Short form version of the trip- Went to Arizona with my kids and a buddy. Killed 3 coues deer. Had a blast.
Long form version- See below........................
Our Arizona Coues trip planned for early December of 2024 carried a heightened level of excitement for me, as this would be the first time Kaleb and Taylor had tags for the same hunt. We have all been on hunts together before, but it had never lined up for all of us to have a tag in our pockets simultaneously. As an avid public land outdoorsman, I always try to tether my expectations before any trip. This hunt took only 2 points to draw, and the average success rate in this unit was less than 20%. Although harvesting an animal doesn’t necessarily constitute a successful trip, the dad in me wanted nothing more than for both of my kids to take a respectable coues deer on this excursion. As fate would have it, my expectations were not only met but exceeded.
“You got a copy”? My handheld radio announced as Taylor, and I bumped down the two-track road early on the morning of day 2 in my pickup. “Yes, Jeff go ahead”. “There is someone already parked where you wanted to go, we are going to continue with our plan, send me an On-X pin where you end up”. I acknowledged the message with an unseen eye rolled “10-4” and contemplated the next move. Jeff and Kaleb had taken the razor to a specific glassing point while Taylor and I had taken the truck and headed elsewhere toward the now-occupied location. The joys of public land, I thought to myself. “What are we going to do now Dad”? Good question Tay……With daylight fast approaching, I knew it was critical to be set up somewhere to glass when the sunlight started to hit the hills. That’s when a brilliant idea came to me. I turned to Taylor and said, “Let’s drive as far as we can down this canyon and stop wherever we are when the sun comes up”. With our foolproof plan now in place we continued on.
As the Travis Tritt song “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” ended some 30 minutes later, we pulled the truck off to the side of the road and got our optics set up just as light was beginning to shed onto the canyon above us. With the weather conditions being warm, the deer were most discoverable in the first hour, so capitalizing on this timeframe was important. About 45 minutes into the morning, I spotted a buck that seemingly appeared out of nowhere on the south side of the canyon we were watching. I turned to Taylor immediately and said you need to shoot this deer.
I wish I could say that I was ready for this scenario to happen. (I try and always be optimistic, but to be honest our foolproof plan of just driving down the road and stopping randomly hadn’t instilled much confidence in me). I was completely unprepared at the moment. The gun was still in the truck, Taylor had no idea where the deer was, I had no idea where we could set up to shoot this buck, and all the while the deer were feeding in and out of sight in the brush above us. As quickly as possible we began to remedy these issues, and we eventually got Taylor set up on the gun in a comfortable shooting position. Now the hard part. Imagine looking at an entire hillside that all looks the same and trying to explain to someone where a 32” tall deer is standing in the 5’ tall bushes some 650 yards away. To Taylor’s credit, she was extremely patient with me as I failed miserably in describing the buck’s location to her. “Do you see that one cactus that’s kind of taller than the other cactus, or how about that one green bush that has a white rock kind of close to the shorter brown bush”? After seemingly forever, one of my terrible descriptions hit home and Taylor said; “I’m on him”. I knew at this point that this buck's luck had just run out.
Taylor has a tremendous amount of poise for a young hunter. She takes her time and goes through her shot process without getting too excited. All of this even though her dad typically has little to no poise during these moments with her. It’s a bit of a running joke within our hunting group that if anyone were to have us in the crosshairs, the person we would least like to have behind the gun would be Taylor. She told me she was ready, and I told her to fire whenever she was comfortable. As the shot rang out, I fully expected that buck to no longer be standing. “Dad, I missed,” she said with a perplexed look on her face. “I know, you shot just over his back.” As she racked another round in, the buck slipped out of the brush pile he was behind and neither of us had him located right away. As I was trying to relocate him, Taylor got him back in the scope, he had only moved a little bit left. I told her to send another one. She said, “I missed again”. Now with some frustration showing she racked another cartridge in and got back in the gun. The deer had bounded up the hill about 50 yards and was now standing broadside again.
