Southern Arizona Deer Hunt - Part 1 Scouting

Last Fall I received a tag to hunt whitetail deer in Southern Arizona.  Many people in the Midwest and Eastern US are familiar with the Whitetail deer as they are plentiful in the US.  Here in AZ we have a subspecies called the Coues Deer which is a smaller and craftier creature affectionately known here as "The Gray Ghost".

I have not been hunting my entire life but it has already become a tradition that I take my Son with me on the scouting trip to an area.  My primary goal was to enjoy some Father and Son time, get a lay of the land and validate some camping spots I located on Google Earth.  

We spent quite a bit of time by this creek which I determined was impassable for an RV so all camping spots beyond this were scratched off the list.   I think my Son threw 100 stones into that pool.   

We spent most of the day driving around and looking for vantage points that would be ideal for glassing.  Glassing is a term used for time spent behind binoculars looking for game.  Typically you sit (for hours) with your binoculars on a tripod scouring the countryside but this is not something a 5 year old can handle so we just made some quick stops.

I think my Son's favorites for the day were 

1. Not being in a car seat

2. Eating nothing but Doritos for lunch

3. Driving the truck

There was one casualty: My war chair

I try not to get too attached to "stuff"  but I picked up this chair in Kuwait in 2002 and I watched many an Iraqi sunset in this chair, tailgate parties, camping trips, kids soccer games.  So this trip was my War Chairs final deployment.  Vaya con Dios War Chair.

The day ended with finding an ideal camp and burning some hot dogs and roasting some smores.  I love this little man and I hope this is something we can do every year and when he's old enough to hunt we can spend even more time outside together.