Monty Owen sent us this photo of his son's first mule deer buck. They had great hunt in California. Sixteen year old, Dominic, took this nice 17-1/2 inch, 3x4 buck at 30 yards.

Monty writes, "We were hunting an area a friend had hunted during bow season and had seen bucks there every morning. After the sun came up over the ridges we moved down the mountain a little then I saw 4 does. One had spotted us but wasn't sure and went back to feeding. After about 20 minutes and not seeing any other deer the biggest doe locked on us again. I think the sun must have been shining on us by then. After what seemed like 10 minutes I was just about to tell Nick we should just go on because there were just does there. Just as I was about to say that two other hunters came up the ridge from below. You know what happened next, the does busted and the big boy came running right towards us from out of our sight. It stopped about thirty yards away and after determining the other hunters were out of the line of fire, I told Nick to shoot the buck in the neck. At this point all I knew was the deer had heavy horns and was at least a three. Well, he could see the shoulder from his angle so he shot and then the buck ran right at us. It passed us about 12 feet away. I told Nick to shoot it again because I didn't want to chase this buck all over the mountain. He did and it only went about 20 more yards and fell. He was happy but I don't think as happy as I was. It was the first buck he has ever seen while hunting and the butcher told us that it was the heaviest he's had out of 49 deer this season. I'm also having it mounted for him.