After those first couple of “fair warning shots”, Taylor’s 3rd shot hit home at an impressive 620 yards. Her first Coues buck made one final downhill scramble towards a brush pile and never came out. As we kept our eyes on him for a few minutes we were confident that a follow-up shot was not necessary. After giving her a big hug we got on the radio to let Jeff and Kaleb know that we had a buck down. About an hour after the shot, the 4 of us were admiring her deer and were able to find some shade to begin quartering him up. With it being so early in the morning, it was a perfect opportunity to teach her how to properly quarter an animal, so we took our time, and she was able to complete most of this task on her own. As we got back to the truck’ I couldn’t help but agree with Travis Tritt. It most certainly was a great day to be alive.
Day six began well before daylight as we arrived at our morning glassing location which gave us a great vantage point to an entire valley. As the sun gained some height in the southern horizon and the deer activity started to dwindle I knew that we had to make a more aggressive move for the afternoon hours. It felt like we had been zigging when we should have been zagging all week. I told the kids that eventually we were going to get lucky if we kept after it. We had been seeing some quality bucks, but we were not in the right locations to capitalize when we found them. “Go wake your sister up Kaleb, we’re going to head up to the top”.
Our target destination was a large rock pile on the top of the ridge that I felt would give us a great vantage point towards a benched-out flat. We had seen a couple of good bucks disappear into this area that morning and were confident that getting to this point would put us in a great shooting position for the afternoon. It’s disappointing when you spend the day hiking to a location that not only passed the eyeball test but also looked good on a topo map, but once you get there you realize it’s not quite as good as you would have hoped! After climbing up as high as we could into the rock pile, we could only see about half of the terrain we were hoping to see. I told Kaleb that we had a decision to make, and he was going to make the call.
Option 1 was to go for broke. We could get aggressive and sneak over to the next hill and hole up in a smaller rock pile. If the 2 bucks fed back out to where we saw them in the morning, we would probably be less than 100 yards from them and be in perfect position. The downside to this option was that we would only be able to see a small area. I felt like this was an all-or-nothing approach. We would either kill those two bucks at the same time or we would see nothing. Option 2 was to be patient. We could keep our current vantage where we could see more country and have options to move if something presented itself. The downside to this choice was that we could not see the entire area where the bucks would most likely appear that evening. (I had already made my choice internally as I was tired of being patient, I was ready to force the issue). Thankfully for us, Kaleb was making this call, and choosing option 2 was exactly the right decision.
I quickly realized that option 2 also came with another benefit I hadn’t considered for Kaleb and Taylor….it afforded them some nap time. After the kids found some soft ground in the shade of the rocks and hit their snooze buttons, I decided to take a little hike to the top of an adjacent hill to see what that area looked like. As I was walking that way, I gained some elevation and was able to look back just beyond the rock cluster we had settled into. Quite surprisingly I noticed a doe and fawn feeding on top of the spine about 500 yards from where we had set up. Until I had gained some elevation, I didn’t realize what a perfect little zone those deer were feeding in. You could not see that location from anywhere other than the rocks we were in. I thought to myself there could be deer in that spot all day and nobody could see them from anywhere but where we were. I made a mental note and continued up the hill.
After I returned to the rock pile an hour or so later, Taylor was awake and sunning herself on the rocks while Kaleb was still dead asleep. I crawled out onto a flat ledge inside the boulders and got everything set up for the afternoon glassing session. I had just finished crawling around on the rocks and getting an idea of good shooting positions to be set up on if an opportunity presented itself that evening. While doing this I was able to see back over where the doe and fawn had been feeding an hour earlier and now suddenly there were 6 deer there milling around. I whispered to Taylor who was hanging out above me on a separate rock. “Go wake your brother up and tell him to start bringing his gear down here, tell him to bring his gun first and then go back for his pack”…..
