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So I get the brace off in early January 2017 and I am shooting my compound at a reduced weight so that I don’t blow my back up. I shoot all winter and into early spring when on a April trip to Kentucky to hunt spring gobbler I dislocate my left shoulder and tear off the tendon that attached the Supraspinatus muscle (this is the muscle you use to pick up your arm). That is a story for another day. So now I have a bad back that is healing and soon to be repaired left shoulder what will be healing. I get my shoulder repaired on May 8 and I am told that I should cancel my August Coues hunt with Wards’s Outfitter in Arizona. I call Steven Ward and lay to bad news on him, he asked me if I had thought about hunting with him in Mexico during January of 2018. I replied “well no, where do I sign up”.

So my hunt in Mexico is scheduled for January 15th thru the 19th. Got all my $h!## packed the week before Christmas, no I’m not anxious. I am shooting everyday in cold, wind and snow. I am ready for take-off.

Saturday January 13, 2018, my wife and I leave the house at 0330 hrs. for trip to the airport just outside Baltimore. Get checked in and through TSA with no problems then I hear from my wife that she was getting some snow to drive in and I told her it will be melted before I get back.

I speak with the other two hunters Jack and Jeremy for a little while then head to bed as I had had a long day.

Don’t see my first deer til after 10:00, when I have two spikes and 6 doe with 2 doe fawn and a button buck come in same trail I walked in on. Something rattles them and all but five leave. Then around twenty minutes later I see three racked bucks coming through the brush, one in the lead is checking out the girls but none of them come in to the water and they all leave little by little.

I then notice about 100 yards away a shooter buck coming in towards the water through the brush. He pushes 3 fawns out of the brush and he stops to survey the surroundings. None of the adult does had hung around so he goes back into the brush never to be seen again. That is about all the action I can stand for one day. Saw at least four bucks that I would have been glad to have taken a shot at, it just wasn’t in the cards today.

It seems everyone had a slow day in their blinds. Jack did make things a little exciting at camp. It seems he felt maybe he needed to spray he clothes down to remove some scent. He picked up a spray bottle and went outside and sprayed his jacket and his gloves and left them outside to dry over night. When he walked back into his room his son-in-law had a surprise look on his face and had Jack look at his spray bottle. It turns out he thought he had picked up a scent free spray but instead he had gotten a bottle of Windex that the cook had left out. We all had a good laugh, and Jack was getting some well deserved ribbing over the next couple of days. He was such a good sport about it.

So I’m in the blind and it is still pretty early so I am messaging my wife on my Inreach. I am in the middle of a sentence when I look out and there is a good 4x4 eastern count buck drinking 18 yards from me. There was a spike and a doe also near the water. My bow was leaning against the left side of the blind, I had my release on the loop but had not nocked an arrow but had an arrow out on my right side. I don’t know how I was able to pull it off but I got my bow, nocked and arrow and was able to draw the bow without making enough noise to scare anything away.

I want to thank every one that made this hunt possible, my wonderful wife, my surgeons, my Outfitter Steven Ward, the ranch owner, my guides Lane and Jose, the cook Hector, hunters Jeremy and Jack, especially Jack for his stories and his comic relief and last but not least my driver and ex wingman Jose.