My First Mule Deer on the Utah Public Lands

Five years after my first hunt in Utah, and countless days unsuccessfully hunting mule deer and elk on the public lands in Wasatch and Uinta Mountains, I’ve finally filled my mule deer tag! Before this season, I prided myself on exclusively being an archery hunter. I’d been brainwashed by all of the incredible archery hunters online, thinking that rifle hunting was somehow less pure and easier. Well, having now been successful on a white tail archery hunt last year back east and now a mule deer in Utah with my rifle, both were profound experiences, equally difficult, and not only pure and ethical, but so much fun. And now when someone asks if I hunt, I can finally drop my usual response of, “Yes, but mostly unsuccessful.” 

Unlike my preparation for archery season which runs all year to get dialed in, procrastination got the best of me and I found myself down at Lee Kay’s shooting range the week before opening day zeroing in my rifle. And by that, I mean, finally shooting my Ruger 6.5 Creedmore with a Zeiss’s Optic that I’d bought years earlier for the very first time. Well, with the limited time I had, I was only able to zero my rifle out to 100 yards, but felt confident with my grouping within a 2×2 box. But then came my next screw up. The unit I drew, DB1556 Wasatch West, turned out to be unexpectedly different than area I’d been hunting archery for the past few years. And even the areas that overlapped, like the Cottonwood Canyons, don’t allow rifle hunting. So two nights before opening day, I was scrambling on all the maps and resources to try and find the best places to hunt from. After getting some help from a buddy who’d hunt in that unit before, I set my sights on the Snake Creek drainage above Wasatch Mountain State Park.

Saturday – October 17th, 2026 – OPENING DAY

With a bit of a delayed start, I was out the door by 5:20 on Saturday, with 45 minute drive to the bottom of the mountain road, followed by another 15-20 in the dark on varying condition dirt roads to the upper elevations. At this point in the dark morning, I was easily being passed by hunters in their Side by Side off-roaders cruising up the bumping dirt road. Slowly I crept up to the parking spot in Flatt Creek and dawned my pack and shouldered my rifle before heading towards the dark basin above. 

It wasn’t long before I left the ease of the forest road and followed a deer path that lead to the base of Ant Knolls. To my shock, and utter surprise, I noticed movement on the apron of the mountain in front of me in a clearing between trees. Sure enough, a deer. At this point in the morning, it was still too dark to make out sex, but I had about 10 minutes before legal shooting light to figure it out. At 200yds, the deer moved behind a tree which gave me the time to make some hurried movements. I dropped my pack, grabbed my shooting stick and rifle, then shuffled forward to a better position to wait for the deer to come out of cover. Then, not only one, but two deer emerge from the opposite side of the large pine tree. Sadly, by this point in the morning, enough light passed through my scope to realize that neither of the two deer were a buck and I had gotten this worked up over two doe.

Over the next 7 hours, I made my way onto the ridgeline, up and over Ant Knolls, and eventually all the way around the Snake Creek drainage. I worked my ass off all day, only to be met with one group of hunters after another. Opening day crowds were no joke. In my haste, and frustrations, I tromped down a hill from the summit of Ant Knolls and managed to spook two bucks bedded down under a pine tree. Even as it was sprinting away from me, down into the drainage of Mineral Basin, I could see the massive, wide rack, sticking far above his skull. But sadly, that was the last I saw of him that day. And no matter how many tracks I followed and deer paths I took, that was the last deer I saw. I had completely emptied the tank and came home with my tail between my legs.

Sunday – October 18th, 2026

At 5:00AM my phone’s alarm clock pulled me from my sleep, and I rolled out of bed completely exhausted. By 5:30 I was out the door again and headed south through town, into Midway, then up into the Snake Creek drainage above the Wasatch State Park again. But rather than park at the same trailhead, I decided to push the limits of my wife’s Jeep Renegade a bit further up the 4×4 road by another half mile. I figured, every inch closer to the ridgeline I was hunting, would be one step closer I’d have to hike out to, if I was fortunate enough to harvest on this day. Forging through shallow flooded sections, straddling rocky crossings, and even balancing on two tires at one point before reaching the limit of the tire’s grip on the icy dirt, forcing me to stop and head out on foot from there.

Rather than taking the detour around Ant Knolls base, I decided to push as hard as I could straight up the road with the intention of gaining the ridgeline before sunrise in hopes of finding that 8 point buck from the morning before. As the morning transitioned from the darkness to the twilight, I was trying to manage how quickly I was sweating through my base layer and into my puffy jacket, even though the ambient temperature was hovering around freezing. Eventually, I made my way through the trees and into the basin with a clear view of the ridgeline wrapping around me, and the back of Big Cottonwood Canyon to the north. A just ahead on the flank of the hillside, there were four mule deer grazing.

It was too dark to make out if any of the four were bucks, it wasn’t too dark to notice the blaze orange jackets that dotted the top of the ridgeline ahead. Momentarily gutted, I was too late. Rather than blow up these more dedicated hunters morning hunt, I sat down in the middle of the road 600 yards away and waited for the minutes to tick past first legal shooting light. And as the minutes ticked past 7:11AM, I heard nothing. No shots were taken. Meaning that none of those deer were either trophies, or more likely, they were just a group of doe. And sure enough, as the sky grew lighter, I could confirm that none of those were bucks. An easy confirmation, those hunters could make at 500yds closer. The hunt was still on, but I needed a new plan.

