Wow where do I begin… Wow what a blast!!!!
I wanted to take my eldest daughter Carolyn (11) on her first deer hunt.
I saw the posting of the “Youth Hunts”, but I think I was a little late in responding…bummer
Then last week I was reading the posts and I saw a new post about someone else (You Rock Jeremy) who also wanted to host youth hunters, so he posted an offer for people to come out for a “Youth Hunt”.
1. Need to clear time off with my boss… Check
2. Call my brother John, “Can Carolyn & I stay with you for a few days starting Monday?” Check
3. Make sure schedule is cool with my wonderful wife Elizabeth…Check
I was already scheduled to be gone all weekend on a Men’s retreat, when I’d rather be packing and getting ready to go.
I get back Sunday, organize my gear, and go to the range with Carolyn for the last time before the hunt. Something is wrong though, the gun is off and she is not consistently hitting with her gun…Noooo!
I get out the 30-30, “Here Carolyn try this one”, “wow Dad that kicks a lot”…ok…um… let me think…
I call my wife, “Honey, please bring me the 44 magnum rifle
please”?
Ok now Carolyn is hitting nice and consistently, great, we are ready to go.
We leave house at about 8ish Monday morning.
Get to Spokane about 2pm; drop off everything we won’t need for the hunt. Change into our hunting clothes and then stop and get some food before heading out to Jeremy’s property.
Carolyn asks, “Dad do you know where you’re going?” “Yes Carolyn it’s just up the road…I think…um…ok let me call Jeremy”
So we get to Jeremy’s house and meet him, what a great guy. Here reminds me of a friend of mine that I have known for years, just very gracious gentlemen. He tells us we are going to go over to another location and try that area. About a couple miles down the road we pull over to see deer and turkeys on both sides of the road…very cool! We get out, get our gear on and head down a trail to over look a beautiful field. As we are walking toward the spot we see a nice Whitetail buck about a 160 yards’ away. It’s a little too far for Carolyn to shoot since she is using iron sights. So we pass, but the excitement is really brewing!
We spend the rest of the afternoon glassing the area, watching the muley does, very cool. Carolyn’s very happy. We go back to Jeremy’s house talk about the next evenings plan, and we thank Jeremy again for being so gracious and head back to brother Johns house. End of day Monday, it’s been a good but long day.
Tuesday we sleep in, spend time we Brother John & daughter Kayla. Ok so it’s time to go, let’s go!
We stop to get a sandwich at subway, and as we are leaving, Jeremy calls and says the deer are in his backyard, very cool! We’ll be right there! On our way to Jeremy’s house we see a ton of turkeys, which Carolyn has never seen wild turkeys before. We get to Jeremy’s house and he shows us where we should sit and wait, and points out where they usually come in from. We sit and chat very quietly. After an hour or so passes, I see some deer moving through the brush about 80 yards away, but not a clear shot, so we wait. Off to my left I hear something walking on the gravel road and it’s coming this way, it’s a horse and rider? He is walking right into our shooting lane, I’m thinking wow this is weird. Then he rides right up in front of us, stops and says, “Have you seen any cows?” I shake my head “no”
. Then he turns and rides over to Jeremy’s back door, and asks Jeremy the same thing. I’m thinking the deer probably hear horses all the time, so no big deal, but dang, that was funny! Within 20 minutes or so of that, off to my left, here come the deer working their way from behind us (of course, lol) and very close, about 10 yards. I tell Carolyn to try to get into position without much movement. I range the biggest doe and she is at 45 yards…nice. So every time Carolyn moves the deer look up directly at us, so we went through the “freeze” ok “move” about a half a dozen times. By this time the doe that was at 45 yards’ had move out to about 65 yards’, and I hear something else coming in from my left and Carolyn is asking me “Should I shoot?” I tell her to wait. I see three more walking out toward the others, so I tell her focus on the first one of the second group. She starts to line up on that one and we go through the “freeze” ok “move” scenario one more time. She says “Dad I got it in my sights”, last thing I say to Carolyn is “Focus & Relax.” BOOM! The gun goes off and all the deer start to run off. Well we wait about 10 minutes and talk about how she thinks she did, I tell her she did awesome. We get up and go see if we can find a blood trail. We look around and we don’t find any…nothing, not one drop. Dang! Did she miss?
Now I thinking she must have missed the deer, but I also know that at this point we have had such a wonderful time that I’m not too concerned if she missed (I missed my first deer with my bow years ago). We gather up our gear and go back to the house and talk to Jeremy. He says go take another look for the blood trail.
We start looking around and at this point it’s starting to get dark, so I pull out my flashlight and continue to look, then I hear Carolyn say, “What’s that?” Woo Hoo! That’s a blood trail baby!!!
Jeremy comes out and helps us look, and sure enough we find more blood. Jeremy and I don’t see a lot though, so I’m thinking we should just wait until morning to go find her, we both know it’s going to drop below freezing tonight, so we pack the gear up and head home. The next morning we head back and find Carolyn’s deer. She made a perfect shot after all. We take pictures and Jeremy helps load the deer in his truck and we take it back to his place. After we get everything loaded in my rig we say goodbye to a super family guy and a great new friend.
Thank you Jeremy, for such a treasured memory with my daughter.
Phil & Carolyn
Here’s a couple pictures of Carolyn’s first deer.