Looking back, it’s weird that I was that descriptive with my directions. It was somewhat challenging hopping over the rocks, and I figured there was no sense in bringing everything at once and risking a trip or fall. We had plenty of time and were in no hurry. Kaleb brought his gun and tripod down to me and I explained to him where I had seen some deer. I told him that with the cloud cover moving in, the deer seemed to be getting up a little earlier than normal, so hustle back and grab your pack so we can get dialed in. He hadn’t taken 5 steps when I excitedly said. “Don’t worry about your pack, grab your gun and lay down on that rock right there”.
Kaleb quickly laid down and I told him to get behind the gun and start looking at a small knoll off to our left. There is a shooter buck that just walked over that hill and is walking towards
he group of deer I had seen earlier. “I got him.” Kaleb said. I relayed the yardage of 425 to him and he made a quick adjustment to the turret and put in his earplugs. “We have all the time in the world right now, take your time and wait for a standing broadside shot”, I whispered. I watched with anticipation through my binoculars as the buck moved in and out of the brush as he made his way down the slope. The buck walked lazily past a small spike and stopped perfectly broadside surveying his surroundings. He never took another step. The 26 Nosler barked in front of Kaleb’s right shoulder and with one well-placed shot he folded up neatly and went straight to the ground.
After a short celebration of high-fives and hugs the 3 of us began to gather up our gear and make our way over to the downed deer. We had to drop down below the rock pile, losing a few hundred feet of elevation, and circle back up through a heavily brushed draw to gain those few hundred feet of elevation back. Even though he was laying only 425 yards from us it took us nearly an hour to make our way over. As we got over to him, we took some pictures and began to quarter him up just as we had done with Taylor’s. With daylight dwindling, we still took the time to have Kaleb complete much of this process. We had our packs loaded up and began our descent to the truck just as the sun disappeared below the southwestern horizon. I took a moment before I stepped off the top of the ridge to watch my son and daughter evaporate over the edge with flashlights on their heads and heavy packs on their backs. I have to say that bringing up the rear of this pack train down the valley was one of the most satisfying hikes of my life.
With both deer quartered up in camp we decided to spend the next morning processing them and getting them vacuumed sealed for the freezer. We still had 2 days left in the hunt, so we decided to head back out that evening after finishing our butchering chores. Jeff and I still had tags in our pockets and our trigger fingers were a tad itchy. We settled on a plan for the 4 of us to hike up to a pile of rocks about halfway up the mountain in the same general vicinity as where Kaleb had shot his buck. Here we would have a great field of view and could all be together looking at different portions of the area. We felt confident that if we could spot something from here, we would have a great shooting platform even though the shots would be at quite a long distance. Before we left the trailer Taylor commented to the group that as long as we didn’t shoot something at the top of the mountain everything would be just fine.
5 hours later about 30 minutes before dark………... “Do you see him”? Jeff whispered to us all. “He’s right at the top of the mountain just standing there in front of that tree”. I couldn’t help but laugh. A buck had appeared on the skyline and stood motionless for about 15 minutes staring down below. Jeff was also laughing as he decided to “get comfortable” on the rock outcropping behind the gun and “just see how it feels”. The 3 of us all made eye contact with one another as we were quite sure how that was going to feel with Jeff's finger on the trigger. Kaleb and I were dying when Jeff began to put his earplugs in, Taylor however was not altogether that excited.
I had my spotting scope set up with my phone recording the buck at the top of the hill when Jeff announced with a sarcastic grin across his face “I’m just going to send one up there and see what happens”. As I began to turn my focus back on where the buck was, I made eye contact with the kids along the way. Kaleb was locked in behind the glass to spot for the upcoming shot. Taylor was behind her binoculars as well, but rather than focusing on the deer’s location, she was staring a hole into the back of Jeff’s head as he lay out prone in front of us about 10 yards away.
“Right over his back”, Kaleb reported to Jeff after watching the explosion on the rock face directly above the buck. Jeff quickly reloaded and again smirked as he said, “Better send one more”. While waiting for an impact as the second shot traveled some 720 yards across the canyon, I think we all knew what was going to happen. Sure enough, that second shot found its mark and the buck piled up about 15 yards below the very top of the mountain. Jeff stands up and turns towards us laughing and smiling and says “Whoops”. As Kaleb and I are high-fiving, we hear Taylor from behind us say in a not-so-quiet voice, “Are you friggin kidding me Jeff”!!!!
