Black Friday... Shopping or Hunting?

I have gone black Friday shopping in the past but this year I didn't have it in me...  Mom was home and graciously offered to watch the kids for us so we decided to head out one more time to look for a whitetail doe for me.  This was the first deer hunt of the year that we didn't have at least one of the kids.  Slightly bittersweet really.  Dane is getting to be quite the little outdoorsman.  He will be quiet when asked, he doesn't mind bellycrawling beside you...  (although he will find little treasures to show you!) and he is getting to the point that he can hike and keep up pretty well.  

However, Kimber is at "that" age.  A little challenging all around. Too old to be happy falling asleep in the pack.  Too young to know how to be quiet or that bellycrawling is fun...  so it's a little harder with her along.  But, we try to keep her with us as much as possible.  The only way they learn, and the only way they grow is to keep at it.  I do have one memory from this year that I will hold dear for a long time.  Dane and I bellycrawled out to the edge of our property to look for deer below.  We scanned the area and saw that none were on our property yet, so I turned around to wave Clint and Kimber forward.  The next time I turned around, Clint is crawling with Kimber walking right beside him with a hand on his back.  The smile on her face and the fact that she was (almost) the same height as him (crawling) just made me happy to have her along, sharing these moments with us.

Okay, back to black Friday!  Packing for this hunt was remarkably easy...  so we quickly got our gear together, dropped Dane and Kimber off at Grandma's with hugs and kisses,  (they didn't miss us a bit!) and headed out to one of our favorite spots.  As we hiked up the bottom, Clint spotted a whitetail buck bedded down in a tiny draw, looking uphill.  We laid down and started looking harder.  That is when we realized that there was a doe bedded down right above him.  

We admired them for a few minutes and discussed the shot.  It was 189 yards.  She was bedded down in a position that I couldn't shoot her in the chest so the choice was either wait for her to stand up, or shoot her in the neck.  Well, I've never shot one in the neck before (at any range) so I was hesitant.  But, Clint said he believed in me and the choice was mine.  As I studied her though the scope I felt steady and confident, so I decided to take the neck shot.  Things went as I had planned and we had harvested our final deer for the season with one shot.  

The buck was obviously rutting pretty hard, cause he didn't want to leave his girlfriend!  We were able to get some nice pictures of him before he finally decided that we were up to no good.

After enjoying the view and the experience we thanked the beautiful doe for her sacrifice  loaded up and headed out.  It was truly a wonderful way to end the season!