What You Need To Know About Hunting Carmen Whitetail

Some hunts are framed by the trophy—a tangle of antlers or sweep of horn taken home—and some are simply a place. Some hunts are both. The small, but rugged mountain ranges across the Trans Pecos and the Carmen whitetail, a little deer whose secrets still escape hunters and biologists alike, are inseparable, and hunting one across the other is a humbling experience not soon forgotten. It might be the deer or the mountains or both, but it sticks with you long after the shot ceases to echo back at you from across the way.

Last November with a bunch of good friends, I trekked deep into the heart of a 36,000-acre ranch south of Marfa, Texas. From the hill above the old cowboy camp where we stayed you could see into Mexico. You didn’t have to walk that far—just sit on the porch of the barn where we slept—to see mule deer, aoudad and javelinas working their way across distant hillsides through the brushy draws. Occasionally, the stunted oaks gave up their most precious secret, a deer that has all but escaped the attention of hunters, a deer science has barely touched.

Taxonomists are a funny bunch, and the most bookish of them will come to fisticuffs with one another over the subtle differences that separate subspecies from subspecies. Whitetails are no different, and depending on who you talk to, there are three dozen subspecies or half that spread across the continent. However, they all agree Odecoileus virginianus carminis lives in the oak-choked draws of Mexico’s Sierra del Carmen Mountains, hence its name. Strips of mule-deer-inhabited desert are what separate, or did separate, the Carmen from its brush-countryborn brethren, texanus.

In very few places isolated populations exist north of the Rio Grande. Billy Tarrant, a Texas Parks & Wildlife Department biologist and district leader in the Trans Pecos region, said the largest Carmen population is inside Big Bend National Park. Several biological surveys sprinkled over the last five decades have further defined the Carmen’s range, and isolated pockets can be found in the Sierra Vieja and Chinati Mountains in Persidio County and the Del Norte, Rosillos, Chisos and Dead Horse Mountains in Brewster County. Severe droughts in the ’90s and encroachment by texanus have taken their toll on these isolated groups. Tarrant said the TPWD has collected sporadic blood samples in hopes of one day completing a definitive DNA study, but the Carmen as a subspecies is not currently managed as such.

It doesn’t take a genetic code to pick out a Carmen whitetail, since bucks stand only 32 to 35 inches at the shoulder and both sexes have a broad, elongated tail that hangs nearly to their hocks. Bucks will weigh a shade over 100 pounds and does around 60. Comparisons to the Coues are inevitable, and we must turn to the taxonomists to find that Carmen deer have a broader rostrum and typically larger antlers and longer points—otherwise they are almost exactly alike. This lack of knowledge about the Carmen—it is all summed up in a couple of booklets—is a touch strange, considering whitetails are the most studied and managed wildlife species in the world. The more you look, the less there is to find, and perhaps that is what is so enchanting about these deer.

It was up to our outfitter, Steve Jones, to fill us in on the details omitted by the studies, namely where to find and how to hunt this critter. The ranch sat in the Chinati Mountains and was the perfect place to walk yourself to death or break out the good glass and let it do the scouting for you. Jones, one of just a few outfitters who runs Carmen hunts on this side of the river, had us on the overlooks at daylight with our backs to the sun, and the critters, from Carmen deer to aoudad to coyotes, would shine. Spot and stalk sounded deceptively simple, especially after a look into the first deep canyon.

My hunting partner, Rob Lancellotti, and guide Steve Brugman, a man with an uncanny talent for spotting game, had a nice buck spotted inside of 10 minutes the first morning. Through a few curved and coated panes of glass, it looked like an easy stalk. I drew the short straw, and two hours and two canyons later the mature 5x5 had given us the slip. The deer were crawling all over the hilltops, something I thought was a little odd. Tarrant said later that Carmen deer have small home ranges and hang out up high, usually above 3,000 feet, and the mule deer stay down in the draws. The aoudad bands were down in the draws, too, feeding on the oaks, so the deer had the tops to themselves.

It was a little before noon when we peeked over a ridge looking for deer in the shade and saw a whole herd of mature aoudad rams. Both Rob and I both took rams 10 minutes apart that were just short of 30 inches. It was a sweet bonus to our hunt, and the rest of the day was spent skinning the animals, packing them out and preparing the capes.

That night was surprisingly cold and full of stories of nice bucks. Jones only shoots mature deer, preferably over eight points and 3½ years. There were plenty of big bucks to go around on this rich, well-managed ranch. Never one to spread the outfitter bravado like rancid peanut butter, Jones was awfully confident one of us would soon hang a buck from the skinning pole under the front yard’s big oak tree. He was right, and then some.

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We slipped out of camp a little late the next morning in an old square-body Chevy, heading up to the previous morning’s lookout. The Suburban squeaked and groaned its way up the ridge, and warmed by the rising sun, I slipped into a daze. Brugman’s size-11 boot stomping on the brake and the sputtering exclamations about deer and bucks and antlers snapped me awake. Most hunting guides have different levels of excitement depending on trophy quality. Brugman’s frantic pointing and inability to clearly say, “Get your ass out of the truck and start shooting!” were pretty good indications the buck was a good one. Problem was, I simply could not spot the buck, despite Brugman’s efforts. As so often happens, I was looking past and over the buck standing in some tall grass just 300 yards off the road. Our usual spots were measured in quarter-mile increments. After finally seeing the buck for myself, my own sputtering and spitting started, as did my efforts to get out of the Suburban. It was hardly a stalk, hardly the picture of grace, but it was one helluva buck. I have managed to shoot bigger deer, but along with a 6 1/2-year-old King Ranch six-pointer I killed almost a decade ago, this buck ranks as one of the coolest.

With long dagger points and a second split beam of sorts splitting off his right brow tine, it was one of the neatest bucks Jones or Brugman had ever seen in all their years. Do you know how this story gets even better? About three seconds after my shot, a beautiful buck stood up and watched the old nontypical run down the hill to die. Lancelloti is no fool, and he was soon standing over a deer that was as perfectly symmetrical as mine was nontypical. Two Carmen bucks, beautiful mature bucks, in about two minutes—the hunting gods were in our hip pocket. Lancelloti, always reverent and appreciative when a game animal gives its all for him, stood quietly as I set up for photographs. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him look south across the purple mountains, then back at his elegant little buck, then at the horizon again. He was thinking what I am trying to articulate here. The Carmen’s combination of the familiar—they are whitetails, after all—and the different makes for one of the best, but least-known whitetail hunts around.