"I have not shot," Aaron said as the deer continued bounding toward us.

Just hours ahead of a storm that was expected to drop several inches of snow, the author shot his best mule deer to date. However, RCO guides would consider this an "average" buck on the property they hunt!

"Just let him come," I said, hoping to keep my friend calm.

At what I would guess to be seventy-five yards, it spotted us and paused to inspect the three reflective characters so out of place in its home range. Aaron's shot was true. The buck of a lifetime fell neatly into a pile, for certain the largest deer we had seen in three days. As we admired and photographed it, the temperature began dropping and the clouds began spitting rain.

Our hunt was being filmed for "Petersen's Hunting Adventure Television" to air this fall on The Outdoor Channel. Many a camera has been ruined in rain and snow, so I discussed the situation with our camera man, Sean Hagan, and we decided I would have a go at the next decent buck we saw. It didn't take long.

"There's a good buck, right there," I said about an hour after we finished taking care of Aaron's deer and were on our way to glass a slide where we had previously seen bucks feeding. Two does had already moved into the cover of a small stand of tall pines, leaving the two bucks that were with them lingering in the open some 200 yards away from us. One of them looked quite nice to me, so I quickly set up for the shot.

"The one on the right is the biggest," Stephan advised.

"Ok," I said, "are you ready? Are you on him?"

Bullets that multi-task, like the Barnes MRX which shoots very flat and penetrates deeply, are perfect for mixed-bag hunts. These Federal Premium 180-grain .300 Win. Mag. loads performed perfectly on the author's elk and mule deer.

I carefully put the crosshairs on the deer's shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The camera caught what I couldn't see: the buck toppling straight over backward when hit with the MRX bullet.

A 4x3 with eyeguards, it was the best mule deer buck I had ever killed, and one of the largest I had ever seen. Upon further inspection, we decided that it had much better mass than the buck Aaron and I passed up a day and a half earlier. I was quite pleased indeed.

That night it began to rain steadily and by the next evening the rain turned to several inches of snow, resulting in four- and five-foot drifts across the ranch roads the following morning.

Stephan (who went out in the squall the next morning to scout for other clients) wanted to find us a buck in the 200-inch range, the likes of which the ranch is known for, and he would have hunted as long and as hard as necessary to do it. There was no need, though. I just experienced one of the most exciting hunts I could ever have hoped for: sneaking to within yards of a rutting bull moose, tagging a fine bugling elk that raced into range as if it were on a string, watching as my friend shot an outstanding mulie buck that did the same, and after passing up numerous "average" deer, I made a perfect shot on the best mulie buck I had ever taken.

Our bucks were the largest two of three deer taken that week. It was the kind of hunt that inspires big dreams--as I drove through the snow drifts on my way home, I was already dreaming of doing it again. Utah…