Cashed Out on the Frozen Red Desert
Red Desert coffin tops Photo: Chad Boles
An atmospheric puff of warm air wobbled the polar vortex swirling high above the north pole. Waves of arctic air plumbed deep into the Northern Hemisphere, transforming a geological safe space into a frozen tomb. The Red Desert of Wyoming, the largest winter range for western big game, iced over. The antelope and mule deer died off by half. I knew none of this when I put in for a mule deer tag.
To begin, I’ve gambled in the Wyoming DNR casino for a lot of seasons. Last year, I crapped out at the elk table. But good news, I won at the mule deer roulette wheel. Bad news: the Wyoming DNR switched areas on me. They sent a mule deer tag to my mailbox - five hours south of where my group was hunting. More bad news: In the Red Desert. I still don’t quite understand it myself. If you know about the Wyoming tag draw, you know.
My usual outfitter in Jackson, flush from my group’s elk contracts, sent me this text. “We don’t even go down that far. I don’t know anyone that does.” The three blinking text dots gave me the same pause one gets when the mechanic is about to tell you what a transmission cost. “And that freeze a couple of years ago…”
Brooding, I damn near called the whole thing off. Calling around, I got all the same answers. Rocky Mountain honesty spoke into cowboy optimism. “Well, we could take you, but most of the big buck deer are gone. Froze out. Next year should be good, though.” Lady Luck was giving me the stink eye.
And then a local game warden suggested Mike Carrico (CARE-eh-coe). I drew an ace. “Mike?”
“That’s me.”
I told him my story. “I’d planned on hunting mule deer near Jackson, but I got a tag near Rawlins. Do you have any spots left?”
“Well, we had that freeze,” he cautioned.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve heard,” from every outfitter with a pulse.
“How picky are you?” Mike asked. I held out hope, as I myself have often offered sympathy at a gravesite.
“How picky can I be? It’s you or deer tag soup.”
“Most everything died,” he said, planting the flag. “But we haven’t hunted muleys in three years, either.” Brain waves of odds making began humming in my ear, putting my tinnitus diagnosis in doubt.
“That’s good, right? I don’t expect a monster. Do you have any mature buck deer?”
“Maybe,” he said casually, without commitment. “I’ll send you a contract.” Excitement streaked through my veins like fat through bacon.
And so, I began to get ready. I and my .300 Win Mag battled for supremacy, exploiting each other’s weaknesses. Reloading practice rounds and rucking a hurt into my heel was all part of the pressure to tag out.
Glimmers of fall emerged. It was go-time. Wheels down in Denver, and I was northbound and down. I summitted Medicine Bow Ridge and pushed my truck through the backside curves down to Rawlins.
Spread out before me was a town scratched into the bronze folds of the mountain desert. Towering red rock coffin-tops, upended and aslant, jutted out the town’s back door. The jagged tops were chiseled in sky blue relief. The entrance sign to the Red Desert read, or should’ve: ‘Rawlins, Wyoming. Population: Cowboys, oil refiners and the people who love them.’
High mountain altitudes and low humidity lift Georgia bullets off the target at long range. I needed to find a gun range. You’ll be interested to know Rawlins, WY, the Home of the Outlaws, has a couple. The city complex, housing the usual accoutrement of short- and long-range steel, was closed.
Plan B consisted of a gun bench built from two-by-fours and plywood stationed on the side of a dirt road behind an oil refinery. The weathered table had the ease of a rocking chair on a saloon porch. No sign-up. No safety meeting. No nothing. It rocked forward in the wind and creaked, ‘Step right up. Take your chances.’
The visual irony was palpable. The tiny paper target hung in the forefront of an abyss of windswept sage. In the afternoon blow, I bent a few homemades through the same hole, fraying the mouse-shaped edge. Done and loading my truck, my phone buzzed with a text from Mike. “Meet me at the Walmart. We can start glassing tonight and shoot tomorrow.” I felt lucky.
Mike pulled up in a giant 4X4 Dodge Ram 10,000 – if ever that model existed – complete with a four-wheeler ratchet-strapped to the diamond plate flatbed. And, yes. It had a Hemi.
He stepped out and towered over me and the truck. “You ready,” he smiled and asked, pulling off his wrap-around sunglasses. Squinting into the sun, he reached out a grizzly’s arm to shake my hand. He was built for pulling, hauling and hunting shit most normal people can’t.
“Ready as I’ll ever be. It looks like you know what you’re doing,” I chuckled.
“Maybe. The weather’s good. We got a shot,” he managed. We convoyed an hour south. The blacktop split the mountain peaks, quilted in green lodgepole pines and flittering yellow aspens. The edges flowed into plains of fuchsia dusted service berries. Sage flavored air tumbled through my dropped windows. Mentally, I went all in.
We half-expected the hundreds of mule deer we watched feeding in the open desert. Head high to the sage, their bodies snaked through the thickets and across the rise. Oversized ears, lurking in service berry tops, wrenched back and forth. Non-stop activity was a bonus, but the small herds harbored no shooters.
Minutes turned to hours. Hours turned to days, and still we glassed nothing we sought. As usual, lacking an elk tag brought the big bulls up to the truck. I glassed more than I’ve seen in years. Black bears ran down the mountains so fast they seemed like furry spiders in a sprint.
