Rapid Fire Mistakes
Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a fellow greenhorn, you have to be ready to go deep, make mistakes, and learn from them while keeping your chin up.
I chewed dry, sandy air, working it over and out chapped lips. Leaning back away from my binoculars, I saw the sky had begun to shift from a sun bleached blue to vibrant shades of red and orange as it sank below the low craggy peaks miles across the rolling sawgrass yellow hills that were pocked with green barrel and cholla cactus.
Looking to the distant mountains across the flats, you’d be forgiven at a brief glance for thinking that the open plains had nowhere to hide. Up closer, the folds of loud rocky desert hills and monsoon-carved dry creek beds could hide an army of a thousand grizzly bears, let alone the mule deer and occasional coues that make the arid Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona their home.
“Got another doe on this ridge at about 400 yards”, I tell Gary pointing out a ripple in the distance. Briefly glancing at my outstretched hand, he rubs his beard and goes back to his own glass. “Yeah on that hillside there are three, and then I’ve got two more over here.”
On the first day of our hunt, Gary spotted a small forked horn that we’d dismissed as “not a first-day buck” just before two other hunters popped over the next ridge and opened fire on it. Four days into the hunt and we hadn’t seen another buck. When bow hunting the January rut down in Arizona, it was common to see three or four bucks in a day, and seven would not be that far out of the ordinary. One in four days caused a sick feeling to grow at the bottom of my stomach.
“I’ve got another deer”, I say watching a brown body move up a slope, “It’s not a deer”, I pause, watching the lithe body creep up the hill and lay down under an ocotillo, “it’s a bobcat.”
We decide that my 300 Win Mag is too much medicine for a bobcat, so Gary whips out the 6.5 Creed he had ready in the truck for just such an occasion. Kicking down brush quietly, in as much as you can kick dry rocks and dead grass quietly, I went prone for the 200 yard shot with Gary spotting.
On our long drives out to glassing knobs over the past few days, I’ve been frank with Gary about my skills. I’m top notch at javelin and pretty good at being a dad and a husband, but I’m not yet a good hunter. I’ve been working hard at honing my shooting, but I’m not far along as a marksman.
My breath slowed as I focused on box breathing. I acquired the bobcat in the scope, tail twitching slightly in the stillness of the late afternoon slipping away into evening. Locked in thanks to a rear bag and solid tripod, the crosshairs settled. Slow as I could, I pressed pressed pressed, until the trigger broke. The gun barely moved and the report of the rifle echoed only briefly through the canyon. Better than me, the rifle setup did its job and I was proud to have my very first bobcat.
After quickly retrieving the bobcat, we had little hope of finding a buck at last light, but nevertheless decided to glass a few final spots as we headed back to camp. The air took on a chill but the rocks retained their heat as we glassed a few knobs.
No bucks on the first 2 five-minute pit stops, but nothing beats that Arizona sunset, even if it did make glassing into the sun difficult. Squinting, I whisper-yelled, “I’ve got two bucks”, to Gary. One 3x3 and a larger 4x4 had spotted us and were spooking away into the setting sun.
We threw down packs and I got behind my 300 Win Mag as the bucks hopped and pranced away in that charismatic mule deer fashion. My crosshairs danced keeping them in sight as they ran straight away. As quickly as they began hopping away, they stopped at 500 yards, turning to look back on what might be chasing them.
I knew my rifle was shooting sub-moa groups at 100 and 200 yards, where I had practiced for months in various positions - prone with a bipod, seated, resting on my pack, supported by a tripod, and at the gun range bench. I had never shot the gun out to 500, but the drops at 300 where I’d shot a handful of times were identical to those listed on the ammo box. While not ultimately confident in the dope chart I’d never tested fully, the need to take down one of the only bucks we’d seen in days overwhelmed me. I dialed up the drop on my scope and settled my crosshairs on the deer. Box breathing – 4 seconds in, 7 seconds hold, 8 seconds out, press press press. I missed low. Shoot. Miss high. Shoot. Panic.
Eight shots in total rang out as I apologized to Gary and myself repeatedly, felt sick and knew that I was totally and unequivocally ruining this opportunity. Shame weighed heavy, but the 3x3 was hit in the maelstrom and worked its way down the valley to a small ripple in the hillside, a bench where it bedded behind a barrel cactus so only its head was visible in the twilight.
Gary offered up his gun and I settled in as he guided my eyes to the barrel cactus. “Can I shoot through the barrel cactus?” I asked. “It’s definitely a possibility” Gary replied. Taking his lukewarm response as a gospel guarantee, I fired on the cactus. Gary threw up his hands, “hold hold - wrong cactus!”
Heart beating out of control, feeling as low as someone can feel while out on God’s green earth, I struggled to find the right cactus as Gary talked me into using various features of the landscape – trees, cactus, ridges, white blurs. Unable to find it myself, he settled on the gun and found the deer for me. I fired on the correct cactus and the deer seemed hit again, but stumbled down into the bottom of the valley where it re-bedded under a small manzanita. Gary told me that its head was still up. In the fading light, I just couldn’t see the buck through the scope that Gary could see through his binoculars. The day’s hunt was over. I’m sure Gary was less surprised by my inept performance than I was, but he was kinder to me than I was to myself as well. “He’s almost certainly dead,” Gary spoke softly, “We have to back out and not run up in there though. We don’t want to bump him in the dark and lose him forever. Let’s give him time.”
