Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Montana Youth Hunt 2023 - Backpacking Trip

Day Two - Success!
There are a lot of great ways to start day 2 of a hunt, especially since day 2 was the opener. “Hey Dad, deer! Right there!” is a pretty tough one to beat.

We weren’t more than a quarter mile from camp. We had been on a logging road at first light, hoping to glass the south facing slopes in front of us and still-hunt between glassing points on the north slope we were crossing.

We were between our second and third glassing point when Trevin spotted the deer. It was a buck, plenty big enough for Addie and standing broadside within fifty yards of the road uphill. I had walked right past it but Trevin noticed. “Addie, it’s a buck. You can shoot it” Trevin has a fair amount of game under his belt for a 12 year old but hearing him sincerely want his younger sister to have the first deer of the trip makes a Dad happy.

We got the bog deployed and Addie setup as quick as possible.



He only gave her a basketball sized window through the deadfall but she made the most of it.

At the shot, the buck ran hard to the west and I heard some timber crashing…and then some more…then silence! While waiting to move to where I expected him to be, we saw another flash of white further above Addie’s buck and then some does down below us near the creek. We had certainly found the deer zone- light to heavy timber about ¾ of the way up the mountain.

We didn’t have to walk far down the road and we could see grey hair and antler just above the road.





Addie’s shot had been true and an 85 TSX from her little .243 had made meat once again just like it had for her older siblings. The buck was better than I thought. Good mass and Trevin counted six points on one side and five on the other (thanks to eye guards and a little cheater at the base of one antler) which got them excited.



We took our time and completely boned everything before stashing it in a tree on the shady side of the hill. Addie isn’t afraid to jump right in and wanted to do some of the butchering.