2 States/2 Tags - Father/Son Muley Hunt November 2018

BIG thanks to a couple folks whom I reached out to for intel on our tags. I've already been in touch via PM/text/call with those individuals, you know who you are - thanks again.

Back in spring, I put dad in for a host of low % odds tags in New Mexico across species. Put myself in for a combination of same/different tags, but given the short seasons in New Mexico - we applied as individuals, not a party. Also threw in for some low odds tags in other states or simply built points across the West. Honestly, I had already planned to hunt northeastern Montana for muleys in mid-November as long as the winter didn't result in major winter kill. If you follow that corner of the country, it was quickly evident that it was time for a change of plans.

Dad's NM 3rd choice deer tag came through and provided that change of plan we wanted. The more I learned about that unit, the more excited I got. I did a TON of map work, contacted folks in the area as well as folks who had had the tag before. Even some hunters who frequented neighboring units with similar habitat, it was worth picking their brains as well.

In the meantime, it was in the back of my mind that if dad tagged out quickly, I might want a tag of my own to do some hunting. Once a rental car, flight, and gear is packed, the tag is honestly the least costly item in the whole collective. I stalked the reissue list for about a month and finally snagged a tag for the west slope of Colorado. A 0 PP tag, more of an opportunity buck tag, but hey - I had a tag and I would be hunting too. Worst case scenario, dad ate tag soup on his tag and I'd be able to hunt the last 3-4 days of CO 3rd season after a long drive between states/units.

Fast forward to the hunt...

I flew out on Halloween night from my home in Columbus, OH. Straight into ABQ where I picked up a 4WD rental pickup and drove 4-5 hours down into the New Mexico desert. I finally put the truck in park about 2 AM, 15 miles deep into a tract of BLM that I intended the scout the next morning. I didn't have the motivation to pitch the tipi that night, so I just rolled out my bag in the pickup bed and woke up 4 hours later to hike and glass the area. The habitat looked pretty good and I liked the mix of terrain breaks that provided glassing opportunity, but the country was LOADED with cattle and I only located 7 does and 1 little forkie buck for the morning. That and somewhere around 2 trillion rabbits. Good grief.

I bailed on that location, swung by the local airport where dad flew into midday, and we trekked further into the desert where we encountered the other main type of habitat in the unit - sandhills covered in shinnery oak. To say hunting this type of habitat is unique would be an understatement. We zeroed in on a couple tracts I had identified as difficult access, roadless areas with abundant water tanks and windmills, and we made camp by mid-afternoon. That evening (Thursday), we zeroed dad's rifle and glassed some more country picking up about the same number of does and 1 or 2 more small dink bucks.



Friday (second and last day of scouting) I decided to hike as deep as possible into the roadless tract where we pitched camp. 10 miles of sand spurs and lunchtime later, we had only seen 3 deer, BUT...they were all bucks and 1 of them was BIG. 26-28" wide. They were bachelored up and hugging a private/public line backed up to a pasture where the feed was prime and water had been supplied for some cows. That and the fact we were miles from the nearest public access, we counted on the fact we would be the only hunters chasing this buck.

Some sound advice that I have tried to live by in the East related to whitetail hunting is "never leave a big buck to find a big buck." I hunt public land in Ohio exclusively and I've done a good job of concentrating areas and consistently and persistently hunting big bucks once I have them located. However, in the West, I've often been prone to more run-and-gun styles of hunting -- particularly guilty of that in hunting OTC archery elk in Colorado. We've filled plenty of tags with that strategy but we've also relied on long windows of time to be successful. With New Mexico's short seasons, I realized once we located a good buck we had better hunker down and try to get it done right then and there.





BUT, we were still scouting. So off we went to find a back-up plan that afternoon. And find another plan we did. I had just checked for tracks around a water hole and poked my head up over the nearest tall sand dune, when a really nice mule deer picked his head up from the shinnery oak only 300-400 yards away. There was a ton of deer sign in this location and the more we poked around, the more we thought perhaps this location should actually become our Plan A. We found another couple smaller bucks towards evening scattered about and that confirmed it. Being we were much closer to a road and easy access, this spot was almost certain to get some pressure at some point in the hunt - so we might as well be the first, while our group of 3 bucks way back could still be pristine hunting 3 or 4 days into the season.

