Banner Year for 12-Year Old Boy
Rusty Hagadone emailed me some photos about the success his boy Dalton had in 2007. Wow, what a year. I asked him to send me over a little story so I could share the great year the Dalton had - at just 12 years old.
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I guess it all started on Oct 14th, I told my son Dalton that on the 15th we would go out after school to see if we could get an Antelope. We did, but saw nothing that big so I said I would take him out of school the next day Oct 16 for an all day hunt. Probably should not say that if any of his teachers read this but we did. Our first stalk
was unsuccessful then we went to another area of the property that we were hunting and found a herd of about thirty does and eight nice bucks. The stalk would work out perfect because the antelope were on the east side of a big draw with a southeast wind about 10-20 mph. We had to go about half a mile to the north, then half a mile to the east just to get to the top end of the draw without them seeing us then another half to three quarters of a mile to the south to get across from there location. As we walked down the draw I told my son that the only thing that might mess this up would be if we jumped a deer and it ran through the middle of the antelope.Well it didn’t take long, we didn’t take more the ten steps and a three point muley got up but he ran down the draw, lucky for us. We had to go about thirty more yards down the draw to where I thought they might be. We went up to the top of the draw to take a look and there they were sixty yards away. But to our amazement the ones that were closest had there heads down in the tall grass, so we could not see any bucks and we crawled up another five yards popped up and there were two bucks with their heads up.
He got into position to shoot and the one buck turned broad side to us, my son pulled the trigger on his dad’s 22-250 and all the Antelope gathered up and started to run off . I asked my son if he hit him and he said “I think so, I had the cross hairs right behind the front shoulders” as they ran out about fifty yards one of the bucks ran out of the herd by itself and then went down about one hundred fifty yards away. I got the biggest high five and hug out on the prairies of Montana that anyone could ask for, the antelope is fifteen inch tall.
Now we were thinking of the youth elk tag that he put in for and got. He didn’t have long to think because he was able to go three days earlier than the regular season with this elk tag. It started on Oct 18, the area where my son had his tag was the same area that I archery elk hunt in, so I knew the area well. He was going on days off from school for teachers conferences, so on Oct 17th we drove two hundred miles from home to stay with his grand parents, the morning of Oct 18 came early because we had to drive another ninety five miles to get to the area to hunt at sun up.
We showed up about five minutes after legal shooting light and a friend of ours and his son had spotted nine cows and calves and one bull already, so we watched as they put a stalk on them. But it didn’t work out for them, so when they got back to the trucks we talked about the fact there were five or six youth hunters in that area, so my son and I decided to head more to the south for the evening hunt. All we saw there was a nice 5×6 bull and no cows, now it’s dark and we have to drive about one hundred and twenty miles back to the grand parents house to stay again.
The next morning we got up a little earlier to get to a different area at legal light and we saw one cow and calf and three bulls and one of them was a 320-330 bull, but my son had a cow tag. It just seems to work out that way, but we made a great stalk from about a half mile away to where he made the shot with his dad’s 30-06 at one hundred sixty yards. We had the wind in our favor, but as we got closer the wind quit, we were about two hundred fifty yards away and dad’s new boots where squeaking and I knew if we could hear it the elk could too, so I untied my boot for the last hundred yards. He made the shot at one hundred sixty yards and the cow Elk went down. Then another high five and hug under the Big Sky of Montana, then the work started.
Now it’s Nov 11 and we were out for a spot and stalk for a Muley buck, while we were out Antelope Hunting we had seen four or five 20-24 inch muleys and for his first buck anyone of these would be great. I’m not sure what happened but the only one we saw was the one he shot. He spotted it about three hundred yards away with some does, they worked there way over a hill and out of sight. We made the walk up to the top of the hill and there he was, one hundred yards away looking back. We had to hide in the sage brush for just a few minutes and then he turned broad side to him and he took the shot with the 30-06. The buck jumped into the air and ran, I asked if he hit him, which with the other two shots and kills it was a dumb question, the deer ran about thirty yards and went down. Once again the high fives and hugs were flying for one very excited boy and one proud father.
- Rusty Hagadone
19 comments December 18th, 2007
