I had a great hunt and actually got home tonight Sunday.
My only problem was that I couldn't hit my rear with both hands. Opening morning I had a herd of 10 running along a ridge. I found them in the next draw over and the closest shot I had was around 150 yards. I shot under that one. I then called in a sow and a young one that was old enough to do without her. I had her at 50 yards and shot under her. The next day I spotted some along a ridge and they disappeared over a saddle. I headed up only to see nothing on the other side. I walked the ridge for a ways without spotting anything and was going to head down into the wash to see if they crossed it but I decided to check a nice draw on the same side of the hill that I spotted them on. 30 yards into the draw I spotted one in the bottom at 20 yards, two other spooked out of there as fast as they could and by the time that I drew my pistol out of the holster the last one was headed up the hill. He would stop but only behind a bush or cactus. I got one shot at him at 75 yards as he was walking broadside and missed.
Then on Friday I was relieving myself when a couple of them spooked out of a bushy draw right under me. I watched as a small herd of 6 of them went over the hill. I went around the draw and started up the hill only to watch them go over the top never to bee seen again. And then on Saturday I jumped a small herd that never even slowed down for me to look at them.
After missing my first 3 shots I thought that my sights were off so Friday I took a dead rest and hit a jack rabbit at 100 yards. So I guess I was me all the time.
On the water situation it was dry for the first 5 days. One of the water holes did have water and another one you could see where they had dug it down a couple of feet to get to the water, it had a small pool in it when we checked it out. But all the cattle were hanging at the tanks and not going very far. Wednesday afternoon it started to drizzle with it continuing into Thursday night. Then Friday it was good weather until about 3pm when we were trying to find that one herd and then it rain until about midnight. It really put down some water from what we saw in the bottom of the draws to the east end of the unit. A friend of ours from Catalina said that drivers were stopped on the highway it was raining so hard that their wipers couldn't keep up with it. But it was a good deserved rain. A lot of hours with just a drizzle to soak the ground real good.
Saturday we even found where a coyote had dug a hole down to get to the water in a wash. It ended up having about a foot of water in that hole.
My partner did git his javilina, mostly by luck but he got one with a 20 yard shot when one popped up out of nowhere as he was stalking into some others. This was on Friday morning after the rains has washed the washes clean of tracks and we could actually track a little.
Overall even if I didn't get one it was a fun hunt. We saw an awful lot of mule deer along with a couple of bucks. But no whitetails in a area that we usually see them, but we hunted that area while it was hotter than normal with very little to no water except for the tanks.
