Zooming In 1 (Season 1)
Show 1 – Greg Miller in South Dakota
The area where I took my monster mule deer is located in northwestern South Dakota. This is a satellite view of that exact area.
The terrain in this part of the state could best be described as rolling prairie interspersed with meandering creek bottoms. The cover in these creek bottoms consists of slightly taller than knee-high yellow grass, scattered clumps of relatively thick underbrush and fairly numerous huge-trunked tall cottonwood trees. There’s also quite a bit of dead timber laying on the ground, which the resident deer herd–consisting of both mulies and whitetails–love to snuggle up to when bedded.
It should be mentioned that, in the areas where we hunted, there was no water flow in any of the creeks. They were absolutely bone dry!! And as we quickly learned, the deeper, more shaded cuts in the creek beds were highly preferred as daytime bedding spots by the deer–especially the mulies.
Now our plan of attack for hunting the ranch where I arrowed the big 5×5 mulie buck was quite simple. About a half-hour before daylight we’d take up a position somewhere close to this spot and then use our Nikon spotting scopes and binoculars to search for deer movement in this area.
Almost like clockwork, we’d begin to see deer activity approximately 15-20 minutes after first light. The activity consisted of a movement pattern in which the deer were returning to bed in this stretch of creek bottom after spending the night feeding in the distant wheat and alfalfa fields located here.
This is the stretch of creek bottom we were sneaking through when I shot the giant mulie. I was glassing from the old dam right here when I spotted the buck hiding out in some tall green weeds growing in this dried up pond bed.
As the footage showed, I made good on the 37 yard shot and we recovered the trophy mule deer here, approximately 250 yards from where I’d first arrowed him.
My successful South Dakota bowhunt was the direct result of some effective long range observation and using the existing terrain features to our full advantage. Be advised, in the weeks ahead we’re going to provide you with more of these informative tidbits on our “Zooming In” segment. We’ll see you here!!
