Stephen his kids, Maci and Jacob, John and I

It seems impossible that this week, March 10th will mark the 4th year since my son flew Home to Jesus.  Memories and photos are all that’s left of a loving, vibrant young man.  On earth that is, Stephen Sakaguchi is vibrantly living and flourishing in a Glorious Land just beyond our sight.  Not far away.

However I would like to share some of those memories of my son with you, this month.  This month of death, tragedy and grief, this month of life, rebirth and victory.

This story is a memory from Stephen’s good buddy since early high school and hunting partner Jeremy Butcher.

THE BEST DAY EVER

By Jeremy Butcher

            It was November 2005, I was one year removed from college at Montana Tech. Stephen was living in Helena and had been thriving in construction. We met at my Mom’s house in Plains, at the time Tommy was eight years old. The grass was green from recent melt off and the orchard had lost all of its leaves.

Stephen and I wasted no time preparing for the trip and catching up on life. It was a time of great reflection, of past memories together and of life’s memories that were not always so good. We were best friends and were open and honest with each other. There was no fear of hurting each others feelings or offending each other. There was nothing that we couldn’t talk about.

That night after hours of hanging out together our conversation led us to discussing our fathers and the memories. Both of us had lost our dads, Stephen at age ten and me at eighteen. We decided to go visit Stephen’s dad’s grave. Stephen had not gone there often which I understand. After much searching with flashlights, we found the grave of James Gary Sakaguchi, Stephens’s father. Over all it was a positive experience and I think it meant a lot to Stephen that he spent that moment.

From there it was off the bed and waiting for daylight with the typical restlessness. In the morning, we traveled to our favorite hunting spot. At the time we hadn’t hunted it much but we knew the caliber of deer that were in the area. I had harvested the biggest deer of my life there two years prior.

When we arrived, we found the hunting conditions to be extremely poor. Heavy snow, low visibility and about ten inches of hard, loud, crunchy old snow on the ground. We parked and headed out. The location was directly off the interstate, it was thick dead fall timber and extremely steep.

We were targeting a specific bench on the steep hillside and went straight for it. Because of the loud snow, we decided to step in unison only when vehicles would pass on the interstate. After two hundred yards and twenty minutes, I heard a buck grunting. Stephen argued with me that it was a crow, but I persisted. The buck continued to grunt and was heading towards the bench.

We carefully followed. As we crested the rim of the bench, we saw a large set of antlers coming straight at us through the brush. We could make out his eleven inch G2 point with a three inch kicker and the wide spread of heavy horns. We were side by side and did not move a muscle. Knowing this was a big one, our hearts were pounding.

The big boy headed into the thicket at 70 yards. Boom! Stephen touched one off and the buck stormed out of the thicket following a doe. He was moving fast but not full speed. I picked a hole in the thick timber and when he fled through it, I pulled the trigger which laid him down.

It was done. With the blood pounding in my head, we approached the mammoth Whitetail buck. I knew the monster wasn’t mine. Stephen had hit it first with a killing shot that would have brought the trophy down. He posed for pictures with the huge buck with a smile a mile wide.

I was happy and mad at the same time, so took a short loop while Stephen drug his trophy to the truck.

We then ate breakfast at a local cafe, caped the deer and took a cruise. Ten minutes into the drive a 5X6 point Whitetail buck jumped across the road and ran up on the hill. Boom! That capped the best day ever with the best hunting buddy.  Ever.  The end

Stephen called me  later that day when on his way home to Helena. “Mom!” he said breathlessly, “you’ll never believe the buck I got with Jeremy!”  He was completely jacked! He told me about the hunt in about the same way that Jeremy told it above. Stephen said he had only a small hole in the brush to shoot so he took the shot. Stephen’s bullet would have brought it down but in brush and timber like that you don’t want to take a chance of losing a trophy buck, so he was glad for Jeremy’s killing shot.

You can see from the picture that he was a happy hunter! It was the biggest buck he ever shot and his first trophy sized buck. I am so glad he had this experience with his hunting buddy Jeremy and that he got the buck.

Thanks to Maci, who wanted me to have the trophy, it now hangs in our house. One day it will go back to Maci and Jacob.