As nightfall was fast approaching now, we left everything but our packs and some water at the rock pile as we geared up to make the trek to the top. I told Taylor that she could stay there with our stuff while we went up, but she was having none of that. I won’t say that she was thrilled about it internally, but she never said a word as she followed us up the mountain as quickly as possible to make use of the little daylight we had left. We made it up to the top after the sun had set and took a few photos. Jeff and I made quick work of the deer and had it quartered and loaded in our packs in less than 30 minutes. With headlights on we turned back towards our stashed gear and headed off the mountain.
You often hear people reflecting on past events and say I wish I had realized how amazing that trip was, or they say If I had known how special it was at the time, I would have soaked it all in a little bit more. They didn’t realize in the moment what a special memory they were making. Luckily for me, that wasn’t the case on this trip. I was fully aware of what a great week we just experienced. I felt like I didn’t take a single moment for granted. As I sit here now putting this story into words, I can still quite vividly relive the enjoyment I had at almost every minute of this hunt, as I knew quite well that we were in the middle of making memories.
I made each of us a small 5x7 picture frame with 3 pictures in it from this trip. None of us had the same pictures. Years from now, we can all glance at that collage and jump right back into that moment in time. For me, it was the picture of Kaleb and Taylor with a heavy pack on, hauling their deer off the mountain. For Kaleb, it was the picture his sister took of him lying prone on the rocks with his dad behind him in the binoculars as he made a perfect shot. For Taylor it was the picture her brother took of her and her dad while she processed a big game animal almost entirely on her own for the first time. For Jeff, well that’s an easy one. On his desk right now is a picture of him and Taylor with his buck from the top of the mountain. There are no words printed on it, but you can see the phrase “Are you friggin kidding me Jeff” written in her eyes.
Long form version- See below........................
Our Arizona Coues trip planned for early December of 2024 carried a heightened level of excitement for me, as this would be the first time Kaleb and Taylor had tags for the same hunt. We have all been on hunts together before, but it had never lined up for all of us to have a tag in our pockets simultaneously. As an avid public land outdoorsman, I always try to tether my expectations before any trip. This hunt took only 2 points to draw, and the average success rate in this unit was less than 20%. Although harvesting an animal doesn’t necessarily constitute a successful trip, the dad in me wanted nothing more than for both of my kids to take a respectable coues deer on this excursion. As fate would have it, my expectations were not only met but exceeded.
“You got a copy”? My handheld radio announced as Taylor, and I bumped down the two-track road early on the morning of day 2 in my pickup. “Yes, Jeff go ahead”. “There is someone already parked where you wanted to go, we are going to continue with our plan, send me an On-X pin where you end up”. I acknowledged the message with an unseen eye rolled “10-4” and contemplated the next move. Jeff and Kaleb had taken the razor to a specific glassing point while Taylor and I had taken the truck and headed elsewhere toward the now-occupied location. The joys of public land, I thought to myself. “What are we going to do now Dad”? Good question Tay……With daylight fast approaching, I knew it was critical to be set up somewhere to glass when the sunlight started to hit the hills. That’s when a brilliant idea came to me. I turned to Taylor and said, “Let’s drive as far as we can down this canyon and stop wherever we are when the sun comes up”. With our foolproof plan now in place we continued on.
As the Travis Tritt song “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” ended some 30 minutes later, we pulled the truck off to the side of the road and got our optics set up just as light was beginning to shed onto the canyon above us. With the weather conditions being warm, the deer were most discoverable in the first hour, so capitalizing on this timeframe was important. About 45 minutes into the morning, I spotted a buck that seemingly appeared out of nowhere on the south side of the canyon we were watching. I turned to Taylor immediately and said you need to shoot this deer.