I rolled out of the gun and onto my back. My ears rung after the plugs fell out around the second or third shot I had taken. I learned then that I had lain on several species of cacti in my haste to reposition every few shots. Their barbed spines lodged in my legs and arms, my neck. I had lost my scope’s lens cover somewhere in the brush. Hopefully, I only laid there embarrassing myself further for a second, but it might have been more.
I picked up the brass and we loaded up the truck and headed home. We spoke in short bursts about tracking, the likelihood of a dead deer in the morning, how sure or unsure we each were that the deer was dead. I was talking, but hardly present as every thought was back with that wounded deer.
Getting back to camp late, a small shaggy ball of energy greeted us in Gaston, a wire-haired Griffon licking, jumping and sniffing the bobcat skeptically.
After a quick pet for the pooch, we agreed to plan to be up earlier than the last few mornings, and I jumped into my brother’s black 4Runner. I quickly drove the tightly wound road from camp back to the house I rented to keep my mom (“Grammie”), mother-in-law (“Busia”), wife Jackie, and three kids entertained while I was out hunting. My wife had worked all day, while Grammie and the girls had been out in the pool most of the day terrifying Grammie. Somehow, my 18-month-old boy had managed to lift and shatter the glass coffee table. Busia’ s homemade dinner was waiting for me.
Hard to stay down with that crew bouncing off the walls and doing their best to cheer me up, distract me.
As stars faded out of the sky and stronger light overtook them in the brisk morning air, Gary and I were right back where I had shot from, glassing the area we had last seen the buck. A flash of fur caught our eye – a coyote out at 500 yards near where the bucks had turned to look back the evening before. With nothing else moving after thirty minutes or so, we decided to hike down into the rolling cuts of the valley floor and the ridge above it to search for blood. Wading through the tall dead grass at the bottom of the valley, we saw another flash of brown. Another coyote, this time less than a football field away. It turned and looked at us briefly before scampering over the next ridge.
We made our way along a twenty-foot-tall cliff face carved into the valley by some unnamed creek to a ledge where the deer last bedded down on small pebbles overlaid with light tan brittle grasses. Blood had pooled in the center of the bed, but then droplets led away. Bloody stool. A few more drops here or there barely perceptible against the red, tan and pink desert rock. Then nothing. We searched for the trail for thirty minutes more before moving apart, each with grim faces, to start a slow circle of the area as the sun began to dominate the sky overhead with harsh light.
Laying at the bottom of the creek bed, straight down the cliff, face down from the buck’s last bed, Gary found what was left of the buck scattered about underneath a manzanita. The ribs were picked clean, other bones were similarly bare to the sky above and barely attached to the carcass while others had been carried away. This didn’t happen to a few ribs, a hind quarter or just an appendage of the deer. Every organ and muscle up to the base of the neck was eaten. The hide was torn asunder and parts of it were gone too. Coyotes. Those we had seen earlier and their buddies had eaten every last edible ounce of that deer, other than the head.
As we pulled up to camp that morning, my 5-year-old daughter Rose was bouncing up and down in excitement to see the deer. When we showed her the antlered head her eyes got big and she cracked the biggest smile. But then her eyes looked around the back of the truck.
“Where’s the meat?”
I explained what had happened and her eyes filled with tears.
“They stole all my meat?” She managed to squeak through tight-pursed lips. I took her in my arms and explained how frustrated I was and how I was so sorry. I assured her we would still have meat for her. She brightened up and offered to hold up the head so I could take a pretty picture of her. That girl knows how to get me.
Bobcat and Hatch Chile tacos were some consolation for both of us that night.
I’m not proud of what happened out there. I could have avoided that miss, and the deer’s unfortunate ravishing, in so many ways. I could have retrieved the more dialed, proven 6.5 Creed that was tuned out to 700 plus yards. I could have let the deer crest and go over the next ridge, running after them under cover for a shorter shot. We could have backed out and returned the next morning. Nearly every option was better than what I did.
Every failure hurts. In javelin, I fail all the time. I’ll try a cue to fix my arm strike or a lift to improve my explosiveness. When that doesn’t work, its time and focus spent failing. With only so many years of competition in this body, every failure like that eats away at you if you let it. Except each one of those failures gives a lesson and helps me fine tune technique and training. This would be like missing an animal clean, or blowing a stock because you charged in and the wind swirled. It hurts. Plain as.
A bigger failing hurts even more. In 2016 I was throwing 245’+ in the days leading up to the Olympic Trials, what would have been good enough for one of the top 8 spots, and I felt like I could climb up to 260’ if I got pumped up enough and flew down the runway fast enough. I wound up getting over-hyped and I was unable to control my technique coming down the runway, resulting in a 230’ throw that left me out of the final round by just one position. In 2021 I broke my ankle just weeks before the Olympic Trials. Toughing it out, I finished second to last hobbling down the runway on pride alone. Those losses hurt more than the other failures. I still feel that pain, bordering on depression, as if it happened yesterday… as if it was earlier today. I don’t feel that bad about missing 11 times, but the way I feel is closer to that than it is to just blowing a stock, just messing up a few practices.
But I didn’t stop throwing when I missed opportunities or was foolish, and I won’t stop hunting even after this thumper of a failure. I am ready to fail, to feel that pain, and move forward better for it.
So whether you are a new hunter, or a seasoned vet, don’t be afraid to go out and fail, learn what you can from those lessons, and keep searching for new opportunities to expand your skill set. Be brave, seek the next horizon even if you fall.
