I went deer hunting this weekend with some family and friends in western Arizona south of Quartzsite.  I headed out early Friday morning with a bit of a map and my GPS to find our hunting group in the Arizona desert.  About five miles from camp, I wound up on the wrong road and went a few miles before telling myself that these guys would be insane to go along that road any further because the road was so bad.  I had just been going off of the general path of the road while keeping an eye on the GPS coordinates of camp that I had obtained from zooming in using Google Earth.  However, there were dirt roads offshooting from the main road all over the place in this area.  Fortunately, I had brought my laptop but unfortunately I had forgotten to load my detailed Topo program.  Using Streets & Trips, I dragged my cursor around and figured where I had gone wrong and turned around and found the right road and eventually found camp after a 90 minute detour.

We unfortunately didn't see any deer that we could shoot at (no bucks), but I learned some good techniques and had fun with the guys.  Alan's truck broke down and he had to cut short his hunting trip, which was a real bummer.  I was amazed at how many quail were out there while we were walking around.  It made me want to buy a shotgun and return to the area.  On Saturday, we were walking a line and they flushed out a group of deer.  I was over a ridge when I saw 8 deer come running over the ridge.  I had my gun ready but scoped no antlers.  They stopped when they saw me and bolted to the east.  I counted three does and five fawns.  Just a few minutes later, another group of three came over the horizon and headed straight for me.  I had them in my sights as they came over the ridge, but again no antlers.  They didn't even see me until they were about 20 yards away and they skidded to a halt and just watched me.  Since I couldn't shoot them, I fumbled for my camera and this startled them to put some distance between me and them.  They jumped to about 30-40 yards and then paused while I took the above picture.

Here is Alan getting pulled back and revving up for Dukes of Hazzard attempt to clear the wash in his rig: