December 1, 2023. Sitting in my office looking at a big moon it's been a great ride.
70 years on this rock revolving around the sun. 912 full moons ago I came into the world. Granted there are far fewer ahead of me than behind but that glow is appreciated, now, more than ever.
I had no expectations for this fall. No clue what was going to happen and for sure, no idea I would get hammered by COVID for most of November. Like hunting, anything can happen. The congestion and cough continue to hang on like a TN tick.
The plan for the fall was rather messy. I don't like messy but had no other alternative. The plan was to head to Colorado on a mule deer hunt with a good friend, shorten my hunt and fly to New York City from Denver to officiate a wedding, fly back to Colorado and keep hunting if I hadn't tagged out, and then drive to my ranch in Montana with a deer-elk combination tag in my pocket for the first time in two years. Non-resident landowners are not given preferential treatment, it's a tough tag to draw but more on that later.
It was a 20-hour drive from my Crossville, TN farm to Colorado. First day I had planned to get 12 hours out to Lawrence, Kansas, and on day two, run the final 8 hours to Limon, Colorado. My long-time friend from South Georgia was going to be hunting with me for the first time in Colorado for mule deer. He is 74 and had finalized his 4th divorce so was looking to get away and have some fun. I hope he is done with marriages. They don't seem to suit his fancy and have a dismal effect on his finances no matter how his success is sliced and diced. My friend says that divorces are expensive because they are usually worth it! Marriages aside, you couldn't find a better friend and hunting partner and for well over 30 years we have enjoyed time afield. He is a tremendous student of deer and deer hunting and is a great rifle shot. He still practices with his hunting rifle! I was going to try to get him an opportunity on a great Colorado buck! My pal and I have been fortunate to tip over some dandy's in years past!
I have been fortunate to meet some nice people in rural Colorado. People who exemplify what is great about the West and America. Hard-working, honest, straight-up, and who know their animals. They feed them, they know their haunts. It was by sheer chance a few years ago I met a guy who was selling me a landowner voucher to go on a guided hunt, one of three guided hunts I have been on. The first was an elk hunt in New Mexico, the second a mule deer hunt in New Mexico, and the third a mule deer hunt in eastern Colorado. All three outfitters were professional, didn't cut corners, didn't overpromise, worked hard, and put me on legitimate animals. I would recommend all three, if you want names, feel free to message me at deantparisian@gmail.com
In Colorado, a landowner voucher is a prerequisite to the purchase of a nonresident deer tag if you don't go through the lottery draw process. Colorado has it figured out, unlike Montana. Game and Fish departments are excellent revenue collectors for the State, they do little to "manage". It is the landowners and outfitters who make sure the resources (antelope, deer, elk) are not overhunted. They have zero incentive to allow hunters to slay the Golden Goose that offers so much in the way of financial incentives to keep game populations steady and healthy. The gentleman I met several years ago is now a good friend. I hunt in what he calls a rather "sleepy" Game Management Unit east of Pikes Peak. Although every GMU in Colorado can produce Boone & Crockett animals this unit has few deer and rather poor topography for lots of animals. Fortunately, in the last two years, we had killed 4 pretty nice bucks. Were they smokers? You decide. I call them "OH SH*T Bucks". An OH SH*T buck is one you don't have to glass and count points or try to figure out how wide he is or look close at palmation or decide how heavy he is. An O.S. buck is one where you just grab your rifle and start planning how to get him killed.
You can read about those previous hunts here:
2022 Dean Parisian Hunt
2021 Dean Parisian Hunt
With the success we had in '21 and '22 I didn't think my luck would be running at full throttle but something happened. A Game Warden out of Colorado Springs had told my friend we had killed the biggest bucks in the GMU the last two years and how could we replicate that again but guess what? Colorado got rain and more rain. The grass grew and grew and grew. The drought that was around since 1998 was over. Grass that hadn't grown in years was in bloom. Protein was abundant. I knew the hunting would be tough because of all the grass and cover but something told me horn growth would be fantastic. I just had to apply for the third year in a row! My hunting pal was "all-in" on going with me, what could derail us?
With the rain and more rain came lots of cornfields. Corn in abundance. Corn with heavy moisture content that wasn't about to be combined until it dried out. Those deer live in the corn forests until the combines push them out. Standing corn offers food and protection for all that headgear! We were up against the corn forests! It was a tough hunt, I'm not complaining. We were looking for those 1%'er bucks and that is a tough chore in any locale. We were seeing deer, the rut was a few weeks off, the corn was abundant and the big groups of deer were in the corn. Hunting eastern Colorado is hard on the eyes. Glassing, glassing, and more glassing to look for that horn tip, that off-color white, the glint of an antler in the afternoon sun in the tall grass and yucca. We hadn't seen a single shooter buck for days. On Day 5, midday, the phone rang. A neighbor had said they had shot a buck that ran across a highway onto my pal's ranch and had spotted the deer in an old river channel. Well, truth be told, in retrospect, they had not shot a deer, they only shot AT a deer and did not have legal tags for that GMU so we went to investigate what was up.
