"Here he comes," Stephan whispered. I could hear the bull trotting. Within seconds, coming head on it raced through the quakies and into the clearing where we set up.

From heavily wooded ridges and draws to lower-elevation sage country, RCO's property is not only scenic, it's perfect habitat for elk and mule deer.

"He's only a 5x5; don't shoot yet," Stephan said as the elk ran past us on our left, then stood fifteen yards away looking, drooling, confused.

I couldn't turn to make a shot. Aaron was sitting to my left between me and the elk, and because the elk was so close, I didn't think I could move without spooking it anyway. So we waited for the bull to make a decision, and when it trotted off down the hill a bit, Stephan made up his mind, too.

"Shoot him if you want."

I raised the muzzle of my rifle skyward, swapped ends, got back on the sticks and planted the first shot squarely behind the bull's shoulder, which caused him to run a little farther. When he stopped again, facing dead away with his head held high, my second shot was placed through the spine at an angle I knew would take the 180-grain Barnes MRX bullet downward to the elk's heart. The bull dropped where it stood, neck twisted, antlers gouged into the earth.

Uncharacteristically, I remained rather calm through the whole event. Then it hit me: Rather than an anticlimactic ending, it was the perfect beginning to a hunt I had lusted after since boyhood.

Stephan Woolstenhulme, left of the author, is an outstanding, hardworking guide who knows the habits of deer and elk. He prefers that clients bring a flat-shooting rifle/caliber combination when hunting mule deer; the author is shooting a Kimber 8400 chambered to .300 Win. Mag.

In my late teens I ran with a gang of bowhunters, most of them many years older than me--a boy in a man's world. Each year several of them made the day-long drive from Southern California to Price, Utah, where they hunted mule deer in the nearby high country for a week or two before coming home and sharing stories of stalking outsized, velvet-antlered bucks. If the stalking went well they'd have a buck or two parted out in coolers in the back of their pickups. One of those bucks, a wallhanger for sure, resides in the Tennessee home of one of the best friends I've ever had. It's the kind of buck that inspires big dreams--I've dreamt of shooting one like it for years.

The fact that it took me twenty-some years to get a chance at a Utah mulie was no deterrent. Aaron and I both had tags, and we both had great aspirations.

After taking care of the elk, we struck out that afternoon in search of big-antlered bucks. Since my dream was already on its way to becoming a reality, it was Aaron's turn to shoot. For him, our trip to Utah was a homecoming of sorts. Aaron had previously lived in the area and had never hunted with but knew the Woolstenhulme family and was glad to do some catching up.

As in my case, this was the first and best opportunity Aaron had had to shoot his best mule deer buck, and Stephan knew that, too, so during the next two days we searched high and low for a deer that would interest my hunting partner. The state-line country Red Creek Outfitters hunts, some 40,000-plus acres, is crawling with deer. They can be found in good numbers from the ranch's lower sage draws and canyons up into the mid-elevation pine and aspen forests and all the way up to the property's jagged ridgelines nearing 11,000 feet.