Happy New Year's gents..been a busy season for me.

Started off with an Eastern archery cow permit for around the house. Dam, it's HOT elk hunting that early! I won't make that mistake again, as after a couple of mornings of hearing the yellow jackets start work @ 5:35am, I decided that I wasn't interested in dealing with a dead elk in 95+ degree heat...so I ate that tag.

I bought the Multi-season deer tag so I could enjoy deer hunting throughout the seasons, even though I happened to draw a Quality Okanogan late archery tag for the last 10 days of Nov. I didn't hunt early stick/smoke deer seasons due to aforementioned heat, but The boy came over from his college duties in Spokane for our annual deer camp in Northern Douglas County. Lots of deer observed, but no decent bucks overall. In our party of 6, 2 were harvested...including a typical 3x3 with tall eye guards by The Boy. He's eating well at school now. I hunted 8 days of Modern, passing on legal bucks every day, but never saw a shooter over 21-22". Did see a couple Super-2's that were 24-25" and 27-28" slick-horned studs, though! The speed goats are populating nicely in the Del Rio country as well.

I scouted my late tag Unit the weekend before it opened (Nov 15-16), and the results were quite dismal, honestly. The season opened Nov 21th, and I planned to hunt all 10 days, as I have friends/family in the area. Severe FOG hampered me the first 3 days, and I saw a total of 3 deer...one being a perfect 4pt w/great eye guards (23-24"), but the fog was so thick my range finder wouldn't read, but I wasn't going to chance a shot (is it 40 or 50??). Day 4 was clear and sunny and WARM, saw 70 deer and 6-7 little bucks, so lots of life and the rut was still happening.

The days start to run together, but it snowed a little 2 days in a row, and that got the deer really moving. I saw some really decent bucks, including a REALLY BIG Super-2, plus a Big 4x4 that was rutting hard, as well as multiple little bucks (both mulies and whities). I had failed stalks on both, and came across a fresh wolf pack "herd" of tracks plus heard my 1st wolf howl in WA (not neat!). Having hunted through Turkey Day, I'd been up hitting it every day from dark to dark with some driving, mainly to spot some deer, then stalk and spend the remainder of the day out in the field trying to trip into an opportunity on a buck.

On the 8th day, after being set up in the snow for 5 hours, I was really fortunate to get a shot on a great buck and connect. Solid hit @ 56 yards, and after an hour, I went and found him. He didn't go too far, and he was piled up due to a double-lung shot! 28" 4x4, with great eye guards. He was the same buck I'd seen rutting hard a few days before, crabby on 2 forks and 2 great forks...but for a 1st time bow kill I'll take it!

I've been wanting to bird hunt all season, but this big game stuff keeps getting in the way! The Boy also drew a late Modern Cow tag for the house. The season runs for 2 months (ends 12/31), and is normally a slam dunk come December. BUT, this year it's been anything but normal. All the (local) tag holders hadn't killed a cow as far as we'd heard. So I started scouting for The Boy the 1st week of Dec, and cut my deer up the weekend of 12/6-7. Kid got out of school for winter break mid-Dec, then immediately got sick. In the meantime, still no cows are being killed! Once he healed up, we started hunting, and all we'd see were bulls! 4-26 a day, the same with the other tag holders...we did this for over a week. All the cows were on private (or public with no access allowed). Finally, with time slipping away, I had an appt on 12/27, and the kid went out by himself and found a herd that was on private land that we had permission to access. He made a great stalk (according to the neighbor who watched the entire thing through his spotting scope) and made a 1-shot kill. He got the guts knocked out, and the neighbor brought up the side by side, and helped him off the hill with his 1st elk. Only heard of 4 cows harvested, normally it's an 80%+ success rate, this year I bet it's 10%? Proud dad moment, though! She's all cut up and in the freezer...now maybe some birds...or just give them a break and go catch some fish...

Hope you guys have a great 2026!