I have a lot of these stories so I will start it. When my son was 9 years old I took him with me for the mentor hunt. This was the last year on the lease land I was in. The woman that owned the land passed away and her son sold it right away but back to the story. It was about a hour before dark and it was like somebody open a gate and said move deer. A spike walked up and he couldn’t find it in the scope so it got away. Ten minutes later a 6 point was coming up the ridge to our left and he was already shaking then he whispered dad a deer to the right is coming it was a bigger 6 point so it was on his side of the stand so he wanted to go for it. I was watching the buck to the left to make sure he didn’t spot us. Then my son says big buck. I said I know buddy just get ready. He is like no dad look behind that 6 point and oh my gosh guys it was a huge 10 point. I told my son try to stop shaking and told him where to aim. It’s about 40 yards away now and my boy was shaking so bad and I whispered you know where to aim so take the shot. He never look at me or said a word to me. Well it keeps walking and I was behind my son so I looked through his scope and he had the buck in his sights but no shooting. Finally the deer was out of sight and my boy turns to me and says dad he was huge. I said why didn’t you shoot buddy. He said I couldn’t. Said I was froze I couldn’t move. Although I would have loved for him to shoot that buck I just smiled and said that’s called buck eggy buddy. Guys always say why wouldn’t you just shoot the buck. It would have been the biggest buck I ever got but I would have done it the same way again bc it is a story my son tells all the time. He is 12 now and is a great little hunter. I have more I will post after I read some of your stories. If you have one take a minute and let us read it.
I took my oldest son, now 8, hunting for the first time when he was three. It was Veteran's Day, I was off work and desperate to get out since that is one of the best days for rut action around here. My wife is teacher and had an in-service day, so it was take the three-year-old or sit at home. I took along a portable DVD player, his favorite movie, and snacks to keep him quiet. I figured we would just go sit the last couple hours of daylight. Maybe I would get lucky and a really rut drunk buck would come by. We set up in a ground blind 15 yards off a trail between a bedding area and a food plot. With about 20 minutes of daylight left, a couple does appeared about 50 yards away. They were headed right for us. I was able to get my son to stand up quietly and see the deer. The first doe came and stood perfectly broadside on the trail. As I went to draw back, my son was overcome with excitement and screamed, "Daddy deer!" The doe bounded away before I got drawn. My son thought I had shot the doe and was really excited. I hated seeing the disappointment on his face when realized the the arrow was still on my bow. But, it was a fun memory for us and we both laugh about it now.
A couple of years ago I drew an extra doe permit. My family owns some property in this unit still, and it's where I lived growing up...I know it very well. It is a couple of old ag fields that haven't been planted for years, mostly weeds but some alfalfa still comes up here and there. The deer bed in draws above this area full of thorn brush and starthistle. They mostly feed in active ag fields up top, but come down to our lower fields too. Early morning and really late evening you'll see does down in the old fields quite often. My son was about 3-1/2 at the time, so I thought I'd try to take him with me, there was a lot of the season left and it was all but a guarantee that I'd get a shot at a doe at some point. I knew he couldn't hike up into the draws, so I decided we would go sit in one of the old fields for the last 45 minutes of the day, didn't want him to have to try to sit still and quiet for too long. Did a lot of coaching with him before hand. The first evening I took him we got there about 40 minutes before the end of shooting light. It was cloudy and threatening rain. I had him bundled up and a set of my electronic ear muffs for him to wear if a shot opportunity happened. Brought my 25/06 for the hunt, you have to reach out a ways usually in this spot. We walked up into the field slowly, it is uphill and a pretty good hike for a kid as young as he was, I carried him the last little bit. We sat down, I put the bipods out and set the rifle next to me and had him seated on the other side of me. He is excited to be there "hunting", plus I'd told him stories many nights at bedtime about hunts I'd done with his papa Doug in this area growing up. My dad had passed away before my son was born, so he only knew him from my stories. For being as excited as he was, he remembered my coaching and stayed pretty quiet. 