The 2015 Iowa first gun season, here in NW Iowa was pretty good, if I had a negative it was the warm weather. On December 5th and 6th it was sunny and warm but 5 am still came around early enough. If your unfamiliar with Iowa gun seasons, party hunting is the traditional style. Our group was comprised of nine hunters, all met at the lodge early, to a game plan the events for the day. We decided that all of us would set in our bow stands for the first few hours of the morning, if unsuccessful we would then group up for a few deer drives. As we all got to our locations and sat, there wasn’t as much movement, that was anticipated. I saw a few does out about 250 yard out feeding in the picked corn field but just was ready to start throwing lead that far.
Another guy walked to his stand he pushed out a coyote, it come running in and I drew a bead on him. All I needed was for him to cross the ditch then he was mine. He hit the ditch and just never managed to come back out, so turned my attention back to the deer. Few minutes later I heard crashing through the bush, it was a doe running full blast my way. I readied my shotgun waiting for my shot. She soon presented a clear shot and with a well place slug, I sent her rolling, a clean kill and meat to feed my family. Soon the time that we had agree to meet up came, with one of my tags filled the group still had many tags to fill.
We grouped back up and after a few small drives we had another decent doe tagged. We took a short lunch break and got ready for the afternoon hunts. At this point my wife joined us, which this was her first shotgun hunt but an event that I had looked forward to all year. Finally, an opportunity for her to share in my passion of hunting. 
I had her sit about 200 yards from my position, from there I could see that she had a few deer within sight but way out of her range. At that time my phone goes off and it’s a text from her “I like this but I just wish one would come close enough for me to shot” after reading the text I thought to myself yup that’s hunting. I set my phone down and looked up and had a doe feeding at 15 yards, had no idea I was there. I slowly reached for my shotgun. The doe quickly realized something was wrong but it was a little too late as I quickly put a slug through her and she fell like a ton of bricks. That would end my wife’s hunt as she came running over to see what I had shot. When we got back to the lodge, after dark, to find out both our youth hunters put the hammer down on two smaller bucks, and between the rest, we had another 6 does on the ground. No one in our group killed a few of our target bucks, which is fine with me as I will get an opportunity at them next fall. Over all we had a safe, enjoyable hunt, it really was a great time of hunting and family are friends.
