I took this great Colorado buck in September 2024. After the shot, the buck tumbled 800 yards down a steep slope. It was a miracle the antlers didn’t break!
September 04, 2025
By Randy Ulmer
Climbing to the crest of a vertically walled wash in the high desert of northern New Mexico, I removed my sweat-soaked hat so my eye would be the first thing exposed over the berm. My otherwise white hair had been combed through with a gray mixture of mineral oil, charcoal and another secret ingredient — for just such a potential eventuality.
Being an equine veterinarian, I discovered this mixture while treating a horse for colic. Routine protocol was to pump a gallon of mineral oil mixed with a healthy dose of activated charcoal into a horse’s stomach.
Having gone prematurely grey, the glow of my silver mane had given me away on several stalks; I needed a solution. I tried head nets, but they interfered with my hearing, field of view and shooting. They were also just plain uncomfortable. A light bulb came on as I was pumping the grey-black goo into the tube running up the horse’s nostril. I rushed home, oiled up my locks with the concoction and was very impressed with the outcome. The activated charcoal eliminated any odor, and as a bonus, it made me look 10 years younger in my success photos! I have been using this mixture ever since to hide my “platinum blonde” hair during hunts. And just like the Brylcreem hair gel ad from the ‘60s said, “A little dab’ll do ya!”
That morning, I was looking for a group of bucks my nephew, Zach, had spotted at first light. They were feeding just over the lip of a giant wash weaving its way through a juniper flat. Though Zach was glassing from an extremely long distance, he suspected one of the bucks was a shooter. I had been moving up the wash, climbing the 15-foot wall every 100 yards or so and peeking one eye over the lip. If my look revealed no deer, I would slide back down to the sandy wash bottom and move up quickly to my next vantage point and repeat.
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Around my sixth or seventh peek, I detected movement through the sage brush. My muscles tensed spasmodically. With steady hands, I slowly raised my binoculars. Velvet antler tips moved above the brush as the bucks fed. Raising myself a fraction further, I could see the tops of the bucks’ backs and distinguish their antlers clearly. One of the bucks was a non-typical monster, the heaviest antlered buck I had ever seen. His bases were so large they almost covered his eyes. I felt a dreamlike, surreal sense this encounter could not possibly be genuine; it had to be a dream. It took a long moment for reality to set in. I felt an immediate gush of adrenaline spreading through my bloodstream.
Getting close to a majestic mule deer buck is nerve-wracking. Your success hinges on your ability to prepare for that stress and calmly execute an accurate shot under pressure. One can’t fully appreciate a heavy-antlered mule deer buck at a distance; you must experience him intimately, close enough to feel his essence. These sensations are disturbing and uncomfortable. Yet, paradoxically, these powerful emotions are what draw me to return each fall, compulsively, to hunt with a bow and arrow again.
Being close to a large, velvet-antlered buck has never been comfortable. I experience intense, nagging apprehension and anxiety. I fear the animal will turn and run before I have a chance to loose an arrow. I try to suppress this agonizing, urgent fear, most often with no success. That day, the feelings were so intense I desperately desired to move rapidly and shoot the buck. I wanted the ordeal to be over with as quickly as possible.
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“Closing the deal” is the aspect of the hunt hardest for a bowhunter to master. A younger version of myself, wanting relief from the acute suspense and angst, would rush the process, hurrying either the stalk or the shot and ruin the quest.
“Patience seldom goes unrewarded” has always been my bowhunting mantra. I recited it then. Patience, patience, patience, I told myself.
My feet were clinging to a little ledge of soil with the consistency of a dirt clod. My legs began shaking, quickly followed by my arms. I was having a difficult time holding the rangefinder still enough to get a reading and was afraid my footing would give way, tumbling me to the wash bottom, alerting the bucks. By the time I had the yardage fixed, I was hyperventilating.
I climbed quietly down and unfastened my bow with shaking hands. Once the bow was free from the pack, I silently climbed back up the face on wobbly legs. When near the top, I stopped my ascent to gently carve a ledge in the soft earth. I needed a solid surface for my feet, allowing me to slowly stand with bow drawn. Holding the bow against the dirt wall with one trembling knee, I slowly excavated the ledge.
Once solidly in position, I cautiously peeked over and took a final range reading. I kneeled on the ledge to conceal any motion and drew my bow parallel to the wash’s bank. I then rotated 90 degrees and ever-so-slowly rose, just high enough to bring the sight to bear on the buck’s chest, then just a few inches more to allow the arrow to clear the wall.
As I rose, the big buck lifted its head and turned; his eyes seemed to bore holes through me. His look eliminated any modicum of control I might have had over my emotions. It was now or never! My legs were trembling like a puppy in a thunderstorm, the bow was shaking violently, and my mind was utterly blank.