On day-three, we began to see real deer four-and-a-half years old. Braking on top of a familiar summit, Mike hugged the steering wheel and worked the transmission buttons into four-low. He focused on proper extreme driving protocols, and I stared at a massive rack of headgear hidden in the short sage. “There’s one.”
Mike turned off the vehicle with a twist of his fingers. Both of us relaxed in the seat back. The buck wasn’t moving. Mike noticed my finger fondling the trigger guard of the rifle in my lap. “He’s legal. He’s a good one, too,” Mike authorized.
“I know,” I calculated. “Look at those two front forks. Aren’t those cool? I’m going to regret this.”
Through the rare smile, Mike said, “Well then shoot him, and don’t regret it.”
Taking my respectable chances, I sighed and said, “He can walk.”
Mike smiled in agreement. “Good. See how young his face is?” For evidence, I yanked my long-range lens out of the cup-holder-holster. The buck mugged, and I snapped.
“He’s got a great rack, though.” I said and heard the click of the truck door.
Mike whispered, “Yep. Time for a leak.” He twisted out of the driver’s seat and stepped down. When his boot hit the ground, a larger rack stepped into view. “That’s a good one, too,” he winced through the open door. “The mature bucks are pairing up. Like the two from yesterday.” Finally spooked, they hopped outside bullet range. Then it began to rain and hail, and I began to regret it.
Photo credit: Amber Yardley
Purple clouds brought darkness. The cattle turned their asses to the pelting hail. The deluge obscured the horizon. Married to the seasons, Mike’s bottomless well of enthusiasm poured out buckets of encouragement. “You can’t shoot big ones if you shoot small ones”, “Over eight square miles? There has to be two walking around somewhere”. “Bad weather gets the deer moving,” broke my silence.
I threw in sarcastically, “I think they stand up to feed under the light of the lightning.” On that note, we called it for safety’s sake and prayed for day-five success. We got a yes.
Everything soaked, we switched to the side-by-side for better feet in the slush. The four-stroke rasped and throttled like a biker gang. Mike’s sighs that followed confirmed we shared a prayer. ‘Dear Lord, let the survivors of the freeze be deaf.’
High on a hill, we edged a ravine we’d passed every day. The white button in the shape of a mule deer rump flashed in my binoculars. I ranged them at 250 yards.
In a split second, the smoky gargle of the side-by-side was gone. Mike already had his binoculars trained on the gray herd. We spoke over one another. “What are they looking at up the ravine?”
Instinctively, Mike quietly opened the door and stepped out without a sound. I slowly jacked one in the chamber, relishing the brass on steel melody, and followed. As we walked among them, we peered through sight canals in the service berries that opened and closed like fun house mirrors. Any gray fur outlines in the gaps would halt our movement. Crouched in front of me, Mike beheld what I surmised. I leaned forward watching a pair of mature bucks we had both convinced ourselves existed. They browsed toward the larger group below. Their heads were high. Mike turned and said, “The one on the right is a 5 X 4. The one on the left is a 5 X 5. That’s them. That’s what we’ve been waiting for.”
I saw the same thing through my circling reticle. “So glad I waited.” An unforgettable breath later, they heard our whispers, or more likely, read my mind. Either way, we got their attention. Their front shoulders tightened into an escape. Their stacked haunches lurch-started the family group. They all thundered away. I tried to follow with my rifle scope, but the high magnification said ‘nope’. Deflated, I broke from my shooting stance.
Still in the game, Mike’s binoculars projected from his eyes. A few emotionally unproductive seconds later, he muttered, “They stopped at 600 yards.” With purpose, he put his binoculars in his chest case and grabbed the shooting sticks from the side-by-side. Gently closing the door, he looked back and said in hushed tones, “We’ll move real quick to the ridge and get a shot. You ready?”
“Let’s roll.” I clicked my safety on, sucked oxygen, and followed Mike to the high-roller table.
We zig-zagged through mounds of service berries and crossed an aspen hammock that opened to the bottom of the opposite ridge. They appeared above us, in and out of view through the brush. The antlers on the two large bucks sprouted through the eye candy. Rember when your dad said, “You’ll know when you see them.” The intermingling racks reminded me of scaffolding. I knew.
Mike whispered instructions. I retained nothing. With my stock in the crotch of the shooting sticks, I clicked my safety off. Boom - thwack! The larger of the two shuddered, but then lumbered away with the group, now stampeding from the scene.
Beginning from the point of impact, we tracked broken sage stems and heavy hoof prints. Downslope as far as we could see, the second buck scampered out the backside of the bottom and across a hayfield - alone. Mike called out behind me, “I see him. He’s in the creek.”
I lifted my binoculars for the search. “Where? I need to finish this.”
“Look to the end of the yellow line of aspen tops. See the running water?”
“Got him,” I said. I secured the shooting sticks under the stock. My scope focused like a laser beam through the gap in the leaves. I calmed my breathing and bolted another dinner bell in the chamber. From an elevated position and against all odds, I cashed out with a shot to the boiler room. It was done.
I raised my rifle and the sticks over my head. “Tagged out!”
Mike fist bumped my sticks hand and doubled over slapping his hands to his knees. Wide eyed and relieved, he said, “We did it!”
“Boy, did we.”
Driving back across the Wyoming border into Colorado, I blinked, but hoped the sign said, “Thanks for playing. Come back soon.”
You can bet on it.
Author with mule deer