I love Hunting, Every time I go hunting I feel very relaxed. I go hunting every chance I get, whether it’s small or big game, I enjoy it all. Big game animals are like elk, deer, moose, bear and more. Small game animals are like coyotes, rabbits, ducks, geese and many more. I love hunting because it is something I do with my family but mostly my dad. It gives me time to hang out with my dad and do the things that I love with him.

This year me and my brother both drew 3rd season buck tags. When you put in for the tags you can put in for early rifle, bow, 1st season, 2nd season, 3rd season, or 4th season. These are like lottery drawings and it means you are not guaranteed to get a tag every year. Every year you put in you get points so the more points you have, the more likely you are to draw tags. The thing is, different areas take more points than others.

The morning of a hunt, I wake up around 5:00-5:30 Am. I am not a morning person so getting up that early is pretty tough. The first thing I do when I wake up is get dressed into my hunting clothes and get my rifle. Then my dad,my brother and I sit down and decide where to go. Once we think of a spot we get in the truck and headout. On our way we stopped at the gas station to fuel up and grab a drink.

We started to drive up the road to our spot when there is just a little light, that way we could see the animals but still get up there before daylight, as we were driving we saw 2 little 2 point bucks, me and my brother decided to pass on them bc they were very small and it was opening day, so we kept driving and came up to the front of a mountain and took out our binoculars and glasses the area for a while. We were looking for a big buck that we spotted earlier this year during bear season. This buck was very tall and had really deep forks. We ended up climbing to the top of the mountain witch took us around 30-45 minutes, when we finally reached the top we looked off the other side down into a bowl and it looked perfect the big buck we spotted earlier was was just on the other side so we sat down and glassed the other side looking for him. We ended up not seeing any deer the rest of the day so we decided to go home and head to a different spot the next day. 

The next day we got up around 6:00 which is a little later than we normally get up. We decided to go to a spot where there wouldn’t be as many people. We were headed into a draw that split three ways and we were deciding what of the three ridges to climb so we could see into each draw so we didn’t miss any animals hiding in them. We chose the middle one, it was also the steepest one. But we went anyway and as we were almost at the top I heard rocks tumbling down the hill to our right just out of view so we started side hilling around to look for whatever made those rocks fall. Just as we got around to where we could see, I spotted a nice tall 3 point buck that took off up the other side of the draw. I got my dad and brothers attention and my brother was already down getting ready to shoot with his 7mm rifle. A soon as the buck stopped he took the shot. My brother jumped up with excitement and said “it dropped , I watched it go down”. Me and my dad weren’t set up on the deer yet so we had no clue if he had hit it or not so we rimmed around the top of the draw looking for the buck. We got to the area where we saw it last and we looked and looked until finally I spotted it laying dead about 50 yards in front of us. We walked up to it being very careful just in case it was still alive. Once we made sure it was dead we walked up to it and my brother got some pictures with it, we checked the yardage and it was about a 350 yd shot. Then we gutted the deer and began our long walk out. We drug the deer down the draw, it wasn’t very easy though. The hill was very steep and we had to side hill for almost a mile while dragging the buck the whole way. To make things worse the hill was very rocky and we had to drop the deer off several little 4-5 foot cliffs it took us about an hour and a half to get back to the truck, it was all worth it though because we got home that night and skinned the deer and cut some fresh tenderloin steaks and grilled them up. I would say that it was a very successful hunting season because later that week I was able to get a little 4 point buck, but that’s a whole other story. So my brother and I both ended up tagging out for the 2023 hunting season.