I pulled the release trigger. I do not recall the shot, nor where my sight pin was aimed at the time. It was all a blur.
Fortunately, the shot was good, and the buck went down in sight.
Buck Fever “Buck Fever” is the term hunters use to describe the emotional meltdown I was experiencing. The syndrome typically strikes when one encounters a game animal with the intent of taking it. The bigger the trophy, the more likely one is to experience this reaction.
For many bowhunters, a big mule deer buck is the pinnacle of bowhunting success. Because of this, older age-class mule deer seem to be the game animal most likely to induce buck fever — especially in me.
The difficulty of the terrain mule deer inhabit, along with the elevation, the physical exertion, the long stalks and the majesty of the animal combine to severely reduce your ability to remain in control of your emotions during the moment of truth.
The rugged terrain mule deer inhabit, and the physical challenges involved in hunting there, can significantly reduce your capacity to handle the stress of a close encounter with a trophy buck. Most bowhunters are softened by civilization. We are creatures who have lived our lives in safe and comfortable environments. We have lost the toughness, wildness and predatory instincts of our distant ancestors. We have few, if any, life-and-death experiences to draw from. We are out of our element, pitting our hunting skills against a wild animal that has lived every moment of its life in danger of imminent death. The animal we are hunting has the benefit of innate survival instincts finely honed over thousands of generations.
Having the right training, equipment and experience will help in these situations. However, success usually hinges on one’s ability to hold it together under extreme pressure. When shooting at a monster muley, I would rather be a mediocre, unsophisticated archer who can hold together under duress than a world-champion archer who cannot control his emotions during the ordeal.
For a normal human, it is extremely difficult to remain calm in extremely tense situations. Psychological studies suggest only 5-15 percent of people are naturally and innately capable of doing so.
Fortunately for the rest of us, self-control can be learned. Unfortunately, even those of us with years of experience will sometimes ignore all our training and do inexplicably stupid things to ruin a stalk or shot. When asked, “What were you thinking?” the true and honest answer would be, “I was not thinking!”
Too Hot To Handle With a bow in hand, I have had more than my fair share of successful encounters with big mule deer bucks. However, the stalks that burn longest in my memory are those that failed when buck fever overwhelmed my emotions, leading to needless mistakes.
When I’m recounting hunting stories, whether telling them directly to my buddies or memorializing them in print, I tend to focus on my successes. But in my mind and in my dreams, I focus on my failures.
The following episode haunts me to this day: A few years ago, deep in the wilderness of Colorado, I hunted a deer that I’d watched mature over the course of several years. He was a unique buck, easily recognizable, with thick, non-typical antlers resembling tree trunks growing from his head. The year I hunted him, he had blossomed into a legend. The first day I stalked him, he was at timberline in late afternoon, feeding and moving uphill in a large thicket of dwarf pines, junipers and willows. I planned my stalk to skirt around the steep, downwind side of the cover and hoped to intercept him coming over the top at last light.
On most mule deer hunts, the hunter gets a good look at the buck from a distance with optics before proceeding on the stalk. During the stalk, the vision of the big buck in a hunter’s mind can get him worked up to a frenzy by the time he is within in bow range. He fed through the thicket just as I’d expected, but instead of veering to my right or left as I had hoped, he fed facing directly towards me for the final 75 yards of his approach. It was impossible to draw my bow without being detected. I was in perfect position, watching him for an hour. Unfortunately, during that hour, I descended into a mental tailspin I could not pull out of. I was a mess!
When the buck reached 10 yards and its vision was temporarily obstructed by brush, I attempted to lean back and draw my bow. My arms were trembling. I was cold, weak and unsettled. Even now, I’m ashamed to say I could not pull the string back, no matter how hard I strained.
On my second attempt to draw, the buck saw my movement and bolted. I was horrified!
On any other buck, I could and would have drawn my bow successfully. Yet on this monster deer, I was reduced to sissy status. Feeling disconsolate and despondent, I morosely glissaded down the scree field to my pack. I slept in a deer’s bed that night, feeling sorry for myself and thinking things could not get any worse. I had just blown my chance at one of the most spectacular bucks I had ever seen.
As it turned out, however, things could and did get worse. Later, I stalked within 80 yards of the same buck. I was on the verge of success, thanks to a second chance rarely granted by a buck such as this. While removing my shoes to cover the final few yards to my intended shooting position, I heard yelling on the crest of the ridge 600 yards above me. I looked up to see several orange-clad sportsmen on the skyline waving their arms, yelling and running around.