Great write up cant wait for the finish

Back to it...might take another start/stops to get through.

That night we set an extra early alarm and at risk of being 2nd truck to the access point on opening day, we were sitting at the end of the 2-track at 5:00 AM. Keep in mind shooting light was 6:45. That gave us plenty of time to double check the backpack contents, sip some warm coffee, study more maps, and watch the eastern skies gradually lighten. Because we had seen the nice buck and the slightly smaller buck rather close to the 2-track, we decided the prudent decision would be to wait on shooting light and then slowly hunt our way into the heart of the 4-5 sections that were public.

Somehow no other truck lights ever swung in behind us and we left the truck about 5 minutes after legal shooting light.

10 steps later, we were laying in the dirt and I was ranging a big bodied deer that had stepped into view right over a large sand dune. Just like that. No exaggeration. We even considered that a better rest might be the truck bed. 200 yards, dad. Looks like a big buck. Heavy, tall, not real wide, but at least as good as that other buck we saw yesterday. Boom. Miss. Boom. Miss.

True story.

There is kicking a gift horse in the mouth, but then there is kicking a gift horse in the mouth, butt, shin, and side. This was the latter. Dad was a hot mess. He is usually dead nuts when the moment of truth arrives, but it was totally unanticipated, completely off guard, and the buck was on to us before we even knew what was going on. Long story short, I had the binos on the buck both shots and I was totally convinced Round 1 was a complete miss. A little bit less certain on Round 2, but we still needed to investigate. We spent 2 hours combing the hillside for signs of a hit...hair, blood, scuff marks, checking over-the-hill fence lines for evidence - anything that would have indicated a hit. Nada, zip, zilch, that buck had cheated death - no doubt about it.

Only one thing to do. Shake it off, re-double our concentration, and see what else opening day had in store for us. About 1 mile in, we stood atop the tallest dune and started picking apart country. We could see 2-3 miles in some directions and bands of sage and cactus alternated with strips of dunes covered in the low-growing oak. In other words, deer could appear in places where you swore no deer had been just seconds before. 2 does over here, 5 over there, little forkie snacking down below. There were a lot of deer. Fast forward an hour or so, and I had switched to glassing long range with the spotting scope and picked up a train of does a mile and a half out. Doe, doe, ..., doe, doe, gawwwhhh!!

Stud buck. I got dad on the spotter ASAP and he instantly confirmed - no-doubt-about-it shooter. Here are some pics I digiscoped as we watched the buck from about 10 AM right up until noon.

I have enjoyed the story so far!

In the 2 hours we watched the buck and the group of does, they fed off of public, on to and through a private pasture, and then back on to another section of public. The trouble was that the 2nd section of public was not accessible as it was a classic "corner hop" section. Once the deer were on that section, the does split off from the buck and disappeared deep into the sandhills. He worked down a fence line and dropped down into a small cut where we were fairly confident he bedded for the midday.

At that point, we decided to push deeper into public land where we would be a) closer to where the deer jumped the fence initially into the private pasture and b) higher and hopefully open up a vantage where we could re-locate the buck. Though we couldn't see the buck from our new vantage 1 mile further, it put us in a much better position to make something happen if the buck reversed his steps in the afternoon. Moving also put a bunch more country in view and we picked up another decent buck in a herd of a dozen does. Though he wasn't a shooter, he was a decent 3x4 buck and kept us entertained while we waited for the big buck to reappear.

At 3:30 I picked up the big buck again in the spotter, and though the heat waves had picked up and were badly distorting the image, we had no doubt it was him and he was headed back towards the pasture. He was retracing his steps!

The smaller buck that kept us occupied throughout the midday hours.

Once it was clear the buck was going to cross back into the private pasture, we dropped into a long narrow coulee and covered ground to get to the fence crossing where the buck and his does had crossed earlier in the day. The buck slowed to a complete halt once in the pasture and really put on the feed bags giving us plenty of time to cover ground, get in position, calm the nerves, and plot our next move.





