We did get married. We got married a month after my Commission in December of 2008. We are currently expecting our first son as well. Yeah the first year of marriage was a blur mainly because I spent the year away. I was Ft. Sill from Feb-April. Then I was at Ft. Lee from April-June. Reported to Drum in July and two months after getting the family settled here I am in Iraq. Kind of sucks.
I went one last hunt with the old man before we headed East. It was a pretty emotional hunt. The wife didn't come and it was just me and my dad. We talked about our old time of the hunting and how he was not going to hunt until I came back. I told to keep on hunting. But here are some pics from the hunt with my dad.
I had drew AZ Unit 9 again for the second year straight. It was pretty cool. My dad and I had scouted the unit pretty well during the summer and early fall. By the time the season had started we had seen a lot of deer and knew where to go. We had hunted hard the first two days and had seen a lot of deer but really no bucks. The weather was warm and the deer were really not moving that much so it made the hunting hard. There were also more people in the area we had hunted the year before and it made hunting a little harder. Alos we had seen what the drought had done over the summer as many of the tanks were dry where we had seen lots of sign the previous season. This is not the case this last winter. But anyways, I had told me dad that there were too many "road hunters" and we needed to get on an old logging spur. I explained to him that I bet those deer are just over there. So we went down an old logging spur and parked the truck about 5 miles from the main road. We started walking.
We were walking slow as the area was thick with sage and juniper. We began to see sign immeadiately about a half mile off of the spur. We walked through two draws before we came to third one that had some sparse openeings. I stopped to drink some water while dad glassed under the trees with the binos. He called me over to him and asked me what was standing next to a big juniper about 300 yards out. I looked ans sure enough it was a lone spike. We were not going get him but we just stayed there and watched him. The deer had noticed us but my guess could not figure us out. The wind was in our favor and we were wearing camo. My dad the woodland brand and I was wearing the Realtree Sage Camo. So we sat there and watched him.
Soon the deer began heading up to us. We got behind some cover. The deer was moving slowly. I had whispered to my dad and asked him if he wanted to pull the trigger since this would be our last hunt for a while and he has not pulled the trigger in a while. I saw the look in his eye and he grabbed the rifle and went behind a stump while I moved back to giant Yellow Pine. Soon the deer came coming up through the draw. He noticed me and I just sat there. Not moving. Again it seemed like he was trying to figure out I was. Soon the deer was I woudl ahve to say about 30 yards away. I looked at my dad and he was taking aim. He went to pull the trigger and CLICK! I had forgotten to put a round in the chamber prior to leaving the truck. The deer did not move. He was fixed on me. My dad was able to pull the bolt back on the .270 and place a good shot in the chest. The deer didnt run more than 15 yards before going down.
After we were done field dressing it we looked at each other and laughed because of the CLICK! He hugged me and said thanks for letting him shoot. He then told to grab the deer and start packing.
Overall it was a good hunt. I didnt get the biggest thing on the mountain but one "last" hunt before leaving was a great feeling.
