In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Paralysis by analysis. This is a crippling mental analyzation that often plagues me. It doesn’t matter if it’s business, family decisions and most frighteningly when it comes to hunting. Should I do this, or that. Thoughts of lost opportunities if I decide the wrong thing.

Well sometimes you just got to make a decision and just stick with it. Right or wrong least you took action.

So started my 2025 Coues deer OTC archery hunt in Arizona. The landscape down near the Mexican border was drier than a popcorn fart. Given that information the logical thing to do was to sit water. With that resource being the limiting factor, there was only so many places the deer could go to soothe their parched throats.

Now I’m a firm believer that if the state says it legal, then we have every right to take advantage of it. If officials say we can sit water, well then by God, we can sit water. That’s what I told myself and that’s what I did for a day. But this year it just wasn’t sitting right with me.

After sitting a stand over a water tank and noticing a few does come in that would make a meth head seem calm, cool and collected, I just couldn’t personally continue to justify taking advantage of them in this vulnerable situation.

They were hyped up to the next level because when they go to water they know they’re most vulnerable. Predators understand the simple logic that us humans do. They have to come to water, so sit, wait and attack when they come in. With the mountain lion population as high as a hippy on April 20th, these dog sized deer were on DEFCON 1.

Am I judging people who sit water? Hell no. Will I sit water again sometime in the future? Hell yes. Just not this year.

At least I limited my options by one for the next days hunt. So what’s left? Spot and stalk or lay and wait by ambush. But which of the spots that I had so meticulously scouted of the off season should I invest my time into?

Just make a decision a freaking stick to it. Analyzing the uncontrollable variables would do me no good. Get out where they are and just see what happens.

I picked a spot on my OnX maps that was littered with waypoints, fired up the truck with all my gear in it and headed out for the day.

With temps in the low twenties and my skin thinning by the day from now living in the typically warm borderlands region of southern Arizona, I layered on the clothing like I was headed on a Mount Everest expedition. If only my Colorado buddies could see me now…

I sat with my spotter between my legs as the stars faded and gray light started to overtake the night. This was the time to catch them moving. I methodically scanned the rolling hills trying to decipher little gray moving specks from the equally gray landscape.

Nothing doing.

Man the rut has got to kick in at some point I thought to myself. With miles and miles of terrain to glass, I was blown away that nothing, not even a coyote, wanted to show itself.

I could sit there and complain about my bad luck, or I could simply change locations and do something about it. Maybe I should wait longer, perhaps they just weren’t moving yet. Or would I waste the golden hour staring at the same few rocks, trying to make a Coues materialize from them.

The best thing to do is the right thing, the second best is the wrong thing, the worst is to do nothing at all.

I decided to move on and see what another area had to offer.

That was the right decision.

My binoculars must have had a mind of their own, because as soon as I had brought up the glass I noticed a buck staring down at a doe, daring her to move. And then another buck, then another.

My short term memory isn’t what it used to be and I kicked myself for not remembering one simple thing with the rut. It’s localized. One hot doe changes everything. Every doe isn’t appealing to a buck, but when they are in heat, they’re a magnet to every buck in the county.

I’ll impart a little bit of knowledge that I’m sure everyone else already knows. When bucks are rutting, I’ve found the best way to get a shot at one is to get in as close as possible without spooking them, sit tight and let them make the mistake.

I gathered gear, checked the wind and meandered the few miles towards the rutfest.

Once I crested the last little hill before I reached their playground I kept chanting to myself, slow is steady, steady is deadly. Don’t make a mistake now. You have all day.

I didn’t need all day apparently. As I took my first steps into the dry arroyo a doe popped her head above a hilltop. With little more than a few tufts of grass to conceal me, I thought I was busted for sure. She obviously had more important things to worry about. In this case that would be a little forked horn buck sticking his nose in a place that she didn’t feel it belonged.

I dropped to my knees hoping that their game of grab-ass was keeping them occupied. They ran by me, tongues hanging out from exhaustion, without so much as a glance at me.

This was the little guy of the three bucks that I had seen earlier. The two others had to be close by. No self-respecting hard horned buck was going to let this adolescent take what was rightfully his.

Apparently the biggest of the three bucks felt the same way I did. Movement on the same hill that the other two had just crossed caught my eye and out came the biggest buck. He looked pissed.

As he dropped down the hill and behind a little depression I drew back. For a moment I thought about how I was going to range him if he followed the same path the doe and forky had just taken, but this was to be an unwarranted concern.

He decided the quickest way to the doe would be a straight line, and that straight line would be right through me.

Good God, he’s going to run right through me I had thought. Already at full draw, with a few blades of grass as cover, there was no way for me to move. If I blinked my eyes he would know it, let alone pivoting the few degrees I needed to get a shot off. I would have to wait until he walked into my sight pin.

Ten yards away and not a clue I was there., what were the chances… As he filled up my entire sight housing I pulled through the shot and watched him stagger as my arrow broke his shoulder and sunk deep into his body.

Adrenaline took control of him, not letting him know he was already dead as he made an all out sprint.

Thirty yards down the trail I heard a crash as he launched himself off a ten foot cliff and found his final resting place in the bottom of the arroyo.

Make a decision. Preferably the right decision. A bad decision is a good backup. But for the love of God, just make a decision. This time it was the correct decision. Perhaps that made up for my 100 previous bad choices. A beautiful buck that was going to go for a ride in my backpack told me that it had.