I watched in horror as the buck jumped up and ran. A few moments later, I heard the crack of a high-powered rifle. The Governor’s Tag holder had just killed “my” buck! Now, several years later, I’m still not over it.
The lesson I learned from that painful bout of buck fever was to use a bow I can handle easily — a bow I can draw from any position and under any state of mental duress! Thinking back, I have lost many more bucks by struggling to pull my bow back than I have from lack of kinetic energy or speed.
Practice Makes Perfect As a young adult, one of my mentors told me it takes a lifetime to build a good reputation as a man of integrity, yet it only takes 5 minutes to ruin it. This saying could be a loose metaphor for the years of training we bowhunters undertake for a single chance at a trophy animal. We spend thousands of hours building our shooting skills, preparing ourselves and our gear in every way possible for the moment. Then, we can ruin it all in just a few seconds.
Buck Fever is just one example of a broad psychological phenomenon. This same emotional disintegration can be precipitated by any intensely stressful, demanding situation where the stakes are high. This is especially true in a binary situation, one where your actions and decisions will determine whether you will live or die; or in our situation, kill a buck or go home empty-handed.
If adrenaline emanated from a person like smoke from a smoke grenade, most bowhunters while stalking a big muley buck would be surrounded by and then disappear into a purple haze. (The smoke would be purple because that is the military’s universal signal for “needs medical attention!”)
Here I am packing out my 2024 buck. Although I have been blessed to enjoy more than my fair share of success on big mule deer bucks over the years, I have found it is the failed stalks that are etched deepest in my memory. My goal over the last 50 years has been to explore why I make disastrous mistakes during clutch moments on big mule deer and, more importantly, how to avoid them in the future! The following are a few thoughts on the subject:
Bowhunters have no proven, practical method of preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at a big buck. Success in these situations usually comes down to whether one can maintain composure under extreme duress. Some bowhunters naturally have that ability. Unfortunately, most do not.
In every buck-fever inducing encounter, there are many variables you cannot control. You need to know how you will react to each of these before they occur. This knowledge must be instinctual and automatic, as you won’t be thinking clearly when it happens. The good news is there are many things you can control. You should be in full command of all these things to eliminate as many variables as possible.
Once in the middle of the situation, there should be nothing technical you must remember to do. (That is one reason I don’t use single pin, moveable sights). Your intellect will be reduced to the level of a reptile. Your brain will not be firing on all cylinders. Every action must be instinctive.
One method of preparing for these stressful encounters is to compete in high-stakes archery tournaments. I have attributed much of my bowhunting success to my 25-plus years of intense, high-level archery competition. I know from experience that the feelings are very similar in both hunting and tournament situations. Not many bowhunters get to experience hundreds of shoot-offs for national or world championships, but the opportunities are there even in small, local tournaments.
However, tournament success does not always translate into bowhunting success. I’ve seen a world-champion archer miss a standing, broadside bull elk at 30 yards. So, apparently, the two situations are not precisely the same.
I believe the sensitivity of an older age-class animal increases exponentially as you close the distance. For instance, I think you can get away with a lot more than twice as much noise, movement and odor at 40 yards than you can at 20 yards. In a similar fashion, the closer you stalk to a bedded buck, the more likely you are to experience buck fever. Our susceptibility to buck fever is also exponential. Nowadays, I rarely push a stalk inside 40 yards. I choose to stop my stalk at the furthest range where I can consistently make a lethal shot. Keeping a little distance between myself and the buck helps me remain calm.
There is a great lesson I learned in target archery that I have adapted to bowhunting. I use a hinge-style (back-tension) release aid whenever possible. I keep the hinge release in my pocket and an index-finger trigger release aid around my wrist. If I determine I have enough time, I pull out the back-tension release aid for the shot. I find this type of release aid forces me to slow down, pick a precise aiming spot, stick with the shot and follow through. You can’t “punch” these releases effectively. So, using one forces me to keep my mind in the game and focused.
Patience Pays Off My final suggestion is to BE PATIENT. I can look back on nearly every successful stalk I’ve made and point out how patience helped me take the animal. The most important time to be patient is when choosing the time to shoot and when squeezing the trigger. Most people tend to rush the shot. They have an overwhelming urge to get the suspense over with and shoot as quickly as possible. It is very difficult to hold back the tide of nagging fear the buck will detect you and bolt. It is true; the deer may turn and run, and the opportunity will be gone. However, 90 percent of the time, the outcome will be better by executing a patient and deliberate surprise release.
Your odds of actually killing the deer are better if you are patient. You need to wait for a time when the vitals are fully exposed and the deer is either looking away or has its vision blocked. You almost always have more time to draw and shoot than you think you do.
