The Hunt -- Day 5: Conclusion and Epilogue

After taking the 9-point at GP-120, I decided to spend the remaining day back in my own stand where I had seen very little the first 3 days. It turns out, the last day was NOT a charm. I didn't see a single deer the entire final day.

But that was ok, I had enjoyed the heck out of myself and managed to take a decent buck too. As I packed up my car and thought about how cool it had been to hunt at the camp, I knew I'd be back the following year, and this time I'd be eligible for a second stand.

A few things I learned that I'll employ in the future.

1. I need an ATV. Getting around on my B-I-L's ATV saved me the past 2 days. By the end of the trip, the 3/8 mile walk to my stand was proving to be too much for my old, out-of-shape legs. We need another ATV and I plan to acquire one before next season. I like this one:

2. I need a variety of stand options. My stand had been hot with deer just before my arrival. Then the winds came and the deer disappeared. I need an alternate location that is in heavier cover so that I'm not shutout by conditions. Update -- since my return, I've cut a deal with my B-I-L to acquire GP-120 for next year. I'll pay him for the stand, and he'll build a new one in a new location for his third. I was pretty excited about that!

3. I need to take my wife Cyn with me if I can get a cabin nearby. No, she's not a hunter, but there are plenty of other things she can do (like hang out in the Spa in Hot Springs!). The 2 day drive would be a lot better with her company and the family would get to see her too.

4. My 3-9 x 30mm VX-R scope was adequate for my 300 yard maximum range shooting lanes, but barely. If I see one at 300 yards, he's going to have to be a very good deer, standing broadside and still, before I'm going to feel comfortable taking the shot without a higher power optic.

5. My rifle was a good choice. Lightweight and powerful, I had no regrets after hunting with it for 5 days and placing a terrific 200 yard+ shot.

6. I had a bunch of junk I probably didn't need, like a grunt call I barely used and 48 bottles of water. It's been 3 weeks and I'm still drinking that bottled water.

Well, hope you found that recollection to be interesting reading. Back soon with the non gun/hunting entry I promised several weeks ago. Here's a hint -- it involves buckeyes, not bucks.

The Hunt -- Day 4 (cont'd): Tango Down!

As soon as I found the deer in the field glasses, it was obvious even from that distance he was a legal buck. I could see his rack jutting up about a foot or so above his head, and could see he was almost certainly 3 points on one side, as the very least. Still, something didn't look right, but I couldn't quite figure it out. That was until he took a step up the lane and looked directly at me with his head raised. Even though his rack was plenty tall and had at least the legal number of points, it was completely inside of his ears!

Unlike the previous two shootable bucks I had seen, this guy appeared to be in no hurry. I took a few minutes to text my B-I-L and let him know that I was watching a legal buck, size yet TBD. As this guy inched closer, I noticed that something else didn't seem quite right. As I studied in him the glasses, it looked like he was standing on one front leg. Eventually, he took a step forward, then showed me his right side. At that angle, I could clearly tell he was holding his right leg against his side, up in the air. Then I noticed him literally hop twice, literally walking on three legs. I texted my B-I-L and told him I had a smaller buck with a bad leg that he wasn't putting any weight on, and asked whether I should take him. My B-I-L responded, "yes, if he's legal."

By the time I got the text, the deer was threatening to head down the same path and into the woods that the earlier does and first buck had. Within 5 seconds, I acquired him in the scope and with just his shoulder to his rump showing (head and neck were already off the trail), squeezed the trigger.

The funny thing is, I don't even remember the sound of the gun shot or the recoil. My ultralight .270 WSM is known for it's ferocious report and bruising recoil, yet I don't remember either. Strange. I looked down the lane with my field glasses and I didn't see anything. I immediately began to doubt my shot. I had been pretty shaky that morning, and it was a formidible distance. I didn't feel that perfect feeling every shooter gets on a great shot, where the trigger feels so good when the sear releases that you know before looking through the spotting scope that you were dead on. Nope, I remember the trigger feeling sort of mushy against my finger when the sear released.

My B-I-L obviously heard the shot and texted "well?" "Not sure," I responded, "didn't feel all that good, he was walking off the path, and it was a ways down the lane." "Heading there now," he said. I waited for about 10 minutes then decided to go have a look. I walked out to the spot where I though he was standing and saw nothing. No deer, no blood, nothing. I texted my B-I-L that I thought I missed and I was going back into the stand and hope other deer show up. He called me and asked me why I thought I missed. I told him about all of the reasons that had me wondering. He told me to just sit tight, he'd be there in 2 minutes.

