Healthy Expectations

Is it healthy to have expectations going into a hunt?

Last year I drew an October rifle Coues tag in what is considered to be a pretty good unit to find some exceptionally sized specimens. I was so stoked. I spent the hot months poring over maps, marking water sources and glassing knobs, and game planning with my hunting partner, Josh. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and braved Arizona’s late June heat to get a jump on my scouting homework. The Goal: to hunt a buck that would top my best Coues to date, a 98-incher shot in 2022.

Soon enough, late August rolled around and I still had not found what I was after. Worries were creeping into the back of my mind. Would we find the buck I was after? Would we find any deer at all? We persisted and Josh managed to turn up and horribly photograph what looked like a decent buck (we were being optimistic scorers) in a tucked away little canyon. I went in there the following weekend to get some better pictures of that buck and succeeded right off the bat. After getting ten minutes of video of him and his bachelor group, I turned around and glassed into the new country behind me with the morning sun on my back. I felt encouraged; that buck was not quite what I was after, but he and his mates were on their feet and feeding, and there could be bigger ones anywhere. The sun’s angle was just about to that magical point where everything glows. Juniper branches, rocks, and especially velvet antlers. After about ten minutes I turned him up. He was tall, narrow, massy, near perfectly symmetrical, and was every bit the deer I had set out to find.

I would spend my next few weekends going back to check in on this buck and he was in pretty much the same spot each time. In mid September I went to Colorado to film a mule deer hunt for some clients. When I returned, my buck had vanished as Coues are known to do. I didn't panic, he had to be around somewhere. I would go on to spend every free day I had, including the three days leading up to opening day, trying every angle I could to find this buck, and fail. 

Josh arrived at camp late opening evening and we collectively decided to move on from this buck. A few days later we turned up another buck of similar caliber, but unfortunate timing rendered us unable to set up in time for a shot. On the last morning of the hunt, I was walking Josh in on a group of bucks when, to my right, a different deer crashed down the knob we were on and walked about 80 yards in front of me.

I took that buck and, at that moment, was happy to be coming home with something to show my family after being basically a ghost all summer and fall. This deer was not going to beat my expectation of topping my previous buck, but did it matter? Should an arbitrary number attached to a deer’s head dictate my happiness? I don't think so.  A hunt (in my opinion) should be about finding adventure,” and escaping the monotony of city life, and if you kill the giant you've been dreaming about, then that just adds to the tale. 

I had a blast being out, experienced the wild with one of my homies, and came back with a respectable Coues buck. It's great to set goals and try to blow past them, but don’t let them ruin a good time.