Kyle Lopez Buck: 306-inch Colorado Mule Deer

14-Year Old Boy Takes the Largest Buck in the Last 30 Years!
by Kyle Lopez

Darn it, I didn’t get my first choice tag for our ranch. But, after a few weeks I found out that my uncle and I drew tags for the Hayman burn area. I was excited because my dad drives by that area on his way to and from work every day. He had been telling me about the monster bucks he had been seeing. There was only one problem; we had to wait until the third rifle season.

My dad had been scouting all summer and had seen many nice deer. Some of the deer he had scouted were 30+ inch bucks and one non-typical that looked like a monster buck. Dad followed these bucks up until two weeks before the season. The closer it got to opening day, the less my dad was seeing the deer. The day before the season opener he didn’t see any deer at all.

“Beep, Beep, Beep!!” The alarm went off. My hunting season had finally arrived. I rolled over to my nightstand and silenced the alarm and jumped out of bed. My dad was already up and ready along with my uncle. I grabbed some breakfast and my gear, my gun, knife, camo and, of course, my orange. I ran out to the truck and we were off. It took about 35 minutes, in the dark, to get to our hunting area. We had decided not to go to Dad’s “honey hole” until later. So, in the meantime, we chose to go to a more popular area to see how many hunters were out in the unit. We immediately started seeing deer. Unfortunately, they were only does and small-forked bucks. We didn’t see any of the deer that Dad had scouted all summer long. Around noon, as the temperature began to rise, we returned home for some lunch.

That afternoon we decided to let Dad’s “honey hole” wait a while longer. We went down the road to see if we could hunt another spot. Everywhere we went, there seemed to be hunters. So, we decided to head north in our unit to get away from the crowd of hunters.

When we arrived at our new spot, we hiked across a small creek and back into the burnt timber. We started seeing deer sign immediately. I just knew we were going to find deer this time. As we snuck around the burnt forest making our way up drainages and over ridges, we jumped a 5×5 bull elk but no deer. We watched the elk for a few minutes before he trotted off. Dad decided that this might have spooked the game in the area. So, before the last of the hunting light faded, we went back to the truck and up the road about two miles. As we were driving, my uncle and I spotted a buck on the hillside. Dad pulled over and quickly glassed the buck. Dad said that this was a buck that we just couldn’t pass up. It was heavy, about twenty-six inches wide, and had big deep forks on both sides. I told my uncle that he should get him because he had never killed anything with horns. So, my uncle went alone on his stalk as we sat back and waited. It seemed like several minutes before we heard the big boom that broke the long silence and sent a shiver through the air. He got him! Dad and I got out of the truck and headed over to where we last saw the buck. There was my uncle, smiling and holding his hand up for a high five. The great buck was lying on the ground, a 7×7 giant. We got him dressed out and went home for the night. My uncle was absolutely thrilled; this was a great deer. The excitement in the pick-up on the way home made a perfect ending to a great first day.

Later that night, my dad put a tape on the buck and came up with a 194-inch green score. This was truly a great deer for my uncle’s first.

The next morning my dad and I got up a little late. The Division of Wildlife had the sunrise and sunset chart off by an hour because of the time change. They were also a day off. But, that was just a minor setback - we had the entire day to hunt. So, we headed out and were back at it again. We still wanted to save Dad’s “honey hole,” so we went to a different area and hiked in. We snuck around there for three or four hours looking at sign, glassing, and trying to locate bucks. But, as luck would have it, nothing turned up. Again, for a second day the temperature began to heat up rapidly so we went home for lunch.

When we returned that afternoon, my two little brothers went with us. Dad had decided to hike back into the “honey hole.” Finally! Dad parked the truck, we gathered up our gear and we were off. We crossed the creek and hiked into the mouth of a drainage. As we entered the drainage, we stopped to take a break. Here, Dad gave his instructions on how we were to hunt the “honey hole.” He decided to climb up a small ridge to our right to peek over into the next drainage where he had watched the bucks go all summer. We started up the small ridge, trying to step quietly over the loose gravel under our feet. We carefully stepped over the burnt timber that littered the hillside and were a few steps behind Dad as he reached the top of the ridge first. Dad barely peeked over the ridge when he froze for a moment and excitedly motioned for me to come quickly. There he was, a nice 30+ inch buck. The buck immediately took off, straight away from us and up the other side of the drainage. Dad and I tried to slow him down by whistling, but he did not stop. As he slowed to cut across the hillside, there was an opening and I took a shot. The shot sailed about six inches above his back. I chambered another shell in my gun and took a hard shot at the running buck. This shot was nowhere close to the buck. And that was it, he was gone.

