Opening day went well, we had secured permission to hunt the same piece of land in Mica Peak that we had hunted the year before when my daughter shot her first doe. We saw a few deer and had a couple of opportunities but couldn't close the deal that weekend.
The following weekend we headed to Walla Walla, there are a couple of areas there that are open for youth to shoot whitetail does with a general tag.
We were seeing plenty of deer but the whitetail does were on private land, the mule deer does were on feel free to hunt land and we saw a two point mule deer on private land.
We ran into a couple of pheasant hunters and asked them if they had pushed any deer out, they said no. We told them that we just saw rooster around the corner and they said they had just pushed 12 roosters out of the creek and shot two. We told them congratulations and that we were looking for a whitetail doe for our 11 year old to shoot. They then told us about a piece of land up the road open to hunting that not too many people new about that almost always held a few does. We thanked them and headed towards it. They followed us up the hill and pointed out a place to park and walk in.
Not too far into the walk I noticed a mule deer looking at us through the grass, the wind was all wrong and pretty soon that deer and two others stood up and started to feed away from us. We looped around to get the wind right and walked parallel to the deer as they fed down the draw. As they kept feeding down the draw they kept picking up more mule deer does. I kept hoping they would kick up a whitetail.
When we made it to the bottom of the draw and underneath the deer we spotted one deer way off to the side and it was a buck, I saw three points in the binocs at 130 yards and told her to get ready. We set up the rifle on the shooting stick and pointed in the direction of the does as the buck moved through the brush and closer to the does. Once he got to the does he gave her multiple shot angles but they were brief and with a youth you just need a little more time to settle in to the shot. After 6-8 minutes of getting set and then having to not shoot as the buck would move or does would move in the way, which seemed like 2 hours, the buck finally gave a perfect broadside shot at 126 yards. I told my daughter " that is probably the best shot you are going to " BOOM! the gun went off and the buck ran 40 yards. His chin kept getting closer to the ground and he piled up for good.
He ended up being a nice 3x3 with eyeguards. She was super happy and I am one proud dad.
I wish I would have got the pheasant hunters phone number to let thank them. It is nice that there are such helpful people out there.
