The air is starting to get more and more brisk with every passing day here in AZ. Our “brisk” is probably comparable to warm fronts across the rest of the country, but it’s still nice. This time of year, I have 2 things on my mind. First, I can’t wait to spend another holiday season with family and friends. Second, I know that I will be chasing rutting mule deer and coues deer with my bow before I know it. Our Dec/Jan archery deer hunts are some of my favorite hunts of the year. It’s a beautiful time to be out in the desert. I don’t have to worry about stepping on a rattlesnake on my way to a bedded buck or a scorpion crawling up my pant leg as I sit and glass. During these hunts, I have seen some truly amazing sights through those binoculars. From watching bucks chase does all over the hills to squaring off with each other to tend to pecking order business, it’s a great time to say the least.
2015 was a pretty exciting year for me in the field filled with new experiences and opportunities. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when I stopped to think about it all. It was almost overwhelming reflecting back on everything, which is what I intend on doing here. Being relatively new to the hunting lifestyle(3 years), means a lot of things happened to me for the first time. The deeper and deeper that I dive into this, the more things that I want to experience someday and the things that I do get a chance to experience, seem to create new traditions that I can’t wait to take part in the following year. There were way to many firsts that happened during 2015 to list here, but I would like to take the time to reflect on the major ones.
Here in Arizona, all of us hunters look forward to the end of July/early August. Why? This is when we find out if we have drawn the deer tags that we are hoping for through Arizona’s lottery system. Myself and my family had not been drawn since 2013, so the anticipation of the results was just plain cage rattling. During the 2013 season, I had found an area that would soon become a second home for me. The amount of bucks that I saw left me awestruck. I can remember calling my dad every night telling him things like, “I saw 11 big bucks today,” or “I had shot opportunities at 7 bucks tonight.” Never in all of the years that we went deer hunting had we seen things like that or had those types of opportunities.
As most of you probably have figured out by now, I am a big fan of the podcasting world. So much so, that I almost find my self listening to hunting podcasts now more than music and that means a lot coming from a musician! They are a great way for like minded individuals to interact and help all of us become even better at our passion. In this case, that is obviously hunting. The knowledge and just pure entertainment that I have gotten out of these shows has been endless. My only problem is, as I have said in the past, finding the time to listen to them all! So many good shows and not enough time in the day!
In 2013 something happened to me that changed my life. The kind of thing that no matter how hard you try, you can’t stop thinking about. I went on my first bear hunt here in Arizona. Going into the hunt, I read everything that I could about bears in Arizona. Where they like to reside, what they like to eat, and their overall habits in the rugged environment that AZ has to offer. No matter how much I read though, I felt ill prepared for the journey ahead. It’s hard to picture something standing on a hillside when you have never really seen what you are looking for. By some stroke of luck though, it happened. I saw a bear on the evening of opening day. Because, of the bear being obscured by brush and other vegetation though, I wasn’t able to take a shot. From that point on I was caught hook, line, and sinker. I hunted bears for the rest of the season and never did get another look at one. That didn’t matter though. I would be back next year.
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