I've never been real big on hunting deer - I get much more excited about hunting elk or antelope. But occasionally I'll end up hunting them for my kids sake or just for more steak. We had some extra room in the freezer this fall and I have access to a private ranch with a good place to shoot whitetail deer, so we got one of my boys a youth deer tag to try and fill.

This particular tag was valid for any anterless whitetail deer in the unit through December 31, and it was a reminder to me how much more "cagey" (wilder, spookier, more skittish) whitetail deer are than mule deer. Whitetails also taste much better than mule deer.  It took us two trips to get it done but my son shot a young doe tonight. 

Driving to/from the ranch, once last week and then again tonight, we could have killed about 100 mule deer. The dumb things were everywhere, they were out earlier in the evening than the whitetails, and were much further from cover. Most of all, when they'd see us they'd just stand and stare at us like we posed no threat. We even saw this stud of a buck (poor pic quality - he's tall, has deep forks, and good mass), I could have hopped out of my truck and hit him with a rock.....

Last week when we were hunting we saw just a handful of whitetails sneaking through the trees right before the end of legal shooting light. They popped up where I didn't expect them to be, and as they were walking along I knew they'd eventually smell us based on the wind direction. Sure enough, I could tell as soon as they got a whiff of us - tails went up and they were out of there like scalded cats.  They actually ran past a mule deer who raised its head for a moment, looked around, then went right back to feeding.

Tonight, we only saw a couple of young whitetails, and they literally showed up two minutes before the end of legal shooting light.  Luckily we were ready, and my son capitalized.  The kid is only 16, and has killed an elk, an antelope, a mule deer, and a whitetial deer.  He's had his hands in everything he's killed, but I've done most of the work gutting them out.  He told me, before he filled this tag, that he really wanted to do all the gutting if he shot one - everything from start to finish.  That was until it got dark and really cold, then he was content just to hold the light and let me do all the bloody work...