Excerpt: Chapter 1
Big, remote, tough to get to, tougher to hunt...yup, there's a reason why the backcountry is a lonely place.

Bragging size backcountry bucks or sweeping antlered, ivory tipped bulls are seldom killed in easy to get to spots on public land by regular guys like you and me. One thing is for certain, if you hunt areas that are reasonably easy to get to, you can count on seeing other hunters and if there are a multitude of hunters traipsing up and down the mountain, you can also plan on not seeing many trophy bucks or bulls. That is just the cold hard facts. A lot of guys spend many years trying to disprove this theory, don't be one of them.

Hunting deeper than anyone else is willing to hunt is a prerequisite in my opinion. Most of the trophy bucks and bulls I have killed not only had no idea I was in the country, but I don't think they had even seen a human since the previous hunting season. I don't have to explain to you how huge of a factor this is.

Some might not believe there is any place you could go to hunt 100% unpressured animals and I probably wouldn't either if I hadn't experienced this phenomenon firsthand on many occasions. As a lot of guys who have had some success, I have always been ultra-paranoid about someone else stumbling into "my" area. Even my best buddies used to call me Mac (Cam backwards) as a code word coined to poke fun at my secretiveness on everything in regard to hunting or where I hunted.

I was literally nauseous when the first Eastmans' video came out that highlighted my wilderness hunt. I just knew my area was going to be overrun with hunters the following season. On one hand I wanted to share my experiences with others who loved western hunting like I did, while on the other I didn't want to share anything as my #1 goal was to protect what I had worked so hard to find. But, guess what? Surprisingly, after the release of the video and my magazine article telling of my success I still didn't see anyone in the backcountry that next year. I told myself that, "Well, it will just take a year for them to figure out where I am. This will probably be the last season I will have it to myself. After this season I am screwed."

Guess what happened the next season? Nothing, still no one. Fact is I still haven't seen one person off the trail in the country I have hunted for almost 15 years now. The first Eastman video (1999) and that first article highlighting my wilderness hunt (1996) came out years and years ago and still the area is as unsullied as when I first stumbled upon it. The reason? It is BIG, remote, tough to get to and tough to hunt country, which turns off many would be hunters. Also, the country simply doesn't hold a ton of animals but the key is it holds enough. This is the exact scenario you are after when looking for prime mule deer and elk hunting areas.

Backcountry Advice: "Make sure your goals are fueled by the love of the journey."

What does this quote mean? A good analogy is this: Don't set the goal of being a great marathoner unless you love running. Same goes with high country mule deer or backcountry elk hunting. Unless you love everything about the backcountrythe challenge, the gear, the misery, the bouts of homesickness and the solitudedon't set a goal of arrowing a big buck or bull in the rugged backcountry. Without love of the former, you'll likely never have the chance to love the latter. Arrowing a trophy animal in deep is tough to do if you're not romanticized by the lonely backcountry.

Even given my overwhelming drive to succeed on my own in the wild, at times I have thought, "I will never kill another trophy buck. This is ridiculousI must have used up all my luck." Or in the more frustrating of times a simple self-loathing "I suck" pretty much summed up my bowhunting performance as I watched a bull-for-the-wall crash down the hill with his herd, clouds of dust and rolling rocks marking their trail long after they had barreled out of sight.

Fact is, hunting the backcountry is never going to be easy. By the time a mule deer or bull reaches trophy class he has lived about five years in the mountains. And for those of us who have spent time in the backcountry you know how tough it is even just for a few days at a stretch. These animals live there day in and day out being subjected to all that the high country can throw at them. A five-year-old animal also has been hunted by, not only humans but also the most efficient predator of all time, the mountain lion. This tends to make them a wee bit edgy.

When considering all of this I am not shocking anyone by saying that a trophy, high country bow kill is one of the absolute toughest challenges you'll face. Arrowing one big one is tough and if you're like me and long for repeated and regular success, well now we are talking long and steep odds. Despite this less than rosy prognosis, I have bucked the odds and so can you...