Your first deer?

[PolarBear]

Dman got me thinking about first critters.  So..  What was your first deer and how old were you?
I shot my first deer when I was 6 at my Uncle's farm in Alabama.  I was turkey and squirrel hunting with my 10-22 along the edge of a corn field.  I sat down to have a snack and a 2x2 whitie popped out.  I hit him in the neck at the base of the head.  He fell, got up and started to stumble off.  I shot several times and hit him in the neck again.  After he made it to the woods I got my Uncle to help me find him.  We tracked him for what seemed to be a hundred miles but was probably a couple hundred yards.  We found him dead in a pile of berry vines at the edge of a creek.  My Uncle was more excited than I was.  I didnt like the fact that the buck didnt die right away like squirrel and rabbits do.  I swore that I wouldnt shoot another deer until I was old enough to shoot a big gun.  My Uncle had it mounted and I gave it to him to keep at his house.

Ok, lets hear some good en's!

[boneaddict]

I was 13 and it was the last day of the season. I had missed a chacne at a huge 6x6 the day before.  My dad was at work and it snowed about 18 inches of fresh snow.  My dad had to plow snow, so afterward my brother borrowed the truck.  We almost slid off the mountain until we chained up, but finally got up on the moutnain at about 10 am.  We finally got to a spot and went out, splitting up.  I was hiking and sweating and took my glasses off.  I spotted a deer.  It was about 100 yards away and moving.  I could see his little spike antlers.  I had my 25-06, the first year I hunted with it.  By the way, that is what cost me the giant the day before. Anyhow I hit it with the first shot right in the heart.  I managed to put two more into him before he slid into the deep snow.  The first one killed him.  My brother showed up and made me gut him without any help.  It wasn't too far out to the truck.  We got home with my first deer and then I had to skin him.  Of course he didn't help me.  I hung him up by his head and went to work.  I almost lost my finger, but got it done.  It was a fun adventure.  I've killed a deer every year since.  Learned how to gut them a little easier and faster, and learned how to skin them right.

[GOcougsHunter]

My first was when I was 19 up on Church Mountain in Whatcom county.  Bivvied 2 and a half miles in.  Got up the second morning and hunted the snow line. 30-06, ten yards, small forkie.  Late season.  No tracking involved.  Haven't used a rifle on deer ever since.

[WAcoueshunter]

My first deer was a doe I shot in the Twisp area.  I think I was 14.  First buck came a few years later near Pomeroy.  First big game animal was a calf elk I shot on the West Bar back when it was a 3-day hunt with 75 tags.  I was about 12.

[WDFW-SUX]

I just got my hunters ed card that summer I was 12...

I shot a fork horn blackie in my grandparents yard with a 30-30. 

I liked it so much a couple weeks later I went with my uncle and shot a 3x5 bull in his yard with the same 30-30.

[Ridgerunner]

I was 16, it was opening weekend and hot and dry.  Hadn't seen a buck all weekend,  we were getting ready to head home when I asked my dad to drop me off about a mile from our cabin.  I told him I would sidehill hunt to the cabin, then we could go home.  Not ten minutes into it a forkhorn stands up about 100 yards uphilll from me.  Boom, first shot nails it in the spine, he goes down but is still moving, he tries to get up so I shoot again, and again.  I'm not letting him get away.  Finally he dies.  I went up, checked it out, tagged him and practically ran all the way back to our cabin, get my dad to come help me get him out.  My dad being the non-hunter that he is thinks we should carry him out indian style on a pole.  So we tie the legs up and try doing that.  Never again......Thankfully we didn't have far to go.  That first buck is a sweet memory, took 4 years to get him, if I had a clue what I was doing it wouldn't have taken that long.

[jackelope]

Upstate new york out of a treestand when i was 14 my first year hunting deer. i shot at a spike whitetail buck and missed from about 35 yards(buck fever )when i regained myself i looked atnd there was a 5 pointer(3x2) standing there looking at me. he spooked and ran aways out to about 80 yards where i hit him in the spine and dropped him...another shot put him down for good from about 20 yards. got a deer or 2 or 3 every year in new york till i moved here.