When he arrived he asked me where I thought he was standing when I shot. I stood on the spot and told him it could be up to 50 yards in either direction. My B-I-L told me that it's usually further than you think, so he was going to go into the woods on the spot and work an arc going further away. He told me to go to the end of the lane, and work an arc back toward him. Before I even reached the end of the road, I heard my B-I-L proclaim, "you know, you should never doubt your own shooting ability." It took about 2 seconds, but then it registered -- he had found my deer!

I walked into woods where he lay and we examined the fellow. He did not drop a spot of blood. We checked my shot location -- dead center left shoulder entry, precisely where I aimed. The exit was just behind the right shoulder, but for some reason, he just didn't bleed much. In any event, we looked at his right leg. It wasn't obvious how he'd been injured, but it was clear he hadn't used that leg in quite some time. It was so atrophied in the folded against-his-body position, that you couldn't even straighten it out. Up close, it was apparent the deer was older than I had originally thought. He was 9 points total (with one tiny fork that just barely counted as 9), and had fresh bark on the base of his antlers where he'd been rubbing a tree of some sort.

When we walked out of the woods, I realized that he was just about 210 yards away when I shot him. I had figured about 170 when I went down to look.

Here's the pics I took right in the lane:

When we got him back to camp, he weighed in at 132 pounds. He was quite the attraction with the rest of the members, with his atypical antlers and being essentially 3 legged. Everyone congratulated me, which is normal when you take a buck. What sort of surprised me, however, was how many of them thanked me for shooting him. Apparently, antlers like that are bad for the gene pool, so they called him a "cull" deer. Indeed, one member, shook my hand and told me "thanks, not many people would use a buck tag to take a deer like that which needed to be taken." I was certainly glad to do it.

In all, I was pretty proud. I had taken a wounded deer that was subject to being taken by predators, with atypical antlers that the other members wanted to cull. But most importantly, I had made a fantastic shot from a relatively long distance. I would spend the last 1.5 days hunting without any pressure.

The Hunt -- Day 4: I'm Surrounded

When I awoke at 5 a.m. on Day 4, I had a renewed bounce in my step, despite being exhausted from all of the early morning wakeups and late night catchups with family members. I was going back to a stand where the action had been vigorous only hours before. On top of that, a front had moved through the area overnight. The wind had died down significantly, the temperature had dropped into the mid 40's, and there was a slight drizzle on the tail of heavy overnight rains. In other words, conditions were perfect.

As I laced up my boots and started down to the cook shack for coffee, I remembered what one of the campers had said to me the night before -- DON'T wait until your last day to take a shot. I didn't plan on it. Today was the perfect day, and I had every intention of shooting something -- a big doe, the 7-pointer my B-I-L had seen so many times, whatever. As I walked up to the guys gathered around drinking coffee, I told them today was the day I was going to shoot a deer.

As I drove into the GP 120 stand, the first thing I noticed is that it had REALLY rained overnight. In fact, I had to put the Pathfinder into 4 wheel drive to get through the mudholes and make my way back in. But I managed and was in the stand and ready to go well before daylight.

Just as it became light enough to see the end of the Front lane (which I had driven on only a half hour earlier), I saw 2 deer standing down at the very end, a good 275 yards away. One thing I forgot to mention earlier. That lane, which is also the road you drive in on, ends at 275 yards because there is a 90 degree right hand turn onto it. In other words, the deer were standing basically on the turn in the road. That said, if you were driving toward the deer (like you do when you leave to go back to camp) and didn't make the turn, you would drive directly into the woods where a small trail came onto the road. It might be big enough to drive an ATV down, but it mostly looks like a game trail. You can see (with the right optics) up that trail about 30 yards. This will become relevant shortly.

