Kenny “K-Dog” Cipra of North Huntingdon is all smiles after shooting a 3-by-3 mule deer in Montana last week.
Not every trip to the woods ends with the hunter filling his tag. That’s just the way it goes.
Sometimes, though, everything works out just right.
That was the case for a North Huntingdon father and son team. They traveled to Montana recently and came home with two deer, of two different kinds.
Fifteen-year-old Kenny Cipra, known as K-Dog to his friends, tagged a 3-by-3 mule deer, shooting it at 150 yards after a two-hour stalk, most of it spent on his belly.
According to his father Ken, Kenny saw the deer at daybreak. It was with two smaller bucks and about 10 does. The rut was still on, if winding down, and the buck was following the does. That had the herd slowly moving away from the hunters.
To get within range, the young hunter and his guide snuck up on the deer, alternately crawling on their stomachs and jogging hunched over, until they got in position to make a shot down a ravine. The deer fell at one shot from Kenny’s Savage Sporter 30-06, his great uncle’s gun.
Ken Cipra, meanwhile, shot a 10-point whitetail on the same property. He took it at 320 yards.
It was the pair’s second trip out West. Kenny shot a mule deer buck last year, too.
Ken Cipra poses with the 10-point Montana whitetail he shot the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
