Alan is the deputy director for Wyoming Travel & Tourism. My writings are about my personal experiences in Wyoming. To say he is a little biased towards Wyoming is an understatement. Still, everyone can have the experiences told here. Just get out there and enjoy the Wyoming outdoors.
“Dad, can I hold up the horns?” If I heard this once last week, I heard it a hundred times.For the first time ever, ever, I hunted deer with my dad. We have hunted birds often, but we never hunted deer together. Not sure why, just never happened until last week.
My dad (who lives in Kansas) drew a deer tag for Region E in Wyoming which includes my old stomping grounds of Lander, WY. This would be our base camp. The problem was that one of our annual state meetings was scheduled to start on the very day my dad’s deer season opened.
I am fortunate enough to have a boss that is understanding about family time and I actually missed the meeting (one I haven’t missed for 8 years) to go on this hunt.
Oh, the quote above; for the first time ever, ever, I hunted deer with my four year old son. Talk about a treat… my dad, my son and I hunting deer in Wyoming. It was a magical time. What more could I ask for than to have my two best hunting buddies with me enjoying the outdoors.
The laughter of my son as he fumigated my truck on more than one occasion was infectious. Watching him use the compact binoculars I brought on the trip for him was precious. Teaching him about deer hunting and enjoying time spent with family was extremely rewarding.
Regarding the horn holding… After watching hundreds of hunting and fishing shows together, my son has figured out that after you shoot a deer, you hold up the horns for a picture to capture the moment for a lifetime memory. We have definitely created a few memories.
About the hunt… the first day, we hunted a small piece of property near Lander hoping to find a nice whitetail buck moving through or a muley buck headed for the high country. We found neither. But the sunrise was magnificent, the air was crisp and the walk wasn’t too much for my dad’s 65 year old legs. He only had to stop a couple times due to altitude… I gave him a hard time about getting old and living almost at sea level, but all in all, he did well.
One of the interesting observations was that we saw a bunch of deer during the hunt, what I would consider a normal amount. By my dad’s standards it was staggering. He saw more deer on this 4 day hunt than he sees all year hunting back in Kansas. Mule deer does were everywhere (of course, the tags we had excluded us from shooting a mule deer doe). That was ok, we were after a buck anyway.
The second day, at a different location, we experienced another exceptional day… but no deer. We saw a few small bucks and thought we could do better. Still saw tons of does and enjoyed watching them. Saw a few pheasants (yes we have pheasants in Wyoming) and ate a tailgate lunch in a beautiful red-rimmed, cedar-filled canyon.
The third morning was the day… we were heading home the next afternoon and needed to make something happen. As we drove up a small canyon behind a friend’s house, we came upon a muley buck working up a hill side about 240 yards away. After re-positioning, he was only 165 yards and my dad got his shot. He put him down with one shot right in his tracks.
We crossed the creek and made our way through the thick willows and up the hill to the deer. I was able to video my dad and son walking up to it together. A great moment. After some pictures of horn holding (one of which already graces my office), we proceeded to clean the deer and get ready to get him to the truck.
In the mean time, my son decided to play around, throw some rocks, sit on a cactus… yep, he sat right on the sucker. I’m not sure what he was doing; I just heard the yelp and another memory was made. We got my son settled, pulled out a few thorns and proceeded to drag the deer down the hill, through the willows, across the creek, through more willows and up to the truck.
When we got to the truck, my dad got a little revenge on his fishing and hunting buddy back home with a phone call. “I told you I would call you when I got a deer down,” my dad said. Repaying his buddy Joe for calling him at work one day and saying, “Well, that is number 5 bass caught today,” as my dad sat in his office chair a helpless working man that day. My dad and Joe have had numerous memories fishing and hunting together. If you hunt and fish, you know what it can be like to have your buddy call and say he is outdoors taking advantage of precious resources as you sit in an office. Revenge was sweet for my dad that day.
We got the tag on the deer, got him loaded in the truck and were off to find my deer. Which we never found after hunting that afternoon and a short venture the next morning. I had shots, just not at the deer I wanted.
I must be reaching a new stage in life… How can I tell? Normally not filling my deer tag would have bugged me until the next hunting year. I still consider myself a novice deer hunter, so having an unfilled tag is hard for me. But this time, it wasn’t so bad. My goal was to spend time with my dad and son, hunting, and to get my dad his first ever Wyoming deer… and it was a bonus because it was his first ever mule deer as well. I can’t explain it. I think it comes with getting older. You realize the important thing is the time with special people. I’ve always known this, but this time…
The memory is more than sufficient.
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