My nephew Kobi is 15 years old this year, and has been hunting for the last 2 years here and there. Last year was the first time he really got fired up about it so we decided to go a step further and take him out of state for what we hoped would be a great deer/elk hunt. We ended up working a little harder than anticipated, but in the end it was perfect.
We started by hunting high, along the divide hoping to find some elk and deer, but the burn area we were hunting did not have the growth I was anticipating, and very few animals appeared to be in the area. A bunch of snow Sunday made us decide to move camp lower and try some new areas. We found several elk Monday, but no bulls. We did get to watch a bear doing bear stuff in the rocks for a while, which was fun.
That night, I reached out to a fellow Hunt-wa member I knew was in the area, and he helped us get dialed into an area they had been seeing a lot of bucks. It was not an easy hike in (extremely steep one way, or moderately steep/long the other way). We started up the 5th morning in the fog and shortly after found a group of deer with a small forkhorn in the bunch. We made a great stalk to about 250 yards. The buck was sprawled out dead to the world asleep on the ground. I've never seen a deer sleep like that. We were set up waiting for him to wake up and present a shot when a bunch of shooting broke out the next canyon over and got the group all up to their feet. My nephew, feeling the pressure now, rushed his shot and missed high. We watched the group disappear over the high saddle on the ridge we were on, so we headed that way to see if we could find them again.
He was bumming a little, but held his head high after I told him about my numerous chip shot misses
. We were all standing on a wide open ridge top, trying to decide what to do next, when he says, "Hey, there's a deer coming." I looked up and about 400 yards out was a buck heading straight for us. We did our best to make ourselves disappear into the 4" grass that we were surrounded by. He slowly came in to almost 250 yards checking us out constantly, before turning off through a small gap in the ridge. Kobi and I hustled down around the knob he had just went behind and started creeping forward looking for him. I saw his horns sticking up above the brush about 150 yards out, moving out in front of us, so we got set up on the shooting sticks and waited. He finally stepped out in the open and I whistled him to a stop. Before I could say anything about taking the shot, Kobi's Dad's (my brother's) boat paddle Ruger 270 barked, and the buck lurched forward and did a nose plow for about 30 feet before tipping over.
We hustled up there and I watched as the same emotions and lessons flooded through him just like they did to me 20 years ago when I shot my first one. We sat down and thanked the deer for his sacrifice, enjoyed the view and a snack for a minute and talked about everything that had happened. When Grandpa showed up it was more hugs and hand shakes, and we got to work. We did the gutless method, and had the deer broke down and distributed in 3 packs in short order, heading for the truck.
It was this trip that made me realize that Kobi is not the little kid that I've always viewed him as. I got a very real understanding of what its like to be a parent and watch your kid grow up in front of your eyes. I realized that not only is he almost taller than me with bigger hands and feet, but mentally he is a young man. Very mature and very grown up. I was so proud to be there and help coach him and teach him and have it come to fruition with a great buck. Kobi is a kid a very few words, shows very little emotion, but I can tell you, he was quite the chatty Kathy that afternoon on the ride back to camp! It was great to see him interact with other hunters (who all treated him great and with respect), and feel and act like one of the guys, not the kid in camp anymore. He even told me he was glad that we hiked as far and hard as we did, and didn't just shoot one off the road. He liked working for it.
We cut up his deer and mine (yes that's mine with the tiny forks sticking out of the pack
he'll be tasty), last night and completed the cycle of killing to processing and putting food away for the winter. It was perfect.
