Coues Camp - A New Tradition

Like many of you I grew up hunting, I was blessed with a family that would drag me out of bed long before the sun was up to chase elk and deer in the fall, coyotes in the winter, turkey in the spring, and antler growth in the summer.
 
And like most kids do I took it for granted.

Throughout the years I have had countless opportunities to keep the traditions alive. The 4 a.m gas station runs where you’d cash in on Payday candy bars and fountain sodas. A football that is essential at any Denhalter camp. Pizza Lunchables as the exclusive mid-day snack. The list goes on.
 
As time has gone on, the tradition that has been the hardest to keep alive is the time with family in the field. Shared experiences turned into text messages and stories told at holidays around the dinner table. Schooling and careers had our family spread across the country. The distance occasionally allowed 2 or 3 of us to hunt together but denied opportunities to get the whole band back together. It was time to change that.

Queue Mexico, Coues Deer, and pocket burritos…
 
For the last 2 years we have been heading down to Mexico, a cooler full of Paydays in tow, to chase the Grey Ghost. While we all want to tag out on the SW whitetail, the main goal is making memories together.

Let me tell you, there is something about those damn deer. As classic western big game hunters, we are much more accustomed to stalking into bow range of an elk than we are at spotting pygmy deer at 1000 yards. We’d grown accustomed to the lavish lifestyle of candy bars and Lunchables while covering ground in side by sides. Suddenly, we found ourselves packing pocket burritos and heading up the ridge on horseback. Somehow, we have stumbled our way into relative success. While we don’t always come home with the dream 110” Coues deer (yes, that is considered big), we come home with the memories of a lifetime and re-established traditions to pass down through generations.

What we’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter if you’re at yearly deer camp in Wisconsin, a once in a lifetime Elk Camp in Arizona, or the third annual Coues camp in the middle of nowhere Mexico. The stories that we now share together are the reason we hunt. The holiday dinner tables that used to be filled with stories of solo adventures are now conversations of the same old stories that we share in. Traditions that fall apart are recaptured like they never left.

Article Credit: James Denhalter