To make a LONG story short, the buck crossed on to public land at about 330 p.m. We made a stalk from 700 yards to almost 400 when the wind picked up, the sky grew dark, and it became immediately obvious we needed to back out and wait for the desert surprise monsoon to pass. Hunkered under a wind cut sand dune, we made a slight adjustment to our planned stalk route, and waited out the weather. Once past, a desert rainbow shone down on us as we re-started our stalk. This time from a slightly different angle and in a way that would put us in some of the taller cactus for more cover. It worked to perfect. 800 yards became 600. 600, 400. 400 down to 200. The wind was still howling 20+ mph, so we continued to pick away yards until the buck was a mere 140 yards distant with zero clue as to what was going down. I got dad set-up on the backpack and told him to keep shooting until the buck was down.



This time we got a much different result than right out of the gate in the morning. Boom, hit. Boom, hit. Boom, he's down!

We knew he was a good buck, but the closer we got, the bigger he looked and the expression on dad's face when he lifted that buck up for the first time was priceless. Celebration time.

To make the pack-out an easier ordeal, we hauled everything back to the truck, grabbed a quick meal on the tailgate, emptied our packs, and went back in a couple hours after dark. We got back to the buck at 10 PM, got him loaded and started hiking at midnight, and made it back to the truck at 2. A 16 mile day in the desert and memories for a lifetime.

Needless to say, we were ecstatic with what 2 days of scouting and 1 full day of hunting had produced. The unit, while of decent reputation, had given us above and beyond what I had expected. Even better, tagging out so early gave me the option to get up to Colorado much earlier than expected and give my tag and full effort. We decided mid-packout that we would give ourselves 2 days to transfer up to Colorado and let the opening weekend pressure subside a bit. That meant a long sleep-in day on Sunday before we pulled stakes on the desert tipi.





The rest of the next 2 days went a little something like this...visit 1 taxidermist - garbage. 2nd taxidermist - primo. Get ice on meat and buy cheap cooler. Bum shower off a guy I met off another forum and return the favor by taking him out for dinner. Return to taxidermist's shop and crash at his place that night. Coffee early Monday AM followed by 9 hours of driving, podcasts, fast food, and scenery transitioning from southern New Mexico to Colorado's west slope. Bighorn sheep were actually the most numerous wildlife we saw from the drive in, that and pronghorn which dotted the NM landscape for the first few hours. Rolling into town late, we decided to grab a cabin that first evening, re-organize gear, charge devices, and get a proper night's sleep before tackling my tag on Tuesday AM.





No promises but I'll try to get Part 2 up tomorrow.

Great stories and deer.

Awesome story, great deer. Thanks for sharing ??

What an adventure! Can't wait to here the rest of the story.

Congrats!

Congrats nice buck.
And now for "the rest of the story".
Lol

At the prompt of a MM'er who left me a voicemail politely telling me to "finish the story!" Here we go...was basically off grid for the last 4 days at grandma's house for Thanksgiving. She is quite literally "over the river and through the woods"...

Our first morning on the mountain was Tuesday, the 4th day of the hunt for Colorado 3rd season. Our unit was also OTC-bull elk and it was quickly apparent that hunting pressure would be an issue. Talk about a 180 degree flip from New Mexico. We saw 0 hunters is 2 days of scouting and 1 of hunting, I guarantee there was not a morning or evening when we didn't see AT LEAST 3 groups of hunters in Colorado.

My plan was to target steep elevation gain areas to try and distance ourselves from the competition. In most cases, this would put us hunting new country than all the road hunters. At a minimum, it would severely change the glassing angle for us as opposed to most of the optics that were pointed up from below. Even with short distances to hike though (mostly 2 miles and under), the elevation was taking a toll on dad.



I was probably guilty of biting off too big of a bite on the very first morning, but after 90 minutes of struggling through the dark, we topped out in a beautiful looking bowl only 3/4 miles from the truck but nearly 900' above in vertical gain. Right from the truck, we could see deer sign and as we gained elevation, there was a ton of fresh elk sign mixed in as well. At legal shooting light, we bumped into a pair of coyotes which took off straight up the bowl and I worried they might blow out whatever we had hiked hard for. With that in mind, we made a hurried push for a good vantage and were rewarded with a herd of elk in the dead center of the basin. A 5 point bull that was decent, raghorn 4x4 (pictured), a couple spikes and 10 or so cows and calves. Though we didn't find any deer in the basin, being in rifle range of elk in an OTC unit (even without an elk tag in our pocket) was a cool experience. For a second, we even thought about going back to town and purchasing a tag...more on that later.



