SE Montana was produced a great buck for me this year, he is a tad shy of 170". His neck measured 28" at the swell and weighed a ton! This dude was huge and by far the largest deer I have seen in my short 2 years of hunting the area. Glassed him in a hay meadow and stalked in for a while on his way back to his bed which was in the badlands. Finally got in front of him with the wind in my face so I could close the distance. He went down into the draws to bed, I waited for a while hoping he would stand or move. Patience is not my virtue so I slowly made my way to the rim. The wind blew my scent down to where I thought he was and lucky me he stood up just long enough for me to shoot. It was a quick ethical kill, which always makes me smile but he got one last move on me by dying in the steepest/nastiest draw in the badlands. Had to quarter him up and pack him out, luckily I was able to drive about 300 yards from the top of the draw.
....And you only leave us with a side profile mug shot? I'm having issues trying to figure out where some points start from. That buck deserves a full on facial.
I killed this buck last Friday during Colorado's second rifle season. I jumped him up on opening day pretty high on the mountain, about 11,300. I didn't shoot because I saw he had a very short G4 on the left side, I stared a little to long through the binoculars before I realized he was a stud even if his G4 was short. He ran off before I got together enough to realize I should shoot. I looked for him the next two days but couldn't find him. I decided to let the area rest for a couple of days and hunted a some different areas until Friday morning. I was about 3 miles in and just about to call it a morning and head back to the truck to warm up when I took one more look in the drainage I had seen him in on opening day. Through the fog and snow I could make out a deer that looked really nice, so with new motivation I started closing the distance. It took me about an hour and a half to slowly close the gap, but due to the angle of the slope I had to back back out and come up on the opposite ridge so I could see him. I climbed up the steep, snowy ridge and peeked over the top, he was still feeding at 397 yards. I practice a great deal at 500 - 600 yards and felt confident of a 400 yard shot on a deer. I tried to get set up, but he was slowly moving towards some timber and my angle was bad, while I was repositioning I managed to get my scope covered with snow. I got set up and did my best to clean the scope with my finger. I felt good about the shot, but he just ran about 30 feet and stopped. My second shot dropped him in his tracks and he rolled halfway to where I was. No ground shrinkage, back tines almost 19" tall, 12" + forks, gross score just short of 190.