It was warm, sunny, and windy. The deer, we saw 3 bucks, had moved on to a small parcel of property that contained an oil well. The owner of the oil well, on a small 30-acre parcel had no easement onto his property so when we called and asked for permission to go after a deer there and said we were hunting on my friend's land with full permission we were granted immediate permission. It's funny how people with no legal easements are kind and generous to those who grant them the privilege to trespass across their property to retrieve oil! We spotted the 3 bucks lying down from about 385 yards out. My friend did not feel comfortable from that distance in the wind, nor did I. We hatched a plan to stalk closer. My pal was about 20 yards ahead of me, half crawling and sneaking into position to find the biggest buck where we had spotted him laying in some thick brush about 3 feet tall. I wanted him to kill a giant! When he got into position to where he thought he should be able to see them, he couldn't find them in the binocs and he turned and waved to come to him. There were 3 or 4 very small buildings there and because this small parcel of land had no water there was no livestock on it. The weeds around these buildings, with all the rain were about about 6 to 8 feet tall. I knew the deer had moved into the shade of those buildings in the tall weeds and it would be fast and furious when they blew up and out. We spread out, I took the left side of the buildings, my pal on the right. I thought the deer would break to his side. He was shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor, bolt and I had my heavy, semi-auto, .243.
It happened fast. There was an eruption of horn and hide and there were 5 bucks, not 3. The wide guy broke up and out in front of me and I could see in a nanosecond he was an OH SH*T so I got on him. He was behind a smaller buck and running away full-tilt and all I could see was horns above the tall brush. I steadied myself knowing I would have one good crack at him as he would be going up a small hill and out of the brush following the smaller buck. He was about 180 yards out when I fired. I stayed in the scope and didn't see a thing, not a horn, not a deer. My pal went nuts! He has seen me kill alot of big game but that shot was truly sweet. I was lucky I was shooting downwind because the rifle wasn't getting pushed by the wind and I had plenty of time to settle in for a good shot opportunity. It was a tough shot, 70 years of "practice" had something to do with it. I had killed the wide buck, the bigger, heavier buck my pal had two shots at and missed.
Later, my pal had an opportunity on the bigger, heavier buck and just didn't get him killed. Those two bucks were the biggest we could turn up in a week. The corn was our nemesis. We went as hard as we could. My buddy had the time of his life and ate tag soup. Laughter, work, and time afield are hard to replace. Priceless memories and how many are left in the tank?
That buck eventually moved onto another GMU across the highway and was killed by the landowner shown here.
I grew up hunting everything I could. I honed my shooting skills on running animals in college when red fox were $65 and money was tight. In high school, it was deer, coyotes, and antelope. I have lost 2 deer in my life, both were standing shots, one a big whitetail in a strong wind in North Dakota in 1975 and another mule deer buck in Montana that we tracked a couple miles and probably made it if coyotes didn't get him. Thankfully I have never lost an elk and have killed several on the run. Out of a couple hundred animals killed to lose 2 is statistically pretty good but I am not proud of the fact. Losing any animal is ugly. The resource deserves a better fate.Having tagged out in Colorado I flew to New York City. The wedding was in Brooklyn and a far cry from eastern Colorado. It was an honor and privilege to officiate at this wedding and one I will never forget. Unbeknown to us at the time, out of the 4 of us in my family, three of us left New York with Covid!
Far cry from Carhartts and Crispi's in the City!
I tired quickly of the stocking caps and beards nursing expensive coffee in their outdoor attire in Brooklyn. I flew back to Colorado and had the good fortune to meet a special person who I had followed on Instagram for a long time. I had no clue she would be at the dinner table and found her to be truly special. If you don't know the story of Kirstie Ennis you should. Inspiring, tough, and motivated come to mind when I think of her. You may find some nuggets for your life in following her on social media, I sure have.
She is amazing. With only one leg, and having climbed the tallest peaks on every continent, Mt. Everest twice, Kirstie Ennis is the real deal. Check out some articles on her if you are having a bad day and are feeling unappreciative of your life. She was hunting mule deer and slayed a nice buck with a great outfitter.