As we stood there on the ridge, I was trying to gather my composure. I thought back to my shot placements. I was feeling frustrated as this might have been my only opportunity at a great buck and I had missed. Dad quickly started down into the drainage and up the other side to where the buck was when I took my first shot. He found the tracks of the big buck and began searching the area for any signs that I might have gotten lucky. As we trailed the buck, we did not find any signs that he had been hit. We crossed several drainages and, as we hit the last hillside, the buck’s tracks ran into some elk tracks and became difficult to follow. Dad was certain that the buck was not hit and, with light fading, we knew there was no catching up to him. We turned around and followed our path out. With each footstep the disappointment began to overtake the excitement of the evening. I was feeling down as the second day of the hunt came to an end. I knew that this would be my last full day to hunt as the weekend was over. I had to return to school and now my hunts would be limited to evenings after school if my dad’s work schedule allowed it. As we were driving home the truck was quiet. Dad spoke up and explained to me that it’s very common to step on big mule deer bucks. Dad said that the shots that I had taken were rushed and very difficult even for an experienced hunter. He said, “He would rather have a dime for every one that he missed than a dollar for every one that he had hit because he would be a rich man.” I understood that my dad was trying to ease my frustration and help me to forget the events of the evening’s hunt, but I knew that this buck would haunt my dreams tonight.

The next morning I got up and went to school still feeling frustrated and thinking about the buck that I had missed. I was not able to hunt the next evening as I had to stay after school to turn in football gear. This turned out to be an even more frustrating day as we were unable to go out to hunt and I just kept thinking about the one that had gotten away.

The next evening was starting to look better as dad’s work schedule was going to allow us to get out and hunt that evening. Dad called me and said he could pick me up as I got off the bus. We could quickly get geared up and head out to hunt. Then, my luck changed once again - and not for the better. There were medical problems with another student on the school bus. This delayed me in getting home. As I got off the bus and into dad’s pickup, he stated that there would only be an hour and a half left once we drove over to our unit. His plan was to drive out on the forest roads and see what we could see.

As we returned home, dad told me that his work schedule would allow him to come home early the next day. He would be able to get me before the end of school so we could start our hunt earlier. The next day, Dad picked me up from school around 2:00. We hurried home, got ready and headed out on the 35 minute drive to our unit. Dad said that we were going back into the “honey hole.” As we were driving, Dad said he had a very good feeling that we were going to get one tonight. My stomach filled with butterflies. I had the feeling that Dad might have known something that I didn’t or seen something on his way home. I had a feeling that there was a surprise waiting for me. He told me that we were going to have to move quickly and quietly up the drainage. This time we were going to go up the drainage where we had jumped the buck three days ago. But this time, we weren’t going to go up any of the ridges to take a peek. We would follow the drainage all the way to the head where Dad believed the bucks would be at the base of a large stone wall. So, we made it to our “honey hole” and quickly and quietly maneuvered our way up the drainage though the tangled mazes of burned timber that littered the drainage up to the base of the mountain. This was a good three-mile hike. As we started to top out at the head of the drainage, the hillsides began to become more visible. Dad paused for a moment and pulled up his glasses to look ahead while we still had the cover of the drainage. He quietly whispered that there were two young does up ahead. We snuck around to their left and, as we did, the does spotted us. We paused for a moment to see what they were going to do. The excitement was starting to build. We were so close to them that it felt like we had stepped into their bedroom. This was the moment that we started to get luck on our side. The does curiously started walking to us, discovered that we weren’t more deer, and quietly trotted off. Dad’s plan was to go away from the does towards a steep hillside that had lush green vegetation on it. As we turned to start towards the hillside, dad stopped and looked ahead again. It was then that my dad said, “Kyle, there is a good buck looking at us.” As dad continued looking through his glasses, he told me that this was definitely a buck that we should take. Dad was standing next to a burnt tree and as he stepped around it he told me to rest my gun against the side of the burnt tree to take the shot. As I got my first look at the buck through the scope, the buck appeared to be just what dad had said. He was facing us looking in our direction with an intense stare. As dad continued to look through his glasses he said, “Kyle, I don’t believe this buck is going to give us a broadside shot. He will run away if he does.” Dad instructed me to place my crosshairs on the white patch on his neck directly under his nose and to squeeze the trigger. I steadied my breathing, let out my breath and squeezed the trigger - POW!! That buck jumped a mile high as the shot went off. As he turned in mid-air and did the “old bulldozer,” as my dad calls it, he collapsed out of sight. Dad exclaimed, “You got him Kyle, good job!” We hugged as Dad’s gut feeling of me getting one tonight came true. We gave the buck a little bit of time (that seemed like hours) before we went to find him. I was so excited, but I tried to collect myself. The adrenaline was flowing. Dad told me to get another round ready as we took off to go see the buck. As we arrived at the spot where we had last seen the buck standing, we immediately found blood and tracked him about fifty feet. The buck was in a small ditch. As we were approaching, it appeared as if he had fallen into an old dead bush. My dad made it to the buck first. He told me to get my gun ready. My heart was pumping. I could see the grey color of his body as dad picked up a rock and tossed it toward the buck’s belly. As the rock hit and bounced off the buck’s body Dad exclaimed, “He’s done Kyle.” This is where my luck took an enormous turn for the better. As I was securing my gun, I heard my dad say, “Oh, my.” He just kept saying, “Oh my, Oh my,” over and over. Neither one of us was prepared for what we found lying at our feet. We assumed that we had shot a good buck, but never in our wildest dreams had we known that he was this good. As I stood next to my dad looking at the buck, there were so many points coming off his antlers that it looked like the bush that he had fallen into had overtaken him. His horns were heavy and it seemed like there were hundreds of points going in all different directions. From this point forward there would be no words to describe this buck - none that anyone would believe anyway without seeing it with their own eyes. Dad gave me a big hug. We had several high fives. There is just no way to explain the excitement and emotion of what we were looking at. Dad said that we needed to get to work on him right away because we had just brought the bare minimum and we needed to get to the truck to get photos of the buck before light faded.

