November 2025
Story By: Jared Behr
Wyoming Mule Deer | Road Huntin'
After a long drive from Oregon the day before, my friend, Keith Henderson, and I were up early and excited for our first day of hunting. The season had already been open for about a week, but having talked to previous tag holders, I knew the rut would pick up more the later I went, so I picked the latest week my schedule allowed.
I had only hunted this part of Wyoming once 11 years ago and had a great elk hunt in beautiful country, stalking up on a bugling bull on opening day. I was excited to explore more of the area.
Because of the late mid-November dates, we rented a log cabin on the edge of town rather than camp like we usually do for earlier hunts. Driving away from town, we saw a sign that got us excited, “CAUTION DEER ON ROAD NEXT 17 MILES.” Driving past private fields toward the National Forest, we could see hundreds of deer in the early morning light.
As soon as we got to state land, we started seeing bucks that were worth a second look. We took videos and pics of several bucks the first day, but I wasn’t in a hurry because I was confident the hunting would keep getting better as we got deeper into the rut. That night, another friend, Ryan Judson, joined us. I really appreciated Ryan and Keith coming along on the hunt even though they didn’t have tags. They were both incredible at spotting animals.
Early on the second morning, we saw a lot of does and some small bucks on the first state land we came to. We headed to higher country for most of the day, but we planned to be back there in the evening to see if any other bucks showed up. A few miles into the National Forest, we watched a buck for a short time before he walked over a ridge. We never got a good look at his width, but he looked like a solid buck, so we set out on foot to get a closer look. Coming up over a small rise, I walked right up on three of the does he was with but never could relocate him. We circled back later that day but never saw that buck again.
During the first two days, we saw more than 40 bucks on public land. Usually, I prefer hunting the backcountry on foot, so road huntin’ isn’t my thing, but we were following the advice from previous tag holders to cover as much ground in a vehicle as you can. We were having so much fun seeing so many animals. We also saw elk, antelope, several bull moose, and a red fox hunting in a meadow. It was exciting because we didn’t know what was around the next corner!
Towards evening, we were headed back to the low state land where we had seen so many deer that morning. We stopped to glass across a private field where it met public, and I commented that the short aspens that were between the field and forest on the edge of field looked like good habitat. We briefly discussed changing our plan and drove around to the far side of the private land rather than go back to the area where we spotted all the deer at first light. Getting to the far side, we spotted a group of deer with a really wide buck. Right away, he struck me as an impressive deer. The problem was that he was on private. One of the does was on public, and based on the direction the group was headed, it seemed they had just come off the National Forest, so we figured they would be back on public the next morning. We watched them until dark.
The morning of day three found us glassing the private field and surrounding public at dawn. We saw several deer but not the same buck from the night before. Driving past where we had seen the buck the previous night, we kept driving up onto a bench that had a mix of trees and meadows. All of a sudden, there was our buck 125 yards away with a group of does laying down, quartering away from us. As we came to a stop in the truck, he briefly looked at us and then his focus went back to the other deer. I got out and got set up, thinking I would wait for him to stand up. After looking at him through the scope for a minute, I realized I had a good view of his vitals even laying down and if he got up, he was only a few steps to some cover, so I put the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. His head went down, and we had our buck. Later when I was looking at onX, I realized we were only three miles from where I got the bull 11 years earlier.
It paid off to follow advice from previous hunters and just cover as much ground as possible, even though that meant road huntin’. It ended up being a really fun, action-packed hunt. Thank you, Keith and Ryan, for all your help!