After getting back to Colorado I headed to Montana in early November, feeling puny and knowing I was getting sick. My wife tested positive for COVID-19, as did my oldest son, we had the same crud. I am pureblood, clot-shot free so I was going to stay positive and ride it out.
There were a couple days I remember very little other than a high fever and the bathroom.
As usual, I tried to overdo it and pretend I was on the mend before the virus had run its course. One of the key aspects of COVID-19 is brain fog. It can be determined that you have COVID by looking at your footwear. This is a positive COVID Test result. When you walk out of the house 100 yards and realize your hunting boots don't match.
We have had some positive developments in our whitetail herd here in the Yellowstone River Valley. Three years ago the neighboring ranch changed hands. Gone was the ranch caretaker who ran an outfitting business on the side. He was instructed that he was NOT to take any bucks off the property of the absentee landowner who lives in Granite Quarry, NC. I know of a beautiful 196-inch buck (as discovered on Facebook) that was shot by one of his paying clients a few years ago on the ranch as well as the 20 to 30 antlerless deer they told me they killed yearly, half of which were probably buck fawns.
Last year, 2022, we had a sizeable die-off in mature bucks. We found some bombers dead from EHD-Blue Tongue and the majority are never found, especially those that go to water. This year was the first year in the last 9 we found ZERO evidence of any deaths from EHD/Blue Tongue. Zero! Amazing! With the loss of so many mature bucks last year the big bombers were hard to find. Everything seemed to be lacking a year. There is tremendous promise for next year but that is the ODE to the HUNTER lament! Next year! It's always next year!
The neighboring ranch has continued to put irrigated hay fields into production and they have done a stellar job. The first year they put up about 200 bales (1200 pound bales), the 2nd, about 870, and this year about 1900 plus bales! That increase has taken the pressure off my hay fields and spread the deer out along the 5 miles of riverbank that encompass our two ranches.
There were very few Oh Sh*t bucks to be seen this year. With Covid fog, I killed the first one I saw. A dandy 6 x 5 that without Covid I might not have pulled the trigger but didn't feel the need to try for something bigger. I saw 6. When I see 6 I get a good feeling. 6 makes my finger itchy. 6 is a happy place. It was rather simple. Oh Sh*t. Boom.
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I still had an elk tag in my pocket but sadly the ranch I have leased for elk hunting the past 10 or 12 years is now an ecological disaster. From my gate to this ranch is about 100 miles. My team was up there a dozen times this year. My son and our friend ground-pounded day after day. The elk were on the feed the next ranch over. We don't drive around and shoot out of pickups and trucks and 4-wheelers. We ground pound to find good animals. The older bulls know the drill and have been in rodeos their whole life. The hearing of an elk is tremendous. In the stillness and quiet of such vast, remote, unforgiving country, sound carries for miles on a still day. My son put on over 33,000 steps in one day! Do the math on that! For the month we saw one cow elk and one bull elk on the ranch I lease spread out over 3 weeks and very few deer. I haven't seen a mature deer on that ranch since 2019. We did glass a lot of elk on the neighboring ranch. Elk are nomads, they travel and will travel far when pressured and will travel for good food. Elk are big, hungry, and very nocturnal. They eat fast and retire early. The out-of-state owner of this ranch has only shot one elk on his ranch in several years. He hunts the ranch the first week of the season and they have historically pounded the deer and elk. It usually is a couple of weeks before I dare to venture on the property to look for animals that may have filtered back on.
The quality of the animals, size, horns, and numbers have diminished in the past few years. The ranch has been raped and pillaged by far too many cattle. Montana has 93,000,000 acres. I can't think of a single ranch of this size that has had the range decimated to this extent. For the first time since I have leased the hunting rights, there are no cows on the ranch. There is NO FEED! The cowboy who leases the grass finally figured out that cattle can't survive on dirt. On the entire ranch, you wouldn't lose a golf ball! Overgraze much? What side of the fence do you think big bulls live on?