[kirkl]

I think i was 12 or 13, me and a guy went to Lopez island for those small blackies, we were driving down a road and see a deer in the middle of a field so we pull in and ask if we can hunt and they say yes, so we go back out and the deer had moved into a small thick tree patch by the road so my buddy goes in to push it out and im sitting in the field waiting. Well it comes out and i take a running shot and miss then it stops and i shoot again and hit it. It takes off into some other woods and we track it down and its dead.  We thought it was a doe originally but when we got up to it, it had bout 3 inch spikes. My first deer and first buck.

[Dman]

 I remember it well, -and am constantly reminder of it. I was a fisher-kid growing up, I'd play hookie just to fish, got my picture in F&H news with two kings at 12 years old. Discovered deer hunting right after High School, my relatives had already been going to the Republic area for 20 years or so, so I decided to get my first tag and go over with them. I took my dad's lever action Win. .308. The 2nd day my cousin and I were headed back to camp when we see a whitie run accross the NF road well ahead of us. Joe says he thought it was a doe, but I got out and told him I'd look around anyway, so I tracked it through the woods a ways. I caught up to the deer on the edge of a clearcut while slowly sneaking along to look up and see it facing me. What looked to be a two point buck flipped over backwards as I hit him under the neck in the chest area. To my amazement he got up and charged off, I shot again from hip level, hit him again and he stayed down. Just when Joe was bringing up the knife, he got up and went in to the deep timber, after the toughest job of tracking the tiniest spoor, we found him, a big bodied??? "Palmer the Hanford Buck" as he was later called in camp was a freak, he had two ducks feet on his head for antler's, to this day I don't know if it's a spike, or a three point....

[Muleyslyr]

Mine is definately tainted.  I was 14 hunting with my Mom, Aunt, and Grandma.  My Dad, and uncle were up in Alaska fishing.  Only year my dad missed opening day.

Opening day, First Creek outta Winthrop, guys everywhere in the hills.  It was my second year hunted by myself with and old 30-30.  As I'm walking across a sage brush hill, I looked up to see 6 doe and a little 3pt. in tow.  Maybe 100yds up hill.  As I shot the buck immediately stumbled to the ground as the does took off.  As it regained it's balance he staggered his way another 50yds. or so into a patch of trees.  Not real thick, but just out of my site. 

As I finally made my way up to were he had enter the thickets, I could hear some guys kind of talkin'.  As I continued on, there were three guys already standing over my deer!  I say, "Hey that's my deer!"  Immediately one says, "No.....there was another buck with the does, they went that way."

I knew right there I was not getting that deer.  No other shots had even been fired in that area, let alone by any of those guys.  But when your just a kid by yourself, and got nothing but women back at camp, what can you do?  What love for that to happen to me now. 

Anyway....finally killed a buck I could claim and keep the year I turned 18.  Lake Pearrygin, Winthrop.  Just a little 2x2, but still got the antlers in the garage.

[Dman]

 That sucks, I'd be pissed! 

 I'll post a shot of "Palmers" huge rack when I can. -sympathy shot

[Dman]

 Here's my first, "Palmer the Hanford buck".

[Ridgerunner]

That is one wierd looking rack for sure.  Looks like a little bit like a moose the way it palms.

[Dman]

 The deer was pretty old, teeth worn down. It went nearly 200lbs. Good venison anyway, but definitely needed to be culled out of the herd.   

[hunterofelk]

I was thirteen and growing up in Livingston, Montana.  Just south of town is a mountain called the Wineglass.  My mentor, Lawrence, was teaching me how to hunt mule deer.  We would hunt a section of private land we called 'the pocket'.  Back in the seventies it was easier to get access to private land and Lawrence had hunted this area since the thirties.  I was alone one Saturday morning waiting at the pocket for Lawrence to drive a deer in front of me.  Just as planned a young buck walked out and I laid down a barrage of fire.  I had a Remington 742 .308.  All three shots went behind the shoulder.  He didn't know what hit him.  I still didn't know how to gut a deer, so I waited for Lawrence to show.  He was very happy to show me how.  I finally gutted an animal myself two years later when I got a cow elk.  We took pictures on the side lawn of my home, now days there is a park and twenty homes where there was a cow pasture.  The pocket is the site of someone's trophy home and no one can shoot a buck there anymore.  All the country I used to hunt just twenty minutes from my home is off limits to public hunting.  Developed for houses and private hunting clubs.  Progress my ***!!! 
Well, anyway here's a bad scan of an old picture.  That's a tree branch we used to drag the deer, I don't know why we included it in the picture.