Hunt The West

Add your site to the GunBroker.com Banner Exchange

Mule Deer

Deer are a bread-and-butter species for all hunters, and mule deer certainly fall in to this category for those who hunt the West.

An easy-to-draw mule deer tag is a great excuse to get out and do some hunting every year. A nice fat 1.5-year-old is good to fill the freezer. A 2.5-year-old will even have some modest 2x2 or 3x3 or maybe even 4x4 antlers.

Big mulies, however, are a whole different thing. With inside spreads that can reach 30 inches across and mass potentially thicker than your wrist, a big mulie can have antlers that are elk-like in stature.

And these big, mature, trophy mulies have a very dedicated following. They certainly deserve it ... but that also makes it hard to draw the tags from the premier mule deer areas.

Applying across multiple states allows you to mix-and-match your mulie hunts. Draw some "easy" tags in Wyoming or Montana or Colorado to have a chance to get out, while building points for high-end tags in places like Arizona or Utah.

State	Notes	General Tag Quality	Limited Tag Quality	Odds of Drawing Limited Tags	Strategy
Arizona	Arizona -- in particular, the regions around the Grand Canyon -- is known for producing monster mule deer. Unfortunately, everyone knows this and has been building bonus points for the last 20 years, so it's extremely hard to get a good tag.	N/A	Average to Excellent	Poor to Impossible	Try for a high-quality muzzleloader during the rut, or stick with Coues deer instead.
Colorado	Lots of great mulies right now, but hard to draw a tag unless you've got a lot of preference points. Don't expect a great deer on an easy-to-draw unit.	N/A	Average to Excellent	Average to Impossible	Build points
Montana	Montana has a weird system for General and Limited tag allocation. But they've got deer, and if you get at least a mile from the roads, you can consistently take nice deer.	N/A	Average to Excellent	Average	Worth considering. If I lived a little closer and wasn't so busy, I'd apply every year.
New Mexico	Huge deer near the northern Indian Reservations. The deer out in the desert run much smaller, but can be plentiful on private ranches.	N/A	Poor to Excellent	Average to Poor	Apply for a high-end tag on your first two choices, an easy-to-draw tag on your 3rd choice.
Kansas	A sleeper state for nice mulies, many of which are corn-fed. The new "Mule Deer Stamp" system for non-residents makes drawing a mule deer tag unnecessarily complicated, unfortunately.	N/A	Poor to Excellent	About 1 in 3	If you can find a place to hunt, and can tolerate the unnecessary risk of the "Mule Deer Stamp" system, go for it.
Nebraska	A sleeper state for nice mulies. Tags are first-come, first-served, so pretty easy to come by. Access to private land will be the tricky part.	Good, if you can get access to a well-managed ranch	N/A	N/A	If you can figure out a place to hunt, buy a tag and go hunting!
Utah	Utah offers some really high-end hunts (the Henry Mountains), some more realistic chances for a good deer (the Book Cliffs), and some general season opportunities as well.	N/A	Average to Excellent	Poor to Really Poor	Build points.
Wyoming	Has some good trophy areas in the western part of the state. Also has some very easy-to-draw general areas that won't produce monsters, but will give you a chance to hunt mulies every year.	Poor to Average	Average to Excellent	Average to Poor	Build points towards a high-end tag, draw a General tag on your 2nd choice.