can think of the times that I've missed downhill. I don't think that I've ever missed shooting below an animal. It always goes over the back, over the back. And that's because these little things that are

If you just think about it, if you're trying to aim up on the animal that's below you, you're really fighting it to get that pin settled where you want. And when you let go, all your energy, now that you only have one hand on that bow, is going up. And as soon as you release the string, you're just going to shoot high. So what I'll do is I'll draw back level, start aiming down. I'll get close to the back of the deer and

Then I just keep bending my hips down and settle from the top down. I try not to go below now if I get low I'll just kind of move back up higher and then try to settle down on the animal as opposed to being low and Pushing my pin up to where I want to shoot I'll get my pin above exactly where I want to hit and let it slightly lower to the spot that I'm aiming at I think the most important thing with downhill shooting is just practice and

Now, I'm fortunate I can just go to the mountain and shoot downhill pretty much daily if I want.

Not everybody has that luxury. Now, if you have somewhere you can practice, if you practice it in your backyard, if that's allowed, there's been times where I have shot off my balcony to get some downhill shots in. I've literally shot off my roof. I've shot off of a ladder. I mean, as long as it's legal to shoot wherever you're shooting and you can shoot off your roof, you can shoot off. Just be careful. Don't fall. Don't call me and say, Hey, I fell off my roof. Your tip sucks.

but get that practice in. I know guys that tree stand hunt all the time and they practice shooting out of a tree stand they put up in their backyard or a ladder stand. Like that's a great idea. You just have some incline when you're shooting at a target to get that practice, to get the draw cycle down, to get that aiming down to practice, moving down onto the target as opposed to pushing up, even though you probably should aim down all the time.

I think the practice, you might surprise yourself at the type of shots where your arrow hits, even though you have a range finder that gives you not your line of sight, but your true ballistic range. Say I shoot a double pin, which acts like pretty much a single pin. So I can set my pin exactly for the yardage that my range finder reads.

Now, in practice, I find that the steeper the angle, the more exaggerated and lower I have to aim. And the reason is, isn't because, okay, maybe the true range is correct and that arrow will hit where I want it to for that site. But what's different is my perception of the target. If I'm at a 45 degree angle looking off of a cliff at a deer,

Its vitals are not looking the same as a broadside target. What I see through my eyes is completely different than a deer that is just flat standing there. I can pick that spot on its vitals where I want. When I'm shooting down, I really see the top of its back and some of its side. So I have to consciously tell myself, aim a little lower. That way my arrow will actually impact slightly higher than where I'm aiming. And this you just have to figure out

through practice. Practice at different angles and different distances because it changes and is more exaggerated the further out you go and the steeper you go. You know, one thing that people always talk about is, okay, now that we've got these range finders that give us our true ballistic range, there's been times where I've been in the mountains and I've ranged something and it goes, man, that looks so far away and you range it and it's 45 yards.

Well, it's the line of sight might be 80 or a hundred yards, depending on the angle you go. Well, that's only a 45 yard shot. Yes. Gravity is affecting your arrow as a 45 yard shot, but you still have to execute a shot as good as you would at the actual line of sight.

Even though gravity only pulls your arrow a certain distance, you're just compensating for the drop. But what you see is a hundred yard shot. If it's a hundred yards line of sight, that's the type of shot you need to execute. If you can't make a hundred yard shot, even though your arrow only drops for 45 yards, there's less margin of error as far as the drop in the arrow, but

But you have to be as steady as you would for a 100-yard shot because you still have other factors like wind resistance, crosswinds, as well as the target looks a long ways away because it is a long ways away. Now, gravity might not affect your arrow the same as your line of sight, but you still have to execute that shot like it's a further shot. And I think a lot of people forget that. So they go to shoot off a cliff. They range it like 40 yards. That's within my range.

And then they miss. And they're like, how did I miss that? Well, you missed because you were treating it like you're shooting at something that's 40 yards, not something that's 100 yards, like your line of sight. Yeah, you might only use your 40-yard pin, but you really have to focus in and execute a shot that might be further than your ability. So that's something you have to factor in when you're in the mountains. How far can I actually shoot downhill? And that only comes with practice.

You know, I just really wanted to talk about this because I think that once you grasp shooting downhill, you're going to be more successful. The reason is because most of the opportunity I have mountain hunting is downhill shots.

stocks are more successful coming in from the top. A lot of animals bedding away where they're facing downhill. So if you get the right conditions and you can pop over ridge, shoot down a cliff, you're going to be overall more successful hunting big game. Hopefully you enjoyed our first podcast. I really just want to thank everybody for listening through it. I really appreciate you.

Feel free to reach out via social media. Send me some feedback. Give me some ideas on questions you'd like answered, as well as maybe some stories you'd like to hear. I'm open to any kind of suggestions. Give us a good rating wherever you're listening. That always helps. I think next week I want to tackle a topic that I get asked quite often, and it's regarding bear country. What do I do in bear country? How do I stay safe in bear country? What do I do if a bear attacks?

I think I can answer a lot of those questions as well as I'd love to share a few stories of close encounters I've had with both black bears, brown bears, grizzly bears. So next week, we'll talk all things bears. I think you'll really enjoy it. And as always, thank you very much. I really appreciate you and stay frosty. All right. Talk to you later.

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