So a friend of mine called and told me he had permission to hunt on the adjoining ranch a couple of days. He is an exceptional hunter and I knew if there were elk he would get into them! It was a beautiful day, I was feeling better although had little strength and asked a good friend to go with and enjoy the day. We found a good bull in the glass, a mile and a half off, bedded alone, and it took a couple of hours to get to him with the wind. The sun was bright and we had it planned perfectly but the tracks indicated he had moved off the bench and into some timber to get in the shade. Vanished like smoke! So, about 3.5 miles behind us and a good memory in that hike. I felt good in the sun, walking rather slow but going hard. I wanted to be off the ranch early and wanted to show my friend the size and vast country in the eastern part of the ranch. We got the quad headed east and came upon elk with heads poking up over the next hill! With no cell coverage I wasn't able to listen to the cell phone message my pal had delivered saying that they had gotten into about 75 head and they had jumped the fence onto my ranch and to be looking for them. Well, there they were! I had ducked behind the hill and we ran up to the timber on top of the hill. We were braced up against some trees waiting for them to come out past the end of the hill and it took longer than we thought. The came steaming out and ran to the next hill and looked back, a beautiful sight for sure. There was no shot opportunity, the herd was in a tight pod and flock shooting into a herd is a low-life, scum-bag method of breaking the law. Sort of like shooting into a bunch of deer munching on a bait pile where it is illegal to bait! So, low and behold, instead of running away from us, the elk side-hilled up into the timber close to us! I had seen a good bull in the back of the bunch as they always are, and waited for the herd to roll by at a good clip knowing the big bull was still coming. My hunch was right. He was heavy and much slower than his cows and calves and was running alone when I fired. Until you have seen a big elk at high speed tumble with legs, horns, and body throwing up dirt when they hit the deck you need to see it sometime! Timing, like most things in life, is what put this guy in the freezer!
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I have been hunting with a .243 my entire life. Never had a problem getting anything killed, a heart shot is a heart shot. With a suppressor, the recoil is extremely limited and the sound is negligible. In extremely cold weather I defer to my bolt action rifles, the semi-auto's are not to be counted on in a nasty wind-chill environment. One of the things I have always done is to practice shooting. At 70, I still practice. Most hunters won't do it. Some are too cheap, most think they don't need to practice and those that have shot some animals think they can continue hunting without practice. Tell me what you think of practicing with your hunting rifle and I will tell you what kind of rifle shot you are on big game. Practice to me is up against a tree, kneeling, standing, on sticks, laying down, off a pack, leaning up against a tree, you get the picture don't you? Benches are for sighting your rifle in. Sighting in is not practice. I didn't start taking my sons to Montana until each was 15 years old. We practiced. I wanted them to be able to handle cold weather, understand a compass, be aware of their surroundings, handle a rifle, weather, and miles on their feet, and do it all over again the next day. We always hunted Montana during the last week of the season during Thanksgiving. Bucks were wary, picked over and shot out but somehow, some way, we managed to beat the odds. My oldest son got his 2022 buck from the taxidermist the other day. A plate full of high optimism, good shooting, and smarts will carry the day!
My youngest son is a Montana resident and moved to our ranch a couple of years ago when Covid Mania was running $$$ into the hands of every politician and Pfizer executive. He and his friends Parker and Brian caught up with a decent mule deer the other day. My son enjoys the hunt and can pass up some marginal OH SH*T bucks better than me. Good on him. To him, this buck felt right, it was the biggest mule deer he had turned up in a month and probably the biggest mule deer left in eastern Montana. The mule deer population is decimated but don't ask the people in charge or those who sell licenses! Ask landowners, outfitters, and guys like me who are intimate with game populations and keep records over decades on familiar country.
While I am on the subject of mule deer let me say one word that describes the state of mule deer in eastern Montana, if not the entire state.
DISASTER!
I have some excellent points to make to the FWP of the State of Montana if they are awake. And the politicians who regulate the seasons.
One, absolutely NO mule deer buck harvest during the rut. Shut the mule deer season off the first week of November.
Two, NO mule deer antlerless tags for five years.
Three, eliminate the December muzzleloader season.
Four, the only deer left to rebuild the mule deer population are on private ground, owned by out-of-state landowners (like me), or on leased ground either by large ranches or controlled by outfitters. The public land deer are decimated like never before.
Five, go to a mule deer DRAW TAG. (lottery)
Six, landowners get one tag regardless of resident or nonresident status
Seven, when you apply for a hunting tag in March you must choose between archery or rifle. No either/or.
Eight, licenses are good for specific units in the state. Montana has 7 hunting districts. Pick one and hunt there.
Nine, shorten the season on elk and deer. Mule deer need a draw system. Elk don't need a shoulder season where cow elk are hammered into February growing fetus's in deep snow and herds get shot off of good feed and cover in the depth of winter.
Ten, the Montana FWP manages money and people. They do little to provide fawning areas, winter feed, coyote control, water, winter cover, etc. Landowners, outfitters, and non-resident ranches do that. Incentivize those who provide the cover to help the resource. Colorado does! Isn't it funny that Kansas, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming don't kill mule deer bucks in the rut when they get stupid? Montana does. Follow the money!