In any event, I'm watching the 2 does thinking that they are likely heading toward me, to the mound with corn where the others had stopped the day before. They did move closer, but veered of the road to my right at about 200 yards where they were nibbling on some kind of foliage. I looked to my left for a second and saw another deer on the Back lane, only about 75 yards out. This one was close enough that I could tell right away it was a small spike buck. He walked to within 50 yards, straight toward me. As he got closer, I could see he was the same spike I had seen the evening before. At the 50 yard mark, he left the Back lane and walked into the woods. I went back to watching the does. By this time, they had crossed back onto the road, and had veered off to my left side. This whole time, I'm texting with my B-I-L about the early activity I'd seen. I told him they appeared to have left the lane and went into the woods, and I suspected would pop up again in the Stump lane in front of me, but that they were so far out there it might take them a good 30 minutes to traverse the woods and emerge again.

I grabbed my field glasses and watched the end of the trail, hoping maybe they'd come back onto the road and drift down into the 125 yard range where I could determine if they were big enough to shoot. At this point, I was READY to shoot a decent doe. As I was looking down the road through the glasses, I happened to be lucky enough to be looking at that exact moment. On the little trail all the way beyond the corner, out of nowhere a big buck was trotting directly toward me. His rack was well outside of his ears and well off of his head, so I knew he was a good buck -- at least 8 points. I put my glasses down and grabbed my rifle. He trotted up the EXACT trail the does had taken, straight onto the corner portion of the lane about 250 yards out, in to about 225, then off to the right side, disappearing for a minute. I figured out pretty quickly that he was on their scent, following them step for step, so I wasn't surprised when he stepped back onto the road and crossed to the point where they had entered the woods. What I was surprised by, however, is how shaky I was trying to put the reticle on him at that distance and feel like I would make a good shot. I never felt like I could. In a few seconds, he was gone. In a flash, it seemed. In all, I'm going to say it was about 12 seconds from the time I first saw him until he was in the woods and gone. And during that entire time, he was trotting, while I was shaking.

I cursed beneath my breath and told myself I needed to calm down. I texted curse words to my B-I-L about missing out on a good buck. Less than a minute later, I looked to my left and standing no more than 50 yards from me in the back lane, walking straight away from me briskly, was the largest buck I have ever personally seen in the woods. His rack was enormous, as was his body. I quickly repositioned my chair, sand bag, and finally my rifle. By the time I found him in the scope, he was already over 100 yards away, and still walking directly away at a brisk pace. I thought I had been nervous before, but now the red dot on my VX-R reticle was bouncing all over the place. I kept whispering for him to turn, but he just kept walking straight away. I contemplated briefly trying to place a shot through the shoulder blades and into the neck, but he was far enough away (130 yards plus) that the angle didn't really present that shot anymore. I knew I didn't have long to decide. In only a few seconds, he was 170 yards away and angling to the woods where I knew he would disappear. Just as he reached the edge of the woods, out of desperation I whistled loudly, hoping he would turn and freeze just long enough for me to try to place one in the kill zone. He never even reacted. Two seconds later, the biggest buck I've ever seen walked into the woods and was gone.

For a moment, I think I actually put my head down. I couldn't believe I had not been able to get a shot on that buck. I looked at my hands and they were still trembling. I let out a big sigh, raised my head, and glanced to my right. Once again, at the end of the Front lane, I saw another deer. I saw antlers, which at that distance, was a good sign.

I quickly texted to my B-I-L, "I'm Surrounded!" I couldn't believe how many deer I had seen in a 30 minute window, and now, after failing to get a shot at two good bucks, a third likely shootable buck had presented himself. I grabbed my field glasses to investigate.

(To be continued in the next installment!)

The Hunt -- Day Three: Finally, Things Start Picking Up

I wish I could tell you that I went to my stand in the morning and the wind had died down and I found myself surrounded by deer. But it simply wasn't the case. Though the wind had gotten a little better, there was still no movement in my area. In fact, the corn was literally beginning to pile up beneath the feeder. I surmised that because my stand is out in the open, where the wind is not buffered by heavy trees, it was even more affected by windy conditions than stands being hunted by others. When I came back to camp and told my B-I-L that I had seen absolutely nothing, he replied, "ok, that's enough of that. This evening, you're hunting in my stand."

My B-I-L has been a member for 3 years so he has the maximum 3 different hunting areas. He had been sitting in a stand he calls the "GP-120" (which is because it's located on 120 acres leased from Georgia Pacific) since opening day, and had seen a number of deer. The GP-120 stand has three long shooting lanes -- A 275 yard lane that is the road you drive in on, which will be on your right shoulder at the 3 O'clock (the "front" lane), a 170 yard lane directly in front of you at the 12 O'clock (the "stump" lane), and a 300 yard lane on your left shoulder at the 9 O'clock (the "back" lane).

