Mexico Coues!

After a few years of convincing from my good friend Tim, I finally decided to join him on a coues deer hunt in Mexico.  Also joining us would be Tim's good buddy Craig.  I planned for this hunt all year long with high hopes.  Mexico is famous for it's world class coues deer and mule deer hunting.  We would be on a ranch this year that Tim has never hunted, so our expectations were a little up in the air.  We were told the ranch had the potential to produce 100+ inch bucks with the occasional 110 or better buck not out of the question.  You just never know what you are going to get, though.

After a long 13 hour trip we finally made it to our ranch around 7PM.  Dinner was served and a sleepless night followed.  Opening morning for us was January 5, and it found us up at the highest point of the ranch glassing down into the low country.  Immediately we started seeing deer.  I've never been down to Mexico for deer hunting and it was very quickly becoming my favorite place!!  The deer were just everywhere.  It doesn't even compare to hunting up here in AZ.  Here's a coupe pics of our first glassing spot.

I glassed up my first lion ever and it just so happened it was the very first animal I saw on the trip!  Unfortunately, he didn't stick around long and I never had a chance to take him.  We sorted through close to 80 deer that day from this same glassing spot, but nothing really sparked our interest.  We did, though, get enough of a look to be able to make a solid game plan for the next day.

On day 2 Tim and Craig both filled their tags with nice bucks.  I was happy with being very patient as I knew we had 7 full days to find a buck worth shooting.

On Day 3 I finally had my chance.  I glassed up a bedded buck at 910 yards on a wide open hillside.  The grass was crazy tall and this buck was almost completely invisible even as open as the hillside was.
Here he is through the spotter.  The sun was at our back so the pic isn't all that great.

This buck would not get out of his bed to give us a better look, so we left him alone and continued to glass.  We glassed up a couple dozen more deer and a handful of bucks that just weren't big enough.  Finally this buck got up with his doe almost 2 hours later and started to feed.  Through my 15's I kept seeing a giant left eyeguard that got me really excited.  Tim had the spotter on him and he kept telling me his eyeguard was just a 3 incher or so.  We argued over and over until Tim finally figured out what I was seeing.  This buck has a giant inline point on his left side!!  What I thought was a huge eyeguard was actually this buck's G2 since I didn't realize the big 7+ inch point was an inline.  Once I saw that inline I knew it was the buck I wanted to take.

We left Craig behind to watch through the binos while Tim and I started our stalk.  We made our way to what we figured would be around 500 yards away or so. I spent the entire previous summer dialing in my load for my Savage 6.5x284 and with my turrets I was comfortable out to 800 yards.  We picked a spot to shoot from and I laid prone while Tim called the range for me.  "425" he said. I dialed the turret and settled in.  "No Wait!  It's 479"  I dialed again and checked my level.  Everything was good.  I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and slowly squeezed.  BOOM!  Tim called the shot.  "He's hit good!  Get another one in just in case!"  Just as I chambered another round Tim yells out, "He's down!  You drilled him right through the shoulder"

I had just killed my first Mexico buck and my biggest coues ever!

We killed 4 bucks on this trip between Tim, Craig and I.  There were also 2 other guys on our ranch that killed 2 deer.  Our ranch didn't produce the giants that we had all hoped but that's just how it goes sometimes.  We had a blast and hopefully I'll be able to head south of the border again next year!

Kaela's First!

Last year Kaela drew her first big game tag for javelina.  We hunted hard for countless days over the month long hunt but never connected on a pig.  She was a little disappointed, but that just made her more determined to get it done!

This past January 1st marked her second opening day pig hunt and we were up in the hills at day break.  We glassed for an hour or so and froze our butts off!  We decided to head up the ridge a little farther to get into the sun and warm up.  After glassing for another hour or so I finally spotted some pigs feeding in the sun below us.  The game plan was made and off we went!

About 100 yards from the pigs, we dropped all our gear and put on our ninja shoes.  For those that don't know ninja shoes are basically lightweight tennis shoes with carpet glued to the bottom.  It's amazing how quiet they are when stalking animals!!  We headed in the last 100 yards or so, with Kaela in front and me pulling up the rear with the video camera and range finder.  We were able to get to within 30 yards of all the pigs feeding.  Kaela was ready as I ranged a small bush at 30 yards and told her whenever a pig got to that bush she needed to draw her bow and shoot.  Finally after watching several different pigs feed at 40 yards one stepped into the 30 yard range.  She drew her bow and settled in on the pig.  Miss!!  The pig jumped up and stood there, but she wasn't able to get another arrow away.

When we started up the hill to relocate the herd, she found her first shed.  She coined it as her lucky shed and put it in my pack.  As we headed up the hill I glassed up a giant 3x3 mule deer that I had put a stalk on a couple weeks prior.  He bedded in a perfect position for a stalk so we changed plans and made the mile long hike over to try to get him.  Long story short, I miss judged the yardage and missed him.  After that, the plan was to hike back out to the Rhino and go to a new area.  We got about half way and Kaela says "Hey I just saw something move by that weird shaped cedar tree!"  I threw up the binos and there was another herd of pigs!!

The plan was made and the stalk was on.  This time we had to fight the wind a little, but we were able to get in position for a shot.  By this time, Kaela was a little amped up and her first shot at 30 yards was another miss!!  I quickly told her to nock another arrow and get ready.  I started "woofing" at the pigs and they started running everywhere!  One big boar came up a trail to 10 yards but made an immediate u-turn when he saw us.  I kept woofing and a big sow started coming up the same trail right at us.  This time she stopped at 10 yards and Kaela was already at full draw.  She took one step and Kaela let her have it!

Finally she had her very first big game tag filled!

Here's a short clip of the day's worth of footage I took.  The end is amazing!  Kaela busted her ass for a whole year preparing for this harvest and the emotions overflowed!

She wasn't excited or anything!