The 3 point buck and the 4 year old boy

I've been away chasing elk in the mountains for the first week of hunting season and that didn't sit well with my four year old son.
Of course since he is almost five (and going on twenty) he considers himself big enough to do everything that dad does and has been on my case to take him hunting with me.
I know that at this point he is probably not so interested in the hunting as he is in the snacks and "dad time" that he will get, so I plan to wake him up early Saturday morning to come with me.
After a pit stop for fuel and breakfast at six, we are on our way to the forest service roads for first light. As I said the game plan during this hunt was basically to spend some quality time with the kid, fill him full of tasty snacks, share a few good laughs and maybe teach him something about nature. Imagine my surprise then when during out drive into the hunting spot I see a little buck standing down the hill to my right.
I slowly drive the truck past the hill and park it around the corner. I turn off the truck and explain to him the plan. We will exit the truck quietly and sneak back along the road till we see the buck and maybe get a shot at it.
Surprisingly we get out of the truck semi-quietly and manage to sneak down the road without too much noise. Alas when we reach the top of the hill there are no deer to be seen. Slowly I whisper in my son's ear, "I think they are in the bushes, if we sit down here maybe in a few minutes they will come back out". He nods his head and we find a spot to sit down.
One minute goes by.
Two minutes go by.
That's about twice the normal attention span of a four year old boy, and he start to fiddle with the pine cones on the ground beside him. Next thing I hear is a not-so-quiet whisper, "dad, I don't think the deer are going to come out".
I push my face right to his ear and whisper that we just need to give it a little more time to wait and see.
As if on cue the little buck steps from the cover, one step, two steps and just as I'm lifting the gun Levi loses his mind.
"Dad, there is the buck, dad, shoot. Are you going to shoot him dad?" All thoughts of whispering have vanished and he cant decide if he wants to raise his binoculars up to look at the deer or cover his ears incase the gun goes off.
Through my own binoculars I see the buck look up. Take one look at the strange looking 3 foot thing making noise and waving his arms in the air and he is gone. All we see are his tail as he bounds away. Which gives me a good opportunity to explain why they are called whitetail deer.
I'm more disheartened then Levi is by this missed opportunity. But we spend the rest of the morning walking around, laughing when he trips over sticks, trying to make the best elk noises, and comparing tracks and bedding areas of different animals we find in the woods.
He's fast asleep before we even get the truck back on the pavement, and its only noon.
But as I look at him asleep in the back, I realize this will probably not be the only buck we miss because of taking a kid hunting, but the time I spent in the bush with him makes it totally worth it. Watching him learn and teaching him about the wonderful world of nature and how it works is probably more fun for me then shooting a buck anyway. Well.......maybe.......

Opening Day

Its a perfect day, that's the thought that was going through my head as I sat waiting for the sun to come up on the first morning of the 2016 hunting season.
My hunt had actually started the afternoon before, after some appointments with my wife in town I had kissed her goodbye and hopped in the truck for my appointment with the elk herds. An hour later found me with my waders on and two packs and a rifle on my back staring at the river I had to cross to get to my spot.
That's when you start to wonder if this is a good idea. Your mind starts telling you, "river crossings are a dangerous enough endeavor at the best of times, much less all alone and with 50lbs of gear on your back, wonder if I went under if I would be able to get these packs off before they dragged me down, better loosen those straps a bit more in case you need to shed those loads. Oh and what if, lets just assume you do make it across this river. Then you still have a 5 km hike in the middle of grizzly bear country all alone to survive. This is all before you even consider camping overnight, hunting alone the next day and packing out that elk if you do get it."
But now your starting to think about elk, you're even more distracted then you were thinking about the river crossing. Staring across at the mountains you know there just has to be elk in those hills. This desire to find and hunt this elk drives the hesitation to the back of your mind as you slosh you way into the river.
Two hours later found me hiking up the old road looking for a suitable camping spot to spend the night. You want to be close to where you will be hunting to minimize the amount of time spent walking in the morning. However you don't want to be too close you might scare the elk away. I also prefer to find a good open spot, so that I can see anything that is a few hundred yards around me. Like I said this is bear country.
As I'm walking along this road looking for a good spot a noise beside the road spooks me. And let me tell you this is no squirrel. I'm thinking "that is either going to be a bear or an elk" and just as I am deciding whether to turn around or not, out walks a big mud covered bull. And that rush of adrenaline come back as I lift up the binoculars to look at his rack. Through shaking hands I steady the binoculars enough to see that he has five points on each side. He's 5x5 bull, not legal even in the morning when the season opens. But thanks to him I have decided where I will hunt the next day, the mud he's covered in means there is a wallow around and if that is the case it may be a hot spot for bigger bulls.
Back I go down the trail to the last landing to set up camp.
I never sleep good the night before opening day, I guess I'm too excited. So after precious little rest I am awake at 4:00. I pack camp in the dark and stash my stuff in the bushes. There is no point packing it around the mountain all day, I'll grab it on my way out that night. Then I start my climb up the mountain to start the hunt.
My destination is a small landing at the edge of a meadow, past where I saw that little bull, at the end of the road. Its a spot high on the mountains, where it seems like you can see for miles once the sun comes out. The air is crisp and cool. And maybe it's the chilly air or just my heightened senses that make me feel like I can hear every leaf rustling as I wait for the sun to poke over top of the mountains at my back.
I sit forward, cow call in hand. "It's come again" I think. My favorite time of the year, this is what its all about and maybe, just maybe, this will be the year that I will finally make all this hard work worth it. Perhaps this year I will bag that elk, and add that memory to the list of the other memories I have made while hunting in these mountains.
The sun is coming up it looks like the perfect day as I raise my cow call to my lips and give it a short nasally squeal.
It's the perfect day, let the 2016 season begin.

And so it begins........

   Hello, my name is Tim Schindel. Most of the year I'm a down to earth family man who loves to spend time with my wife and kids when I'm not working my day job at a heavy equipment dealership out here in the East Kootenays of British Columbia, Canada. But when September comes around every year things seem to change.

   That's right, it's hunting season. As the days get shorter and the nights get colder it seems that hunting consumes more and more of the limited free space in my head that is left over after the bills are paid, activities taken care of, yard cleaned, arrangements for childcare are made and vehicles are patched together to survive another week.

   Although I would love to say that I have had a very illustrious and successful hunting career, alas that is not the case. My hunting seasons to this point in my life seem to have involved much of the following: missed shots, sore feet, frozen fingers, broken trucks, and enough gas money to fund the purchase of new fighter jets for the Canadian Air Force. However, they also seem to involve very little in the way of animals in my freezer.

   But that is going to change this year. Not only is that because I have a gut feeling that this is going to be better then years past, but also in terms of preparation, this is the most work I have ever put in before hunting season. I have been to the shooting range more then I ever have, spent more time scouting then I ever have, and have practically rebuilt my truck for this occasion. All this work must ultimately pave the way for a successful hunting season. With four mouths to feed (and another on the way) it's now or never to "bring home the bacon" (quite literally).

   Hunting season 2016 is sure to be a wild ride, I plan to post the successes or failures that come in the following weeks here for all to see and experience. Hopefully together we can look back in three months and raise a glass to a wonderful (and finally successful) hunting season this year.