If I continued with my original plan, to gain the ridge and hunt the backside into Mineral Basin, I would not only run into the two groups of hunters already on the rideline, but also a group of four others that were in the process of hiking up the trail. Just like the day before, it was going to be so crowded that I was never going to get the first shot on anything, which would be just a waste of time. So I took out my binos and started to glass the hillside below the ridge, further to the north where the hill started to flank away back to Snake Creek. Sure enough, beyond a rollover in on the hillside, out of view from the hunters on the ridge to the south, were two more deer grazing just below the top. At 400yds, it was still too dark to make out if one of them were a buck or not. I was still undecided and trying to formulate a new plan to get up high onto one of the other ridges. But as Steve Rinella says, don’t leave elk to find ek. Or in this case, mule deer!

Even though I felt like I was wasting the peak hunting hour, it was worth finding out if even one of these animals was a buck. So I started to make my way towards them, moving from tree to tree under the cover of the pines. At 350yds out, I caught a glimpse of something on the trailing deer’s head that seemed to differ from the the movement of its ears. With the anticipation growing, I dropped my pack at the base of a pine, grabbed my rifle and shooting stick again, and headed across the void of trees, through the open, to the next lone pine tree. Managing to remain undetected, I made it to the last tree between myself and the two deer. I realized that I was now sitting just on the other side of the tree from the likely camp of the hunters on the ridge. But from this vantage point at 280 yards, I could finally confirm the trailing deer had a small set of antlers, it was a buck.

Even though I confirmed it was a buck, he was still too far for a shot, but there was absolutely no cover between me and the two deer. The two deer that were still grazing, albeit slowly, were only 40 yards from turning the corner into a rocky face where they would disappear and likely loose my opportunity at a shot. I quickly ran through any and all options in my head before pulling out my wind checker and to my delight, saw the wind was ripping down hill, towards me, which would give me 80% of the coverage I’d need to cross the open hillside without getting winded by either of the two deer. Crouching down, to change my shape, I hustled along the trail that traversed the hillside as far as I could until I was directly downhill of the animals. The entire time, I saw the buck starring directly at me. At any moment, I thought I was going to spook them, but they never left. Curious, but still there.

With luck falling more into my favor, where I stopped was a large boulder that stuck up only a couple feet from the ground around it. It would make the perfect rest to shoot at such an uphill angle. I dropped to my chest, momentarily crushing my ribs as I forgot my chest rig was still attached. I fumbled with the clips to detach the rig, pushing it off to the side before finding my position behind my rifle and locating the buck through my Zeiss scope. At some point in all my hurrying, the buck had stopped grazing and turned around to face south and starred downhill at this dumb hunter fumbling with all his gear. But I was settling in as quickly as I could and working through my checklist.

The buck was far enough below the ridge that there was no risk of a skyline shot with a solid background. I moved my rifle’s safety lever to the fire position. A round was already in the chamber. it was already into legal shooting light even though the 7:42AM sun was still not up. Lastly I had to account for the bullet drop. Doing the mental math, the last range I took was 280, and the trigonometry in my head said that this leg of the triangle wasn’t going to be much closer. With the buck looking directly at me, broadside on that hill, I raised my crosshairs to zero to come to a rest above his front left shoulder, right along his spine. This placed the 300yd crossing of the reticle just behind his front shoulder, through the lungs. And with my rifle resting on the boulder, and my chest into the ground, my breathing didn’t affect the rise and fall of the scope, it was locked onto the buck. All thing on my list were checked. This was it. My heart was pounding. I’d never shot at this distance before, but a calmness came over me, and I squeezed the trigger.

The recoil hit my shoulder and the rifle jumped. I momentarily lost sight of the deer as the crack of the 6.5 Creedmore round echoed across the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. I quickly reacquired the deer in the scope and my heart dropped. The deer was walking downhill seemingly as if nothing happened and maybe it was just the sound of the shot that spooked him. Strange, I noticed the doe he was following was standing still, watching her buck walk away from her, no doubt disappointed that the courtship was now off. Then, I watch the buck stumble, and drop less than 20 yards downhill from where I shot him from, two minutes before the sun rose.

A primal rush of endorphins washed over my body and I let out a silent scream into the dirt. Years of hunting these public lands in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, coming home with an empty freezer each year. Finally, the years of hunting, target shooting, training, spotting, and money, I filled my buck tag. Of course, taking the animal was only half the effort. I spent the next two hours field dressing and quartering the animal for my very first time by myself on a steep hillside that would make for some great skiing. And with full game bags packed up onto the load shelf of my pack, I slowly, and gingerly trekked down the mountain and back to the Jeep. With 40-50lbs of deer on my back, not including the pack, gear, and rifle, this load was taxing every muscle in my legs. But my smile was still ear to ear, and nothing was going to change that. It stayed there, through the next few days as we cleaned, prepared and processed the meat and filled our freezer for the next year.