My 9 year old son and I went deer hunting the first day of rifle season in the northern zone in October. And we've hunted at least one day of all three weekends of southern zone so far. We'll hunt next weekend too. Today was the first time we've hunted this season with snow.
This afternoon we were tracking a good size track. The deer knew we were following it. It keep trying to shake us. It was snowing and the tracks were as fresh as they come. We were probably within a 100 yards or so of it. We tracked until it crossed a pretty deep stream. There was no way for us to cross it. The excitement was awesome.
We were hunting in really thick woods with a lot of really thick brush so I had my smooth bore barrel on my 11-87 12ga. I switch back and forth between my 21" smooth bore barrel with ghost ring fiber optic sites (these are awesome!) and my 21" fully rifled cantilever barrel with a Leupold 2-7x32mm VX-II Shotgun scope depending on where and how we're hunting.
My 13 year old daughter went with us back in October and on opening day of the southern zone. She didn't want to go today. To cold for her and about 5 to 6 inches of fresh snow. We wanted to still hunt today and it almost paid off, man we had a great time!