This photo looks down the back lane on your left shoulder.

As you can see, it's in a much more heavily wooded area with tall, mature soft and hard timber.

When my B-I-L sent me out in the afternoon, he told me that at about 4:30, I was going to see a large 7-point buck on the Back shooting lane, and I was going to shoot it. He had been watching this particular deer and several others for days, but is at the point in his hunting career where he's only interested in two things -- a bigger mountable deer than he already has (most likely 12 points or better) and filling the freezer with older does. At 4:10 p.m., I received a text from my B-I-L telling me to get ready. Within 5 minutes, I saw my first deer on the Front lane (which looks a lot like the Back lane, only slightly wider and resembling more of a road). It was a little spike at about 250 yards. He gradually made his way up to a mound where we had scattered corn, about 120 yards away. He eventully stepped off the lane and headed into the woods. In about 15 minutes, he emerged directly in front of me in the Stump lane, at about 60 yards. He slowly made his way to the end of the Stump lane and disappeared. In all, he was in sight about a half hour, which was by far the longest deer encounter I had to date.

Meanwhile, before he left the Stump lane, I noticed 2 more deer on the Front lane, once again near the very end of it at about 250 yards. With the field glasses, I was able to determine that these were two young does. They took the same path that the little spike followed, and gradually worked their way toward me until they settled on the area we scattered corn. I put the scope on both of them at various times and contemplated taking the larger of the two. In a few minutes, I decided I was going to hold out for a buck -- I still had the rest of the evening and 2 more days to hunt. Still, I practiced putting my Leupold VX-R red dot reticle on the kill zone and imagined squeezing off a solid, on-target shot. I was surprised by how calm I felt as I looked down the scope at my target.

The two does stayed in the Front lane well into darkness. I waited as long as I could, hoping they would leave before I climbed down and drove back down over the same lane on which they had stood the past hour plus. Eventually, I climbed down and got into my Pathfinder, which I had parked in the woods almost directly beneath the stand.

I came back to camp reinvigorated. I had neither seen nor shot the 7-point, but watching a handful of small deer for almost 2 hours really improved my psyche. My B-I-L was disappointed I had not shot anything, but I went to bed convinced that Day 4 would be my day -- I planned to head back to GP 120 in the morning and tag one.

The Hunt -- Day 2: J-Dawg Bags a "Monster," I'm Still Hunting Hard

We woke up on Day 2 to even worse winds. It was hard not to be discouraged, but you can't control what you can't control. On the way back to our stands, J-Dawg and I discussed the fact that it was his last day to hunt, and if he saw a doe, he should drop it.

It wasn't 15 minutes after it was light enough to see that I got my first text from J-Dawg: "got a big doe. should i shoot it?" I didn't notice it when it arrived, so my reply of "yes" was a few minutes tardy, leading him to respond that I was too late. I told him on the next doe to shoot first, and text after. It was probably only a half hour later when I heard a gun shot that seemed to come from his direction. I texted my B-I-L telling him I thought I heard J-Dawg shoot, to which he responded, "yep, a doe. I'll go pick him up in a bit."

I was sitting there smiling, glad J-Dawg had shot one when I noticed a doe looking directly at me from about 40 yards away. She was standing just to the right of the roadway which is directly ahead -- the same roadway where I had seen the spike the day before, only she was between me and the woodline at about half the distance. I have no idea where she came from. I never heard her or saw any movement -- I just looked up for a minute and she had instantly appeared. She seemed to be a pretty young deer, from what I could tell. I flipped open the covers on my scope and put the cross hairs on target. She was so close, I might have been able to kill her with a sling shot. She walked across the road, making sure to stop broadside and tempt me to pull the trigger. In all, she must have stopped a half dozen times giving me clean, broad side kill shots as she sauntered counerclockwise from about my 2 o'clock position to my 7 o'clock position. I thought she was heading to my feeder (85 yards out at my 9), but she never strayed more than a 40 yard semi-circle away from before heading into the woods on my left flank.

That was really cool. I knew right away I wasn't going to shoot that doe, but it was awesome to be able to watch her through the scope, knowing I could if I wanted to.