As the elk dissolved into the oakbrush, we glassed the pockets of sage and higher chutes of rock and aspen hoping to glimpse a mule deer buck, but it didn't appear any were up in the basin. Bailing on the basin, we turned into the sun and assumed a perch high above the juniper and sage flats below and proceeded to glass for the next 3 hours. We could see 270 degrees from rifle range out to 1.5 miles and saw nothing save a single doe/fawn pair.



Lunch break time and a switch in areas, it was obvious deer HAD been in the area, but things did not look promising a third of the way into 3rd season.

We drove 30 miles south to a state wildlife area for the afternoon hunt. The SWA began in the low country along the river bottom and reached back and up through swaths of state land and BLM traversing the sage to juniper and into oakbrush transition area. It was a bit lower in elevation than what we had tried in the morning, and some tough access in one corner promised some seclusion (or at least we hoped).

It took about an hour and a half to climb up to a prime glassing knob and we instantly started seeing deer (and more elk!). 4 does here, 3 there, a couple does and fawns crossing the field back closer to the road, 2 does up in an oak opening. Lots of does! We had just talked to the local biologist and he said only 50 deer were currently using the entire SWA. Well if that was true, we saw just about all of them. And ZERO bucks.



Until the last hour of daylight that is. I picked up a deer standing stationary in an opening in the junipers - the problem was that I could only see its butt. I got dad on the spotter and told him to keep watch and report back when he got a glimpse of the deer's head. It took somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes for the deer to swap ends, but when it did dad just blurted out "buck, big buck, big buck". I jumped on the lens and sure enough a solid 4 point buck was in full view. We glassed just long enough to determine it was worth pursuing, make a prediction on his movements given the nearby doe groups, shoot a bearing with my compass, guess a range on the map, and tear off down the mountain with over 1,000 yards to clip off.

With 20 minutes of daylight remaining, we had stalked directly in between the 2 closest doe groups to his location that we could see and were within 200 yards and full visibility of both. I was laying prone on my pack and just needed that buck to step out and nose some does. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Shooting light ended and we were still wondering where the buck had gone. With my binos I was still checking both doe groups when I saw the one split down the middle, does trotting in both directions. There he was. Right on time for him, only 2 or 3 minutes late for us. Perfect plan, excellent stalk, but the buck's patience prevented another first day tag out.



Had the buck been a bit bigger, we probably would have focused on that spot and concentrated on trying to hunt that specific buck. But he was just a nice buck, not a great buck, so we decided on the drive back to camp to keep exploring new country and hunting for a bigger buck.

Another picture of the "first day" Colorado buck. We figured he was probably 23-24" outside, he definitely had decent forks on both sides and OK fronts. 150 class - a good buck for the unit and considering the conditions, but this was Colorado and anything is possible.

Next morning we slow hunted a big ridge of junipers that back-doored some irrigated fields on private land. It took a couple hours to find deer but once we found a few, it was quickly obvious most of the local deer were piled in this one pocket. It took quite a bit of time glassing in between junipers but we eventually picked out 15 or so deer. 2 or 3 small bucks and the rest does. There were a few BIG set of tracks in the sand and we planned to come back and check the area again in a few days.

This was one day where from atop our ridge we could see a major road that sliced through the unit. It was ridiculous how many rigs drove slow up and down that road throughout the morning. Every turn-off got glassed no less than 15 or 20 times before lunchtime and not a single hunter (that we could see) ever left their truck.



We used the middle of that day to check 2 areas in the unit that I had marked on my maps. One area was slightly higher in elevation, but decided against exploring it much when the roads were less than subpar and remembered I had declined the insurance offered from the rental company. The other area had some interesting pockets with isolated feed but for the most part resembled the surface of the moon. This area more so than any other badly reflected the recent drought conditions.



With great results at a state wildlife area the previous evening, we decided to visit another for the afternoon. I'll just sum that evening up with one comment...if you're hunting deer on piece of public property and rumors spill out that 150 elk were on that tract of public land that morning, go deer hunting elsewhere. It was a bee hive of activity right up until last light and we saw no fewer than 30 rigs packed into a 4000 acre tract of state land. A bunch of eager elk hunters slobbering over the prospect of some "easy elk" making a dumb mistake. We chalked the evening up to bad luck and vowed to never step foot there ever again. No one fired a single shot that we heard and we saw a single doe scrambling for cover right at last light.

