My nephew 16 years old, has been anxious to hunt since he was 10. He’s nonresident as my sister, his mom, moved from Tucson to the northwest about 20 years ago. Anyway she finally agreed based on hunt dates, school and such to let him put in for deer in az. He drew a tag! Everyone’s excited, but, a few weeks before the hunt my sister says she may not let him go due to grades.
“We” myself, my uncle and my brother are disappointed in this information of course, but we understand. I told my sister if he’s not gonna make the hunt he needs to turn his tag back in so another jr can use it.
My nephew worked hard studied took tests and quizzes and brought his grades all up to A’s and B’s! Green light!
Day one windy as shoot. We find deer but the only bucks ( two spikes) were way off and disappeared quickly.
day two rainy in the am. We work our way to a good spot after waiting for the rain to pass by mostly. We found a big fork not long after getting to our spot. My mindset was conditions are awesome let’s let things start moving. My nephew (rooster) of course was ready to stalk. So we stalked, a fork that was 550 yards was now at 217.
Roosters on a boulder and steady but the buck was mostly behind a thick ocatilla. I tell him don’t shoot through that ocatilla but if you have a shot take it. He says “I’m not comfortable with this shot”. I say ok just wait. Well buck takes a few steps and is gone. Coues deer for ya.
Day three head out, find a good spot, after a short time other hunters come in to the end of the canyon we’re glassing. A half our or so goes by and they move on. I’m thinking they might push something to us so we watch and wait but nothing comes. We decide to move as well.
While we’re moving, we hear a shot. Those other hunters kill one. We watch for a bit as they find their kill as well as looking for something that might be heading our way. After what we felt was long enough we decided it’s time to get to our next spot.
After a few minutes we glass a buck, close, bedded in the shade. We tell rooster sneak up and get on that boulder. He does, just in time! The buck we glassed, along with another smaller buck that we didn’t see, got up and started moving out. They paused for just a second and the shot rang out. Perfect shot placement put him down in his tracks at 125 yards. I was so impressed and to be honest relieved that we didn’t have to track a wounded deer.