At the start of the hunt, I still hadn’t had a chance to completely tune up my bow. My problem was that my peep sight kept slipping up the string and I would progressively shoot higher and higher. I finally figured this out and moved it back to where it was supposed to be. After shooting a whole in our fence though, I decided I better not shoot in our back yard. That and that fact that our playground is right in the middle of where I used to shoot my bow put a damper on that I guess. Anyway, there just isn’t anywhere close to shoot a lot.

Finally, on the opening evening of the hunt, I decided to take the family up the mountain and have a little picnic. I brought bows for the boys and we had a great time tuning my bow and letting them shoot. I told them if we were quiet we might see a deer. The boys weren’t quiet at all but sure enough, a doe showed up about 1/2 an hour later. We just kept doing our thing and it hung around for another 1/2 hour or so. I thought I’d hike up the trail by myself a ways and see if there was anything else. To my surprise, I found a little two point not far up the trail. It was a little to far for me to take a shot and I didn’t feel like loosing an arrow so I just watched it until it wandered off. It was funny because I could still hear all the boys in the background running around and being loud.

The next week I took a drive up the mountain a couple more times. We saw lots more does but nothing else. The problem is that Tibble Fork Canyon is extremely traveled. You have to compete with 1/2 the valley’s worth of people driving up and down the road. Deer don’t like that much and tend to stay a little further off the trail.

Well, we went to Monticello (me and the boys again) last weekend. We hiked around a hill Friday night, sat in a tree stand Saturday morning, sat in another tree stand Saturday night and drove around Monday morning. All I saw were does again but at least Saturday night they were close enough that if they were bucks I could have shot one. They licked the salt block for 1/2 an hour then wandered off.

This week I drove and hiked all over the mountain again. I saw 3 more does last night but there were too many people again. The worst part is last night, I was driving up this really rocky road and decided it was time to get into 4 wheel drive. To my utmost disappointment, my truck’s 4 wheel drive wouldn’t engage. No 4-wheel light and no 4-wheels turning. I had to turn around. I drove up another road and was surprised how far I was able to get with just two wheels turning but at last, I still had to turn around. Oh the misery of not having 4-wheel drive! I’m fixing that as soon as possible.

The moral of all this is that I guess I’m going to have to take the boys hunting more often. Just let them run around and make noise and I guess the deer get curious and come see what is going on.