Because we had found a good number of does off the beaten path the morning before with some big tracks intermixed, we returned to the same area hoping to lay eyes on the buck leaving those tracks. We decided to hunt in from a totally different direction, slow hunting through thick cover and sliding through the primary bedding slope between 10 AM and noon once the deer had a chance to settle in. Whether those deer changed their schedule from the day prior or they scooted out in advance of our best attempts at still hunting, we got nearly skunked that morning with only a half dozen does and a small buck sighted for our efforts. We didn't see any elk that morning, but were in fresh sign start to finish even locating a couple piles of recent bear scat too.





I revisited the maps at lunch and chose some flat-topped mesas with some juniper removal projects to target for the evening hunt. Though the habitat looked great, most of the sign was a week or two old and I had the sneaky suspicion most of the deer had migrated lower to the nearby private already. We saw a few does that evening but didn't scratch out even a single buck sighting. We did have our 3rd elk encounter of the trip so far...remember that OTC elk tag I contemplated buying that very first morning!! You know what they say about hindsight. It was a long hike back in the dark to the truck, and we headed to town for some mid-hunt creature comforts and catch the Steelers/Panthers Thursday night football game. Go Steelers! That was a whoopin'.

Next morning was spent decluttering the truck, splitting gear into halves, packing dad's luggage, and dropping him by the local airport for a hopper flight to Denver midday. I had 2 days left to hunt solo. Though hunting with dad had been splendid, I was looking forward to hunting alone at my own pace without having to look over my shoulder.





That day just after lunch, I pressed deep into a tract of public land that faced into a large surrounding landscape of private land. From my perch high above the junipers and sagebrush, I could see literally miles into near and distant groves of aspen, oakbrush and even a bit of dark timber. Unfortunately, by sundown it was obvious that I had overstepped the bounds of where the mule deer had migrated. The trails beaten deep into the mountainsides all had one-way traffic headed to low country. I saw a measly 3 or 4 does far below on the fringes of the juniper/sage transition line and that was it. That was the final time I ventured higher in elevation and though it took 3+ days to ultimately accept it, I committed to hunting lower country for the rest of the hunt.

From where I left my truck, I drove 30 miles down the mountain, low through the private, and up into some BLM country that promised the right combination of nearby agriculture, sagebrush/juniper transition areas, and just enough terrain to get away from road hunting pressure. I slept in the pickup bed that night (COLD!! 12 degrees!) and was perched atop a flat mesa well before legal shooting light. As it was now the 2nd Saturday, plenty of headlights bounced around on the 2-tracks down low.

In between the 2-tracks and the bottoms of the mesas, I glassed several doe groups early but all conspicuously lacking a tag-a-long buck of any age/size. Somewhere around 8 AM and swinging the big optic on my tripod, I picked up a long string of does coming in off the private and headed towards public land to bed. They disappeared into a cottonwood river bottom and when they popped up over the other side a big buck had joined them - and he was rutty! I followed my normal multi-step procedure of plotting a long range stalk - GPS starting coordinate, compass bearing, estimated destination coordinate, and zoomed-out pictures on the phone for context - and took off. It took me only about 30 minutes to cover the 1.4 miles to be within 600 yards of the doe group and the buck. At this point, it was just a matter of sorting out property lines, getting a distance ranged and a solid shooting rest built with the pack, and being patient.

Darn those property lines.

Twice the buck was within 30 yards of the invisible public/private property line (no fences on this boundary), but both times he drifted back towards the river bottom and corralled his does straight away from me. As they drifted towards the 700 yard mark and beyond, they left my confident range and more bucks started coming out of the woodwork. At one point, either 4 or 5 different bucks were in orbit of the dozen does. Lip curling, chasing, fighting, rubbing, the whole rutting show. It was awesome. I settled in my mind that a shot opportunity was not likely going to happen that morning, but was confident I was the only one in on this herd and was confident that where they were headed to bed on public, I'd have ample opportunity to cut them off in the afternoon.







I got some really good digi-scoped pictures of the bigger buck and the other decent buck in the group - a fairly mature buck sporting only 2x3 antlers. By 10:30 AM, the deer had drifted into a long bench of junipers that finger ridged down off the nearby steep-sided mesa. I took a good long time to study maps, the subtle terrain features of the area, guess at what the thermals would do later in the day, and hiked the 3 miles back to the truck.