I wish I could say that I was ready for this scenario to happen. (I try and always be optimistic, but to be honest our foolproof plan of just driving down the road and stopping randomly hadn’t instilled much confidence in me). I was completely unprepared at the moment. The gun was still in the truck, Taylor had no idea where the deer was, I had no idea where we could set up to shoot this buck, and all the while the deer were feeding in and out of sight in the brush above us. As quickly as possible we began to remedy these issues, and we eventually got Taylor set up on the gun in a comfortable shooting position. Now the hard part. Imagine looking at an entire hillside that all looks the same and trying to explain to someone where a 32” tall deer is standing in the 5’ tall bushes some 650 yards away. To Taylor’s credit, she was extremely patient with me as I failed miserably in describing the buck’s location to her. “Do you see that one cactus that’s kind of taller than the other cactus, or how about that one green bush that has a white rock kind of close to the shorter brown bush”? After seemingly forever, one of my terrible descriptions hit home and Taylor said; “I’m on him”. I knew at this point that this buck's luck had just run out.
Taylor has a tremendous amount of poise for a young hunter. She takes her time and goes through her shot process without getting too excited. All of this even though her dad typically has little to no poise during these moments with her. It’s a bit of a running joke within our hunting group that if anyone were to have us in the crosshairs, the person we would least like to have behind the gun would be Taylor. She told me she was ready, and I told her to fire whenever she was comfortable. As the shot rang out, I fully expected that buck to no longer be standing. “Dad, I missed,” she said with a perplexed look on her face. “I know, you shot just over his back.” As she racked another round in, the buck slipped out of the brush pile he was behind and neither of us had him located right away. As I was trying to relocate him, Taylor got him back in the scope, he had only moved a little bit left. I told her to send another one. She said, “I missed again”. Now with some frustration showing she racked another cartridge in and got back in the gun. The deer had bounded up the hill about 50 yards and was now standing broadside again.
After those first couple of “fair warning shots”, Taylor’s 3rd shot hit home at an impressive 620 yards. Her first Coues buck made one final downhill scramble towards a brush pile and never came out. As we kept our eyes on him for a few minutes we were confident that a follow-up shot was not necessary. After giving her a big hug we got on the radio to let Jeff and Kaleb know that we had a buck down. About an hour after the shot, the 4 of us were admiring her deer and were able to find some shade to begin quartering him up. With it being so early in the morning, it was a perfect opportunity to teach her how to properly quarter an animal, so we took our time, and she was able to complete most of this task on her own. As we got back to the truck’ I couldn’t help but agree with Travis Tritt. It most certainly was a great day to be alive.
Day six began well before daylight as we arrived at our morning glassing location which gave us a great vantage point to an entire valley. As the sun gained some height in the southern horizon and the deer activity started to dwindle I knew that we had to make a more aggressive move for the afternoon hours. It felt like we had been zigging when we should have been zagging all week. I told the kids that eventually we were going to get lucky if we kept after it. We had been seeing some quality bucks, but we were not in the right locations to capitalize when we found them. “Go wake your sister up Kaleb, we’re going to head up to the top”.
Our target destination was a large rock pile on the top of the ridge that I felt would give us a great vantage point towards a benched-out flat. We had seen a couple of good bucks disappear into this area that morning and were confident that getting to this point would put us in a great shooting position for the afternoon. It’s disappointing when you spend the day hiking to a location that not only passed the eyeball test but also looked good on a topo map, but once you get there you realize it’s not quite as good as you would have hoped! After climbing up as high as we could into the rock pile, we could only see about half of the terrain we were hoping to see. I told Kaleb that we had a decision to make, and he was going to make the call.