We dressed out the buck and got him ready to go. We still had a long three-mile hike out to the truck. We started off on top of a ridge, but soon the ridge died out and we bailed off into a nasty drainage. The drainage was littered with many deadfalls of burnt timber arranged in a tangled mess. Light was beginning to fade and we could only drag the buck a hundred yards at a time. Then, we would have to stop to clear out another hundred yards. This process seemed to take forever as darkness was now upon us. The excitement of the hunt began to rapidly wear off because of the work that had to be done to find an easy path to drag this monstrous deer out. What seemed like an easy decision at first, to leave the deer whole so that we could get photographs, now seemed to be fading as fast as the light was. Those three miles were the longest of my life but, as I look back, it was worth every bit of it. We had shot the deer around 4:30 p.m. and didn’t get back to the truck until 7:30 p.m. As we got the deer to the back of the pickup, we looked up and saw a car traveling down the road towards us. The vehicle slowed as my dad had his parking lights on. The people inside the vehicle asked if we were alright. Boy, if they only knew - we were overjoyed. Dad told them that we were ok and that I had just harvested a buck and we were loading him into the pickup. The buck’s massive horns didn’t go unnoticed as they asked if they could take a photo. They were amazed at what an awesome trophy this was. They asked Dad for our email address and said that they would send us the photos that they had taken. They congratulated me on my harvest and drove away. As we climbed into the truck to head home, there was one more hug from Dad congratulating me and telling me how proud he was. What a great experience this was. As we drove up the hill, I could hardly wait to call my mom and my brothers. We began making plans on who would call first once we had cell service. Once we got those magical bars to make a call, I immediately called my mom and brothers. I began to tell them very excitedly the details of the great buck that I had just taken. As I was describing the buck’s many points to my mother, she seemed amazed and asked, in disbelief, if I was multiplying the points. As we got into town, we stopped by several friends’ houses to show them the great buck. Everyone that we stopped to show was simply amazed. Everyone told me that this was truly a deer of a lifetime, but I believe that it is truly a deer of a thousand lifetimes.

As we started out on this hunt, it was our goal to take a good buck for my uncle and myself. I would like to thank my dad, for he is not only an awesome dad but a tremendous guide. I could not have done it without him. My dad’s scouting to and from work and his knowledge of hunting played a big part in my success. My dad has a lot of sayings and, as I thanked him for being such a great guide, he said, “I would rather be lucky than good any day.”

With an official score of 306 3/8 net B&C, the Kyle Lopez Buck is now the #2 non-typical for Colorado and the pending #12 or #13 in the world. It is the largest non-typical mule deer taken in the last 30 years.

Tale of the Tape

Number of points: 26×17
Outside spread: 37 0/8″
Gross typical frame: 206 6/8
Total abnormal points: 104 4/8
Gross score: 311 2/8
Net score: 306 3/8

Tags: 2007, colorado, HI34, lopez buck, mule deer

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