#51 RANDY STOLTE Top 100 Santa Rosa Island Mule Deer Bucks
#51RANDY STOLTE
This is Randy's second entry into the SRI Top 100 (#59). This is another one of these bucks that showcases his antlers very well. Compare this buck with yesterday's buck taken by Hank Osterkamp. From my experience, every client I know would shoot this buck as compared to Hank's. Yet they actually score exactly the same!
Randy was on the third hunt of the season. Before the season started, when we were scouting, I was in the field with super helper Chuck Sharps, and we saw this buck in the thick coyote brush. As hunt days rapidly go by and each hunt takes on its own pace, you often forget what happened yesterday, little along what happen two weeks earlier. Anyway, on this morning, I had remembered this buck from before the season. I thought to myself, " Lets go look for that buck that Chuck and I saw." Tecalode canyon is a long drive away from camp, so we hunted on the way, but the goal was to reach this particular canyon. We began to search for this buck about a mile and a half from where we had seen it. As luck would have it, within the first 3 or 4 minutes of hiking into this canyon, I spot this buck laying down behind a few bushes about a 1/3 of way up from the canyon bottom. I couldn't believe our luck-- I'd never had such duimb luck finding a buck in such short notice! When I pointed the buck to Randy, he asked whether we should run back to the truck to get the spotting scope. I told him, "Don't bother, i know this buck." So Randy calmly got into his shooting position and fired a killing shot from about 325 yards away. Never had to worry about Randy making a great shot.
