I’ve hunted whitetails since I was a kid in my native Central New York and have chased them since in locales as diverse and far-flung as South Texas, South Dakota and Alabama. In early October I travelled to Oregon’s Grant County for my first mule deer hunt.

I’ve never been much of a stand hunter, and for that I blame a short attention span—a common affliction of people of my generation. When I hunt whitetails, I prefer to be on the ground—stalking and still-hunting—so the idea of taking the hunt to the muleys in their stunning canyon country habitat excited me to no end.

My host was David Morris, whose family arrived in east-central Oregon via the historic Oregon Trail in the mid 19th century, settled there and continues to call it home today. We hunted on his 4,000-acre ranch and his cousin’s 11,000-acre property (left).