In the meantime, I got the following text from J-Dawg: "I got down to pee. That doe I shot wasn't a doe -- it's a button buck. FML. I broke the law!" It was followed by "how the hell was I supposed to be able to tell it was a buck from 75 yards????" I told J-Dawg not to panic, that my B-I-L would know what to do. The general rule in Arkansas is that a legal buck must have 3 points on one side. In the meantime, J-Dawg had already texted his mom, who had gone online and determined that shooting a buck with horns less than 2 inches was also legal. My B-I-L subsequently confirmed. Apparently, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had already pondered and answered J's question -- you're NOT expected to tell that a button buck is actually a buck and not a doe. Thus, it's not illegal to shoot them thinking they are does despite the 3-point on a side general rule. The only downside? You have to use a buck tag to register what you thought was a doe, leaving you with only 1 buck tag for the remainder of the season. Oh well, much better than breaking the law.

I learned a while later that my B-I-L had picked up J-Dawg and his deer and were headed back to camp. Just before 11, when I planned to climb down and head in, I noticed a deer on the edge of a young pine thicket just behind my stand. It's hard to tell in this photo, but if you see what looks like a roadway behind the feeder on the pre-scout post, you can see the area where I saw it. I'm not sure whether it was a buck or a doe. I just saw it's back half as it stepped into the pine thicket. Once again, I thought it might be headed to the feeder. After waiting another half hour without seeing her again, I decided to hike out and go see J-Dawg's deer.

By the time I got back to camp, my B-I-L and J-Dawg had already skinned J's deer. When I saw it hanging on the rack, I knew why it hadn't taken long. The poor little thing was about the size of a healthy German Shephard (the smaller, canine version -- not a sheep babysitter from Eastern Europe). We gave J-Dawg infinite amounts of grief over that monster he downed the rest of the day. But hey, he saw one, his aim was true, and he made a legal kill. I think he and I both learned a valuable lesson that day -- if you are going to take what you think is a decent size doe, you should always be sure she's with other deer so you can make a relative size comparison. It's hard to tell a decent size doe from a medium sized dog from that distance without having another deer nearby to do a comparison. Oh well, it was a good shot and I'm sure those tenderloins turned out to be pretty tender!

On my way back out to my stand for the afternoon hunt, I decided to film the last little bit of the drive in so you get a little better sense of the territory. Here's what the drive looks liked from behind the wheel of my Pathfinder.



The wind continued throughout the afternoon and made for miserable conditions at my stand. In fact, over a 3.5 hour period, I caught a glimpse of one buck. It was being chased by 2 domestic dogs at my 3 O'clock, out about 300 yards. I could tell it was a buck, which from that distance and considering I only saw it for about three seconds, probably means it was a pretty good one. I spent the rest of my time entertaining myself by reading about the previous day's Michigan victory over Illinois on my Ipad.

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You have to love modern technology!

When I got back to camp, I learned that I was one of three hunters who had seen the same dogs chasing my lone deer of the day. One of them (who saw it just before it passed into my area) confirmed that it was indeed a very nice buck. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get a decent shot at a bounding whitetail at 300 yards when you have all of 3 seconds.

At this point, I was 40% finished with my 5-day hunt, and had only been in a position to shoot one small doe. I'm not going to say I was not enjoying myself, because just being out there was terrific. However, for the first time since I decided to join the camp and make this trek, I was beginning to wonder if I might go home empty handed.

When I got back to camp I heard similar stories where many hunters just weren't seeing the deer they had seen only a week earlier during the blackpowder hunt. I kept telling myself, however, that it only takes one.

The Hunt -- Day One: A Slow Start

I awoke to my alarm at promptly 5 a.m. to hear the wind howling. After wrangling J-Dawg, I filled my backpack with Vitamin Water, bottled water, jerky and nuts. I tried to give him equal rations, but he didn't have as much room -- it turns out his mom packed him several goodies of his own. Unfortunately, we realized we left his hunting clothes in his sister's car, so J-Dawg set out on opening morning wearing shorts, boots and a long sleeve shirt. I gave him a heavy fleece shirt to take to the stand with him so he wouldn't freeze, but we were both so pumped the cool, windy morning didn't seem to matter.

