“mule”

If you're a big-game hunter that dreams of taking a bull elk, mule deer or pronghorn out West, the time to start planning is now.

Mule deer bucks you scout in the summer heat may disperse miles as the mercury falls. Keep a handful of tips in mind as you decipher their habits and movements so you’re not left scratching your head during hunting season.

In the open Sonoran Desert, where mule deer can be spotted at the edge of your range, it pays to prepare for long shots. A decent short game doesn’t hurt either.

Nebraska’s Platte River flows through mule deer country among a smatter of crop fields—exactly the kind of landscape patient hunters can exploit to find big-racked bucks.

As most of you know, I love my rather bucolic state of residence. A lot of folks like to characterize us as backward and unsophisticated. But as if it were a scene from the CSI television series, some Wyoming game wardens were able to determine that a 185-inch 4x5 mule deer buck was taken in an area closed to hunting in 2010 because of the contents of the buck’s stomach.

The Boone & Crockett Club’s Generation Next Youth Awards, amid the organization’s 31^st Big Game Awards, included a remarkable 132 great animals entered. Among the black bears, pronghorns, mountain goats and mule deer were eight typical and eight non-typical whitetails taken in nine different states.

Faced with back-to-back hunts this past fall—the first in pursuit of pronghorn on the rolling prairie outside Casper, Wyo., the second combing the rugged Idaho mountains for mule deer—I knew I would need a balance between wide field of view, detailed clarity and precise ranging capabilities. Luckily for me, a pair of Leupold’s BX-5 Santiam HD 10x42mm binoculars and an RX-2800 TBR/W rangefinder were on hand, ready to be put to the test.

I have just returned from my first scouting trip for the season. Out here in Wyoming scouting is a bit different than our whitetail hunting brethren do elsewhere—mostly in terms of scale.