It is so ugly now it is disgusting. I have talked to many FWP personnel, wardens, and biologists, over the last couple of years. It is the same story. Believe me when I say a day late and a dollar short.
It is a tale of epic greed, politics, and a resource so far gone it may never recover. Believe me when I say the good old days are here and now for mule deer.
I can only hope hunters can get behind sound management practices in Montana and get them implemented. Across the world, it is the hunting community that keeps game populations alive and healthy. As usual, the government is a cluster of epic greed. Mark my words, it will get worse before it gets better. Ugly, butt ugly. I hate it.
Whitetail deer in Montana are doing well and my son's two friends arrowed good bucks this fall on the Ghost Ranch. Parker stuck this dandy.
And Brian bagged this bad boy.
It seems like yesterday when we would practice going up and down pine trees in our climbers. We would practice in daylight and dark. There was a level of comfort in it for me as a Dad knowing my sons were capable and trained.
Our friend Parker had his Dad come from western Montana for a couple of days and thumped a beauty. Counting 6 is always exciting!
I want to share a story with you that is special. A good friend of mine owns some property up the Yellowstone River a couple miles. Good guy, avid bow hunter, entrepreneur, family man. He was bow hunting elk this fall and arrowed a nice bull that was wearing a collar. Not many elk in America wear collars. He searched for the bull for a couple of days. Figured coyotes and birds would give it away if dead. No luck. A month or so later he is on a website called "Trophy Bucks and Bulls of Montana". There is a young guy on the site asking if anyone knew the exact location of a bull in the Custer National Forest that had been arrowed with a collar on it! My buddy contacts him and gives him the exact coordinates of where the bull was arrowed! This week the rack was exchanged and my friend gave the young man $500 for being a great guy! What a class act in the world of woke! Here is the rack that was returned to him!
Speaking of woke, I picked up a new license plate for my truck.
In looking back at 70 years gone by there isn't much that fazes me these days.
Some things never change. I took a degree in Economics in 1976. Pain/pleasure, supply/demand, and greed/fear haven't changed for about 10,000 years. The biggest part of your net worth is still your ability to function. Good health is your responsibility. Big Pharma isn't your friend. The purpose of medicine is to have you come back for more medicine. Health is true wealth. I don't know how much time is left but I sure enjoy every single day with gratitude and thanks to my Maker.
At 70 I am not certain I get the same enjoyment anymore from dropping a good animal as I do from seeing family and friends harvest their animals. I still love trapping coyotes, shooting geese over decoys, fishing for bass, walleye, and northern pike, birding, hunting beautiful agates and petrified wood, and still doing what I have been doing for a long time, hunting stocks with positive earnings, price momentum, and CANSLIM characteristics. For the first time in many years, I did not participate in the huge rally in the stock market in November. Covid fog had me. Watching stocks break out and the market roar contrary to the talking heads on TV and print media it was a tremendous month. The charts don't lie. I hope you participated in some of the best markets of 2023.
I still enjoy flushing pheasants, watching prairie dogs take flight, and splitting firewood. The simple things in life. I now eat less, drink an occasional adult beverage, go to sleep earlier, and wake up earlier. I still love to swim and exercise. Reading is a favorite and staying off the time-wasting social media is a must. Cell phones are the ruin of this nation. Admit it. Look around at people today, glued automatons, transfixed in a dopamine binge of reels and pictures asking themselves if they measure up? Disaster on so many levels. Reminds me of something Obama was yacking about a few years ago, HOPE & CHANGE. Change comes from within. If there is something you don't like, don't just hope, change it.
From where I sit today the best is yet to come.
I believe it. I am working hard to NOT LET THE OLD MAN IN!
I pray every day. At my age the prayer list seems to lengthen daily. The dreaded "C" is rampant. Treasure your health and work at it. Put down the sugar and strap on some shoes. Leave the cell phone and work up a sweat. You'll thank me later.
Let me leave you with some of my favorite quotes. They have served me well for decades, maybe they will strike a chord with you or someone you know. Pass them on if they help.
Human is not a synonym for rational.
Don't confuse net
worth with self-worth.
Success has nothing to do with money and everything to
do with how you feel about yourself.
People can do whatever they think they can
do.
I've never met a successful pessimist.
I've always believed that if you put
in the work, the results will come.
The extra mile is never crowded.
Americans
underestimate the value of pure freedom.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion
to one's courage.
Don't fear giving up the good to go for the
great.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. May your stockings be full, your freezer full, and you have pleasant memories of 2023.
And from the Last Best Place, the Land of Big Sky Country, may the Creator shine his blessings on you and yours in 2024!
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