“It was a happy and sad feeling all at the same time. I had harvested a real good deer, but the hunt was over so fast.” 

The forecast showed 75 degrees and sunny. . . really, 75 degrees?  I waited six years to draw this tag and purposely chose the late season hunt to avoid warmer weather, but 75 degrees and sunny it was. It’s always a “roll of the dice”, you can’t control the weather, I told myself. 

Both hunt options I had were outside the peak of the November mule deer rut time frame. I thought, if I got to choose, I’d go with cooler, late season weather every time. Also, the corn is usually off the fields by then, taking away most of the “buck brush” (places to hide), as they say in Canada, and work slows down for me, making a hunting trip feel a lot more like a vacation.  

I got a message from the outfitter two days before I planned on leaving, “Can you get here early, I’m ready.”  

I replied, “I’ll try.”