More than any year recently, I was excited this year for the Wisconsin deer hunt. And it did not disappoint.

Over the years this hunt has always been one of the premier hunts on my schedule because it is a time when the men (mostly) get together to spend three or four days of uninterrupted time together. Since I was a very young man I've always looked forward to spending the time with my dad and brother. As the years have passed, my sons have been able to join us on a regular basis. And last year, we added my niece Kate to the hunting party which is very cool.

This year was a big step. We added two more young men to the hunting party in my nephews Brett and Trevor. These two brought our group total to 10 hunters; a larger deer hunting party than I have ever been with. And, it was everything I had thought it would be.

The highlight of the trip and one of my favorite hunting pictures of all time is shown below. size. A very happy 12 year old just after bagging his very first whitetail. Congratulations Brett! I'm very proud of you. 

We ended up bagging a total of 2 bucks. My son Blake shot an 8 pointer on Saturday afternoon. We could have taken many more small bucks, but passed them up in hopes that they will grow up a bit for next year. Two QDM bucks had already been taken on our property during the 2009 early bow season.

One other remarkable element of our 2009 deer gun deer hunt was the warm weather. Opening morning it was around 25 degrees and after that it was in the 40s and 50s all weekend. The older I get the more I love warm weather.

Here are a couple more pics from our great trip. Thanks to all of my hunting partners for making this the best trip ever.

Brett and David

Me and my gang   

My friend Tim spent the last thirty days pursuing whitetail deer at his ranch in southern Minnesota. He never was able to connect with the animal he wanted during the bow season, but caught up with this one during the gun season.

Congratulations on a quality buck Tim.

In your dreams you might have a 500 acre ranch just outside of Golden, Colorado. I know I have one in my dreams. And, my neighbor Eddie has one for reals. 

Eddie has a 6x6 that scored 362 on his wall that he shot a few years ago. Generally, they do pretty well. I've posted pictures of his bobcat and mountain lions on this blog in the past. This time he had a banner year even for his crew.

Eddie, who is on the right, is sitting on his big and heavy 6 x 7. The "little guy" on the left is a 6 x 6 bigger than any elk I've ever shot. Take a look at the photo below to see how far apart these two big guys died.

Lest you think this is all about getting lucky, each of these big bulls were killed with a single shot from 400 yards. Eddie saw both of them and his buddy didn't see the second bull. Eddie waited as long as he could for his friend to locate the second bull, but eventually had to shoot. When that bull went down, the second bull stepped out and was taken with a single shot from his hunting partner.

Believe it or not, it gets better. The third guy in their hunting party had shot a nice 6 x 6 four days earlier. As it turned out, the only one who had shot an elk until these two were shot ended up with the smallest of the three. Oh that bad luck.....the smallest 6 x 6.
 

Summer time is just not my running time. There were weeks this summer where my mile count did not reach double digits. I think there was one week where I ran a little over three miles. Huh, three miles. And I call myself a runner.

The good news is that I have been running 13 to 19 miles a week for a while now and this week, drum roll please, I have trotted along for over 25 miles. I actually ran 5 out of the last 7 days. Woo hoooo! I think I can make a good argument that I am back on track.

And, my calendar tells me just in time if I'm going to use a 6 month training program. The Boston Marathon is almost exactly 6 months away. I'm running Boston! I like saying that and writing it.

I'm looking forward to doing a little more variety in my speed work this time. I'm going to keep my mile repeats because they really work. And, I'm also going to run some 5k races as a gage of my speed. But, I'm also going to do some Yasso 800's and maybe some 400's, too.

Ultimately I'd like to run a 5k under 20 minutes again, but I'm going to need to do some speed work that is geared toward that to be successful. As for a marathon goal, I'm not ready to decide. I've been so focused on qualifying for Boston over the last couple of years, I'm just not sure what I want to shoot for this year. I do know that I don't want to show up for Boston not ready to run well. Rather that means I 'm going to try to run a 3 hour 15 minute marathon or a 3 hour and 50 minute marathon, I don't know.

I guess I'll make that decision over the coming months.