New Soon-To-Be Hunter

   This evening, I took my 7 year old cousin Connor on a deer hunt. Connor's only hunting experience prior to this was when I took him with me on a squirrel hunt last year and we walked around with a .22 and brought down a couple bushytails. This morning, my little brother Ewing got his first deer with a bow, and Connor helped him field dress and drag it out. Now Connor wanted to experience the whole hunt! The deer near my house right now have been gathering in huge herds (42 is the biggest we have seen) in the river bottom fields, and there is no way to get within 200 yards of them, so we have been working on figuring out a way to drive the deer up in the woods where it is easier to get a shot. After a few tries in the past couple of weeks, my brother and I figured out a pretty good setup for a 2 man deer drive.
    My cousin and I set up on top of a ridge overlooking about 90-100 yards of woods bordering a field. When the deer get spooked out of the river bottom, some of them come through this funnel, and normally have relaxed enough by then to provide good shooting opportunities. After getting Connor settled in with a nice seat and a blanked to stay warm, I gave my brother Wyatt the okay to start, and he pushed deer from about half a mile away, he counted 25 in total. 3 does came by us first, but they wouldn't stop in a clearing so they walked around for a couple minutes. Connor hadn't seen the deer yet but when he spotted them, he whispered to me "I see one!" and I responded with a very quiet "shhhhh". Luckily the deer were very forgiving today, so we were able to get away with a little whispering and movement, which is exactly what we needed. I finally lined up for a 75 yard shot on the smallest one. When I shot, I dropped the the barrel a little bit and shot under it, resulting in the deer running straight at us and stopping at 25 yards to stare, at this point Connor was giving me a bewildered look as if he was saying "JUST SHOOT IT?" as I scrambled to get powder and a bullet in the gun. Just as I was clicking the safety off after reloading (deer is still standing there!), she snorted and ran off. We stayed put, however, and within 5 minutes, I heard a commotion in the thicket behind us.
     I raised the gun and clicked the safety off, just as a doe stepped out of the thicket at about 45 yards. There was too much brush in the way, so I had to wait for her to walk out and present a shot. Just as I was preparing to stop her and shoot, she stopped to look around. The only problem was the small sapling right in the way of where I wanted to put my bullet. Connor shifted his feet, and the doe immediately decided to have a staring contest with me. Since we had been spotted, I leaned over a little bit and took a shot at her shoulder. When the smoke cleared, I had a deer laying on the ground and Connor said "did you get it this time?". I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the deer. His response was "Woah it's RIGHT THERE!". Hopefully Connor will hit a growth spurt within the next year so he can shoot next time, because right now he just isn't quite big enough to handle a gun well. I think he still had a great time though! Thanks for reading!

 

Looks like I had some serious demon eyes this evening