We live out in the country, surrounded by family owned lands bordering Weyerhaeuser timber lands. A year ago in August the wife and I were sitting in the garden after sunset, watching the fire burn, when a couple forked-horn bucks and a doe strolled into the yard and started grazing about 50 feet away, paying no attention to us. Of course they're always raiding our garden...the Deer Mafia always get their cut, but we'd never thought about hunting. We both come from families with hunting backgrounds, but we'd never actually killed big game ourselves. Her dad grew up hunting deer and elk in the area around our house and I grew up hunting duck and pheasant a few miles away. So on this warm August evening, as the deer browsed in the yard we both looked at each other and had the same thought..."we need to start deer hunting". The archery season here opens Sept 1st (any deer) and I rushed to prepare...as ignorant as I was. With so little time, I figured if I tagged a decent sized doe I'd consider myself lucky. Finding deer in a predictable location was easy enough, and I came close a couple times but got busted. I even found a nice little herd of elk but that wasn't what I was after. I ended up eating tag stew last year. Still, I had a very memorable first season and a ton of fun. This year...with a full year's worth of scouting and prep, and several trail cameras, I tagged a decent little buck 9 days into the season about a half mile from home, up on the weyco timber land. I'm starting plans for next year's season now and I still have so many questions!!
