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Sarah's First Buck!

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My daughter Sarah is 15 years old and 2008 marks her 5th year of hunting big game in Arizona. She is quite the little huntress, having taken Javelina, Turkey and Elk but until yesterday things just never seemed to come together on Whitetail deer. Sarah has a great attitude about deer hunting and she has covered some serious miles in really tough country, been on hunts when deer have been taken, in the sun and in the cold, but we just could not put things together to get a good opportunity for a shot at deer.

A 45 minute quad ride and 35 minute hike up a ridge line found us setting up to glass. The wind was gusting pretty hard and I concentrated my efforts in some steep cuts and small pockets out of the wind. We picked up a bunch of Mule deer does and a couple of whitetail does before packing up our stuff and hiking up the ridge into some higher country. We set up again and I started panning the hillsides focusing most of my time in the cuts and pockets out of the wind. I picked up a bedded doe and a doe up feeding in one steep cut and a few others here and there. Eventually I panned back to the bedded doe to see two does running over the ridge into the cut with the bedded doe.

He stood up. Big mistake. The commotion of the deer running into the cut must have been to much and he stood up to check things out. I assume he had been bedded in the thick grass and weeds in the cut because all of a sudden he was there. I watched him for awhile and even at a thousand yards the 10 power Swaro's showed some impressive headgear. I looked over at Sarah and she was curled up in a ball sound asleep in the sun. ( one of her favorite pastimes during extended glassing sessions ). I watched him until he moved out into the open and then poked her with my walking stick in the leg to wake her up. I said " take a look through these binos and tell me what you see". Her reply was just a big smile, she was stoked.

We watched the buck until he bedded to make sure he wasn't going to leave the area and marked him with a few landmarks. We slid off the ridge we were on into the bottom of the canyon and climbed out in a place I was hoping would put us across the canyon from him within shooting range. As luck would have it when we topped out he was still bedded but got up and started moving across the ridge. He traveled about 50 yards and bedded under a big juniper before we could get set up for a shot. I thought about trying to move down the ridge we were on to get a different angle on him as we were unable to see him from where we were at, but we had a good wind in our face, he was a big buck, and I just didn't want tp push our luck.

Sarah popped out the legs on the bipod, turned the Leoupold compact up to seven power, rested the buttstock of her rifle on my Badlands and we hunkered down in the sun to wait him out. We talked about where to hold on him when he got up and when he finally did two and a half hours later, Sarah was ready. At first we could only see his head and neck and then he took a couple of steps into the open. Sarah said she was locked on him and sent a 139 grain Hornady SST backed by 40 grains of AA 2520 out of her SINGLESHOT (just had to throw that in ) on its way, 286 yards across the canyon. I jumped at the rifles report and found the buck again running like his arse was afire across the hillside. He had covered about 50 yards when he went down and disappeared out of sight at the edge of some steep bluffs.

No ground shrinkage here. He has four points plus a two inch point between his bases and G1 on the right side and two on the left. 18+ inch wraparound main beams and good mass of 4.0 and 3.7 through H3. Gross score of 108.1.

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Wow great buck looks just like a set of sheds that I've got from unit31

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What a beautiful buck! Great pictures and write up, congrats to you and your daughter on a great deer.

 

Phil

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Way to go Sarah! That's a monster. I'll bet your pappy is so proud of you, he could melt! Keep up the fine huntin!

 

Mark

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Great buck. Wow it sounds like you guys had a great time. Congrats on a awesome buck.

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