Option 1 was to go for broke. We could get aggressive and sneak over to the next hill and hole up in a smaller rock pile. If the 2 bucks fed back out to where we saw them in the morning, we would probably be less than 100 yards from them and be in perfect position. The downside to this option was that we would only be able to see a small area. I felt like this was an all-or-nothing approach. We would either kill those two bucks at the same time or we would see nothing. Option 2 was to be patient. We could keep our current vantage where we could see more country and have options to move if something presented itself. The downside to this choice was that we could not see the entire area where the bucks would most likely appear that evening. (I had already made my choice internally as I was tired of being patient, I was ready to force the issue). Thankfully for us, Kaleb was making this call, and choosing option 2 was exactly the right decision.
I quickly realized that option 2 also came with another benefit I hadn’t considered for Kaleb and Taylor….it afforded them some nap time. After the kids found some soft ground in the shade of the rocks and hit their snooze buttons, I decided to take a little hike to the top of an adjacent hill to see what that area looked like. As I was walking that way, I gained some elevation and was able to look back just beyond the rock cluster we had settled into. Quite surprisingly I noticed a doe and fawn feeding on top of the spine about 500 yards from where we had set up. Until I had gained some elevation, I didn’t realize what a perfect little zone those deer were feeding in. You could not see that location from anywhere other than the rocks we were in. I thought to myself there could be deer in that spot all day and nobody could see them from anywhere but where we were. I made a mental note and continued up the hill.
After I returned to the rock pile an hour or so later, Taylor was awake and sunning herself on the rocks while Kaleb was still dead asleep. I crawled out onto a flat ledge inside the boulders and got everything set up for the afternoon glassing session. I had just finished crawling around on the rocks and getting an idea of good shooting positions to be set up on if an opportunity presented itself that evening. While doing this I was able to see back over where the doe and fawn had been feeding an hour earlier and now suddenly there were 6 deer there milling around. I whispered to Taylor who was hanging out above me on a separate rock. “Go wake your brother up and tell him to start bringing his gear down here, tell him to bring his gun first and then go back for his pack”…..
Looking back, it’s weird that I was that descriptive with my directions. It was somewhat challenging hopping over the rocks, and I figured there was no sense in bringing everything at once and risking a trip or fall. We had plenty of time and were in no hurry. Kaleb brought his gun and tripod down to me and I explained to him where I had seen some deer. I told him that with the cloud cover moving in, the deer seemed to be getting up a little earlier than normal, so hustle back and grab your pack so we can get dialed in. He hadn’t taken 5 steps when I excitedly said. “Don’t worry about your pack, grab your gun and lay down on that rock right there”.
Kaleb quickly laid down and I told him to get behind the gun and start looking at a small knoll off to our left. There is a shooter buck that just walked over that hill and is walking towards
he group of deer I had seen earlier. “I got him.” Kaleb said. I relayed the yardage of 425 to him and he made a quick adjustment to the turret and put in his earplugs. “We have all the time in the world right now, take your time and wait for a standing broadside shot”, I whispered. I watched with anticipation through my binoculars as the buck moved in and out of the brush as he made his way down the slope. The buck walked lazily past a small spike and stopped perfectly broadside surveying his surroundings. He never took another step. The 26 Nosler barked in front of Kaleb’s right shoulder and with one well-placed shot he folded up neatly and went straight to the ground.
After a short celebration of high-fives and hugs the 3 of us began to gather up our gear and make our way over to the downed deer. We had to drop down below the rock pile, losing a few hundred feet of elevation, and circle back up through a heavily brushed draw to gain those few hundred feet of elevation back. Even though he was laying only 425 yards from us it took us nearly an hour to make our way over. As we got over to him, we took some pictures and began to quarter him up just as we had done with Taylor’s. With daylight dwindling, we still took the time to have Kaleb complete much of this process. We had our packs loaded up and began our descent to the truck just as the sun disappeared below the southwestern horizon. I took a moment before I stepped off the top of the ridge to watch my son and daughter evaporate over the edge with flashlights on their heads and heavy packs on their backs. I have to say that bringing up the rear of this pack train down the valley was one of the most satisfying hikes of my life.