10 minutes later I see two does walk out into the field, they had come up into it from the old barn area rather than down from the draws. We are on the other side of the field about 300 yards away. I point the deer out, and when he sees them he puts the ear muffs on and looks at me like "why aren't you shooting yet?" I have a longer set of bipods on the rifle that can be used from a sitting position. I range the bigger doe at 285 yards, raise the rifle up and settle my 300 yard reference down low on the heart. At the shot the doe falls down, gets back up and sprints about 60 yards before going down for good. The excitement on his face is something I won't forget. He tells me he knew I hit it because it fell down, but thought maybe I didn't hit it good when it got back up and ran so maybe I should shoot it again? I laugh at that. I tell him that it is down and not moving, so we don't need to do that. "Well...ok". We get up and I tell him we'll go back to the pickup. The deer had fallen while still in the old field, so we can simply drive the pickup right to it. He immediately informs me that if we did that, we wouldn't be unloading the "vroom-vroom" (4-wheeler) that I'd brought just in case we needed it for a recovery, and that would mean he didn't get to ride on it. Well, we can't have that. So we go to the pickup and unload the grizzly, get on it, and ride up into the field. By this time it is pretty dark and starting to spit rain. We get to the deer and I park with the headlights shining on it. I tell him that he can stand next to me while I gut the deer or stay sitting on the grizzly, he opts to stay on the bike. With a flashlight in my mouth I start on the deer, dummy me forgot the headlamp needed batteries. After I get her opened up and the pelvis cut, I start working on getting the gut sack removed. After about a minute of "dad, dad, dad, dad..." I finally take the flashlight out of my mouth and say "what?". He very seriously informs me that he doesn't like this part very much. I laugh and say, "well nobody does, but it has to be done. I will hurry and finish". By the time I'm done and have the deer strapped across the front rack it is raining pretty steady. We drive back to the truck and I get him in the back seat, strip off his damp outer layers, and then turn on the cargo light so he can watch me through the back window. Stupid me bought a short bed pickup, so the doe has to be taken off the bike and put in the very front, and then the bike is loaded with the front tires on top of the deer and strapped in so I can shut the tailgate. We head back home, about a 30 minute drive. After about ten minutes of silence he suddenly asks me, "Dad...do we have all that stuff inside us too?". Made me laugh, and I answered that yes, we do, but not quite so much of it. We get home and I unload the bike and then back up to the shed. I get him out of the pickup and inside the shed. He was very engaged in the whole process of hanging and skinning the deer and asked a lot of questions. The skinning doesn't bother him a bit, just the gutting apparently. My FIL and I cut up the deer a week later. The next day I planned to grind up all the scrap and make breakfast sausage out of it. It turns out that a 3-1/2 year old boy takes great interest in feeding the scraps into the grinder. He helped me with it clear through the whole process. After that for the following several months, every time we cooked and ate some of it he told everyone that would listen (other family on camping trips and such) that the sausage was made by me and him from the deer we had got and then proceed to tell the hunting story to them. He wasn't with me last year when I shot my muzzleloader deer, but he helped me grind and make sausage through the whole process again. I think I have a hunter on my hands.
I begged my son to bow hunt when he was in high school, he was not interested. My daughter did show interest and I got her all set up with gear she hunted 4 times and passed on little bucks, not sure where she got that ego. Now my son wants to hunt right when I am tapping out on keeping up the place and heating with wood.
My youngest son got his hunters safety cert at 12. Took him out and sat with him twice on public land. Sat on the ground both times. First time had a decent 7pt buck stroll straight to us, within 40yds, he never took a shot. Wanted a broadside shot. Sigh. Second sit he was on my left watch along the side of a hill. Had a buck walk within about 10yds of me, but him being right handed couldn't swing far enough to the right... I now carry a pistol for this circumstance. Two sits, two exciting opportunities. He didn't like sitting in the cold.