It took me an hour to drive out of the area I had camped in the night prior and loop all the way around to gain easier access for my evening ambush, but it went off without a hitch. By 2:30 PM, I had gotten the wind and snuck into a position guarding the narrow swath of open sagebrush that separated the private river bottom from the bench of junipers that was 100% on public. I had a 450 yard shot to the deep corner where private met public and had a 30-40 yard wide window to shoot all the way back to my position. With 3+ hours until dark, I was confident my hunt would be over before sunset. Sure enough, about 4:45 I saw the first of many deer sneak down out of the junipers, ease into the sagebrush and work across on to the private. 2 does, a little forkie from the morning's rut fest, another forkie, another group of does, the mature 2x3, and a few more does. By my count, every deer from that morning EXCEPT the big buck was accounted for before nightfall. I was stumped and the only thing I could figure is that he kept rolling through once all the does bedded and he had checked them all for signs of estrus. I have to think that if a single one of them had been "right", my plan would have come full circle that evening.

I was down to the last morning of the hunt, but I was not without a plan. I had multiple doe groups located and mapped from earlier in the week and my plan revolved around some quick run-and-gun drive, hike, and glass action for the first couple hours checking for bucks that had moved in to tend doe herds. Once I checked 2 or 3 spots, I planned to head back into the juniper bench and still hunt in hopes of locating the big buck from the previous day.

My morning started off great and I located doe herds of 14, 17, 6, 7, and 11 all before 9:30. The only trouble was that for all the does, I could find nothing but a smattering of forked antlered bucks. Oh, and remember that OTC bull tag I decided NOT to buy, I bedded down 2 more bulls on public land right after sunrise - one a really nice 6 point in the 300" range.

With my hunt down to the juniper bench, I decided I would pass the mature 2x3 if given the chance again and kept my bar set for the big one. The wind was blowing stiff and the thermals were already locked in place, so I made 3 passes down the bench - once along the top, once 1/3 the way down, and a final pass only about 40 yards up from the sagebrush transition line. In all, I stalked to within 20 or so yards of 15+ deer including the 2x3. I was glad I had already made up my mind and passing was easy. Like the day before, I accounted for nearly every deer in the area I knew about, EXCEPT the big buck. It was discouraging that I could not put things together on a big buck, but I was very satisfied with my effort on the hunt. I made solid plays the whole hunt through and just needed a tiny bit more luck to punch my tag.

With nasty weather blowing in, I had to bail on my Sunday evening hunt and take off for Albuquerque where I had to return my rental truck and fly out early the next morning. For those of you in parts of western Colorado on the close of 3rd season, you can attest to how gross it got in parts of the state. It took me almost 10 and a half hours to drive what should have taken only about 5 hours. Thank goodness for 4 wheel drive is all I can say.



In conclusion, I think a lot of guys read the title of a post like this and assume it ends with 2 really nice bucks, especially when the first tag is a near immediate "result". The bottom line is that these 2 tags illustrated the wide spectrum that hunts can span. Hunts can seem almost too easy, hunts can seem darn hard - they are all good and a hunt's goodness has little to do with the end result. Sure punching one's tag on a big buck is a great feeling, but I had the honest to goodness feeling that I wouldn't have changed a single thing about the 10 morning/evening hunts I invested in Colorado. I could rest easy knowing I put forth all the effort I could muster, passed on 8-10 bucks that I was within comfortable rifle range of, and chased a couple bucks that I would have been proud to take. Tag 1 down in New Mexico was an obvious and unequivocal success, but I would argue that Tag 2 in a 0 PP Colorado deer unit with pumpkin patch hunting pressure was as well. I hope everyone, independent of their hunt "results", can keep everything in perspective and thoroughly enjoy in retrospect their 2018 hunting season memories as well.

What a great story ! Sounds like you should be a writer for a hunting magazine! You tell the story so well, it makes the reader feel like he was there. Well done!

Sorry you didn't fill the second tag. I really enjoyed your write up and story. You have the right attitude and we all need to remember to enjoy the entire hunt because sometimes the end result isn't always success. Plus one on you made us feel like we were right there with you. Thanks for sharing your hunts with us.

Great write up. You had my hooked. Keep writing!!