I put three .270 WSM cartridges in my right front pocket, made sure I had my orange hat and vest, and after messing around for a bit, left camp promptly at 5:30 a.m. under the cover of total darkness. We had planned our route the day before -- I would drive J-Dawg to his stand (a loaner from my B-I-L) then drive as close to mine as I could get before hiking in. In all, it was about 15 minutes and 5 miles. (I will embed a video in a later part of the series that will show the last mile or so of the drive, which is essentially 4x4 territory.)

After arriving at my parking area, I strapped on my pack and began hiking in on a trail suitable only for 4-wheelers and bulldozers. After what seemed like a mile (we later estimated it to be between 1/4 and 3/8 of a mile), I finally emerged near my stand. Though I was never a boy scout, I would have made one proud in packing my bag. I toted probably 10 bottles of water/vitamin water, 2 pounds of nuts and jerky, a box of ammo, field glasses, a flashlight, a deer grunt, a camo fleece pullover, a flip video camera, my blackberry and of course, that hunting essential -- my I Pad. It didn't take but 1 day's worth of hiking for me to realize that I probably didn't need to carry so much stuff.

In any event, I was in my stand a good 20 minutes before it was light enough to see. With the wind continuing to howl, I waited for the deer to arrive. And waited. And waited. At 7 a.m., my automatic deer feeder spun a half pound of corn onto the ground. Being the optimist, I figured the deer heard it go off and were probably beating a path to my stand at that very moment! But as the minutes dragged past, I neither saw nor heard anything. Of course, the wind was blowing so hard, a herd of elephants could have tromped through the brush behind me and I probably wouldn't have known it.

Finally, about 8:30, a small deer appeared on the roadway/shooting lane directly in front of me, on the left side of the head-on view photo from my pre-hunt scouting post. He was walking right toward me at about 75 yards, right in the road gap in the treeline. I could tell right away he was a little spike. He took about five steps toward me, turned to his left so he was broadside in the road, then in 2 or 3 steps walked into the cover of woods. He wasn't much of a buck, but it was great to see a deer - any deer - after sitting there for 2.5 hours with nothing happening but a handful of shots in the distance from my fellow camp members.

I hunted until 11 a.m., but saw nothing else. I wasn't too discouraged yet -- though the wind was really whipping about (no doubt causing the deer to stay put far more than usual), the pictures in my game camera told me that most of the deer near my stand/feeder came by in the evening. So I hiked back out, jumped in the truck and picked up J-Dawg on the way back to camp. He had seen a few does and a decent 8 point that he couldn't get a shot at. While I was hunting in a clearing with a woodline through it, he was deeper in the woods where it was a little quieter from a wind perspective.

We headed back to camp and ate biscuits, sausage, eggs, hash browns etc. prepared by the camp cooks, who would be preparing 2 big meals a day for the entire opening week. We learned pretty quickly, however, that most of the hunters quit between 9:30 and 10, and had eaten all the bacon and gravy! But we didn't mind -- we came to hunt, not eat. J-Dawg only had 2 days, and I only had 5. We decided we would hunt first, and eat what was left. And from that point on, we were typically the first ones out of camp, and the last ones in.

Back at camp, we learned that a half dozen or so hunters had bagged decent 8 point or better bucks. However, most were disappointed with how many deer they had seen, blaming the wind and weather. Many hunters had not seen a single deer, which was incredible to them considering most stands had been "overrun" with deer the weekend before during the blackpowder hunt. In fact, my B-I-L had shot a large doe the week before after picking her out of a crowd of NINE sitting in a single shooting lane.

We loaded up at 2 p.m. to head back to our stands. The wind remained ferocious throughout the afternoon. I stared for hours at the areas around me, waiting on the deer that had been captured on my camera only days ago to return for the corn scattered beneath the feeder. But it wasn't to be on that afternoon. I stayed until it was good and dark at 5:45 without seeing a thing. Through text messaging, I learned J-Dawg had seen nothing either, while my B-I-L continued to see a fair number of deer, including a couple of decent 7 and 8 pointers -- he was holding out for a BIG deer.

Back at camp we filled up on pork chops, pinto beans, corn bread, and all sorts of goodies. The deer might have proved disappointing on day one, but the food continued to be awesome. We had hunted hard, and were tired. We hung out with family as long as we could, then made them go home so I could shower, relax with a cocktail, then get to sleep. 5 a.m. and Day 2 would be here before you know it.