My 12 year old son shot his first deer last year. She was a very healthy whitetail doe. That was a day that he had waited for quite some time. He carried a smile on his face for weeks. This year he told me that he was holding out for a buck. He even decided that he should stay home during the youth doe season so he wouldn't be tempted to shoot an antlerless dear. Our hunting season started of a little slow this year. Due to me starting a new job, and the boys sports, we were only able to hunt weekends.
Opening morning we were in our tree stand well before first light. We sat for an hour or two before we saw our first and only deer of the day. We had a doe about 80 yrds away and looking directly at us. BUSTED! Nothing the rest of the day. Next day, same thing happens. One deer, and busted early in the morning. That was the extent of our early season.
Getting busted like we were, I decided to put a little blind material around the stand to try to help conceal us a bit better.
Late season opening day. We are in the stand hour before first light and I have a feeling that today is the day.
After about two & a half hours and Hunter falling asleep a half a dozen times, I heard some branches breaking just to the right of us. I tapped the boy on the leg and told him something was coming in.
As I peaked around the corner of the blind material, I saw young doe looking directly at me. She was with three other does and a nice tall, wide racked buck. Unfortunately, the buck didn't present us with a shot.
After this time getting busted, I decide that we needed to come up with a different game plan. I explained to my boy that I thought I picked a bad location for our stand and offered my apologies for doing so.
After lunch we went on a little walk about in search of a new stand location. We walked up on top of a little rock out cropping and found several places that would provide good cover and great shooting rests.
We end the day there with no sight of a deer.
The next morning it was pouring down rain and we arrived a bit later than I had planned. As we were just getting to our new stand, I saw a big bodied deer but I couldn't make out what it was. It didn't stick around too pong either.
We got all settled in to our new spot and ten minutes hadn't passed and I heard the boy whispering to me and pointing down the trail. I looked where he pointing and I saw two deer. One of which had its nose in the others rear.
I told the boy to watch the one in the back and to look for antlers. About a minute passed by and he looked at me, white as a ghost, and said, "Dad, he's a buck." I pulled up my binos and sure enough he had bone. I told him to take the shot if he was ready. He drilled it before I finished my sentence.
The deer ran about 30 yrds and went down. We could see it from where we were sitting. We both thought it was a spike but when we got up to it, it was a little 3x2.
This was no monster buck, but definately a trophy in his eyes. And surely a hunting season that both of us will remember for the rest of our lives.
On a side note, I had the opportunity to hunt yesterday morning. I had a little spike come in first thing. I decided to let him walk because I obviously wanted to shoot something bigger.
As he was walking out of sight, I got to thinking that this was probably gona be my last day hunting this season. I hoped that I hadn't just passed on a sure thing.
About 45 minutes later this little guy comes around the opposite side of where he came before. After all the second guessing the first time I let him go, I decided to put some meat in the freezer and call it a year.
I was sitting in the exact same spot that my Hunter was sitting in when he shot his first buck the day prior. I thought that was pretty cool.