With both deer quartered up in camp we decided to spend the next morning processing them and getting them vacuumed sealed for the freezer. We still had 2 days left in the hunt, so we decided to head back out that evening after finishing our butchering chores. Jeff and I still had tags in our pockets and our trigger fingers were a tad itchy. We settled on a plan for the 4 of us to hike up to a pile of rocks about halfway up the mountain in the same general vicinity as where Kaleb had shot his buck. Here we would have a great field of view and could all be together looking at different portions of the area. We felt confident that if we could spot something from here, we would have a great shooting platform even though the shots would be at quite a long distance. Before we left the trailer Taylor commented to the group that as long as we didn’t shoot something at the top of the mountain everything would be just fine.
5 hours later about 30 minutes before dark………... “Do you see him”? Jeff whispered to us all. “He’s right at the top of the mountain just standing there in front of that tree”. I couldn’t help but laugh. A buck had appeared on the skyline and stood motionless for about 15 minutes staring down below. Jeff was also laughing as he decided to “get comfortable” on the rock outcropping behind the gun and “just see how it feels”. The 3 of us all made eye contact with one another as we were quite sure how that was going to feel with Jeff's finger on the trigger. Kaleb and I were dying when Jeff began to put his earplugs in, Taylor however was not altogether that excited.
I had my spotting scope set up with my phone recording the buck at the top of the hill when Jeff announced with a sarcastic grin across his face “I’m just going to send one up there and see what happens”. As I began to turn my focus back on where the buck was, I made eye contact with the kids along the way. Kaleb was locked in behind the glass to spot for the upcoming shot. Taylor was behind her binoculars as well, but rather than focusing on the deer’s location, she was staring a hole into the back of Jeff’s head as he lay out prone in front of us about 10 yards away.
“Right over his back”, Kaleb reported to Jeff after watching the explosion on the rock face directly above the buck. Jeff quickly reloaded and again smirked as he said, “Better send one more”. While waiting for an impact as the second shot traveled some 720 yards across the canyon, I think we all knew what was going to happen. Sure enough, that second shot found its mark and the buck piled up about 15 yards below the very top of the mountain. Jeff stands up and turns towards us laughing and smiling and says “Whoops”. As Kaleb and I are high-fiving, we hear Taylor from behind us say in a not-so-quiet voice, “Are you friggin kidding me Jeff”!!!!
As nightfall was fast approaching now, we left everything but our packs and some water at the rock pile as we geared up to make the trek to the top. I told Taylor that she could stay there with our stuff while we went up, but she was having none of that. I won’t say that she was thrilled about it internally, but she never said a word as she followed us up the mountain as quickly as possible to make use of the little daylight we had left. We made it up to the top after the sun had set and took a few photos. Jeff and I made quick work of the deer and had it quartered and loaded in our packs in less than 30 minutes. With headlights on we turned back towards our stashed gear and headed off the mountain.
You often hear people reflecting on past events and say I wish I had realized how amazing that trip was, or they say If I had known how special it was at the time, I would have soaked it all in a little bit more. They didn’t realize in the moment what a special memory they were making. Luckily for me, that wasn’t the case on this trip. I was fully aware of what a great week we just experienced. I felt like I didn’t take a single moment for granted. As I sit here now putting this story into words, I can still quite vividly relive the enjoyment I had at almost every minute of this hunt, as I knew quite well that we were in the middle of making memories.
I made each of us a small 5x7 picture frame with 3 pictures in it from this trip. None of us had the same pictures. Years from now, we can all glance at that collage and jump right back into that moment in time. For me, it was the picture of Kaleb and Taylor with a heavy pack on, hauling their deer off the mountain. For Kaleb, it was the picture his sister took of him lying prone on the rocks with his dad behind him in the binoculars as he made a perfect shot. For Taylor it was the picture her brother took of her and her dad while she processed a big game animal almost entirely on her own for the first time. For Jeff, well that’s an easy one. On his desk right now is a picture of him and Taylor with his buck from the top of the mountain. There are no words printed on it, but you can see the phrase “Are you friggin kidding me Jeff” written in her eyes.
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