Lessons learned...

My nephew Shane came down this past weekend for his first bowhunt. We had some challenging hunting conditions that I think we both learned from. It started raining saturday about 10 am. It rained throughout the entire weekend. Shane did not get here until about noon, so our only option was to hunt in the rain. We do not get much chance to hunt together so throwing in the towel was never considered. We did, however, have to change the game plan a little. I had planned on hunting a heavily timbered canyon for a buck I had picked out for him, but with the rain I knew that tracking in there would be a major problem. Shane and I sat down with the topos after lunch and started map scouting for a suitable spot. After locating a likely spot where tracking wouldn't be such a problem we suited up for our hunt. The spot we picked out was a fairly open gully with a great vantage point in both directions. This gully connected two larger areas of timber, and had just a narrow strip of timber (<50yards across) through the bottom of it. I had never hunted there before, but with the conditions that was the best spot. We hunted there saturday afternoon and all of sunday. We saw better deer movement than I expected with several does funneling through saturday and Probably 15 does, fawns, and small bucks sunday morning. We learned that those deer can really sneak up on you when you can't hear them crunching leaves on the way in. We were never detected as the wind was perfect for this particular spot. All in all it was a great weekend of hunting with my favorite little hunting buddy. The lessons learned will surely help both of us in years to come. Shane had multiple opportunities to draw on does and young bucks just as practice on timing and controling movement. Even though he knew he was not going to shoot any of those deer he drew on, he was still pumped! I think all this experience will help increase his odds the next time he comes down.