Daughter's first deer, and with a ML

[lokidog]

So, this fall, my daughter says she wants to deer hunt.  It came a bit out of the blue.  We decided to try the ML as her mom was going to hunt archery and I was doing modern.

She tried her mom's ML but it misfired a couple of times so she tried mine.  No misfires but the stock was a bit long so we put her mom's stock on my gun.

We sat out in the neighbor's meadow almost every day during early season.  She had some shots at a couple of does, including one really dumb one that just begged her to shoot it, but she didn't.  We did see some bucks, including one face to face at 12 yards but could not get a shot.  One evening, we had a smaller forky come out and then saw a really, for here, big fork horn behind him.  The smaller buck came out and stopped within my daughter's self-imposed 50 yard range with the big buck following.  I suggested she wait for the big guy... of course, at 62 yards he turned and walked away, and pulled the smaller one with him.     at myself for getting greedy for her.  After that, she had no more opportunities.

Late season comes along, and the orchard near the meadow is empty.  We sit Thanksgiving morning and evening and see nothing.  We went to the Apple Cup Friday so no hunting.  We got out again last night and jumped a buck bedded about 50 yards from our blind, nothing else was seen.

Shortly after getting home last night, I saw a decent sized buck and a doe out behind the house.  I decided to try to keep him around until morning by tossing some apples over the fence during the evening and just before bed.  I got up early and waited until just before legal shooting time and tossed a few more apples out.  At about 7, legal time but stil way too dark to shoot, I saw a big bodied deer, too dark to see antlers, but I knew he was a buck.

My daughter was getting antsy, so we snuck out around the house.  He was munching away so did not mind our bit of activity.  He turned mostly broadside and BOOM, he flipped around, landed on his back with his feet flailing.  I thought, nice, no looking for him, but then he stands up and hurries off while we reloaded.  We waited about 40, for her quite agonizing minutes, to let him die and get some better light for searching.  When we went back out, we found a small splotch of bright blood and a small piece of bone.  We followed the trail we saw him leave on and only found one small drop of blood.  We continued on the trail hoping to find him piled up, but found no more blood.  She moved off on a slight side trail while I continued almost to our property line.  Seeing nothing, I circled back and found him piled up in the salal about 20 yards farther than my daughter had walked.  I breathed a big sigh of relief, as I think most of us do when we find them.

It is kind of cool that she got her first deer in the same location as my wife's first deer and with a piece of each of our muzzleloaders.  Now, she just wants me to grind the whole thing as she doesn't like steak... good luck with that though.   

[PolarBear]

Very cool, congrats to her!!!!   

[Bob33]

Way to go, Dad and daughter.

[blackveltbowhunter]

Great Buck!! Congratz

[Taco280AI]

Awesome 

[Whitpirate]

Awesome!  When she's off at WSU you'll have an excuse to hunt whitetail in the Palouse. 

[MLBowhunting]

Alright great job    

[Sabotloader]

lokidog

Holy Cow! Assume! Congrats to the proud young lady... cool!

[Hunterman]

Nice looking buck there young lady    Congrats   

Hunterman(Tony)

[Turner89]

Nice job Lokidog.   Have fun grinding

[gonehuntin68]

Nice BT

[SemperFidelis97]

  Nice shooting

[huntnfmly]

The smile says it all . Congrats

[runamuk]

Saw that on FB this morning huge congrats to her.....

[singleshot12]

congrats looks like a fairly good size bt for out there