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Jon and John,
This letter gets a little lengthy, but who could blame me!!
We just opened up our second retail store in Wichita on Monday 9/18, so I had no scouting time this summer. By Thursday (9/21), I was down to my last 2 days to fill my Any Deer Muzzleloader Tag for the September season. On Thursday afternoon, I headed out west to [location deleted]. I saw good numbers of deer and Friday morning passed on a small 6pt muley. At mid-day Friday (9/22), I drove back to Wichita to pick-up my oldest son Clayton, who is 9, to hunt the special youth season weekend. We got back in the field in time to hunt the last evening of muzzleloader deer season, but my tag remains unfilled.
Saturday morning was cloudy, damp and cool, with a strong wind blowing from the northwest. At 7am we were set up along a creek bed in some timber where I thought deer might be bedding down out of the wind. We started seeing deer at first light but they were all coming from the south and had winded us. At 8:30am, this doe and a fawn showed up 40 yards from our setup. Clayton said he wanted to take her, and he made a nice clean shot. She dropped within 50 yards. Clayton had his first deer!
We were back in the field around 4pm. With the wind still strong out of the northwest, we swung around to the south to approach a draw that was a few hundred yards from our morning hunt. We set up on the southeast side of the draw next to a small cedar tree. Around 4:30pm, a doe got up out of a plum thicket 125 yards across from us on the north slope, a perfect bedding place to get out of the wind. After a few minutes she laid back down. I carefully scoped the 3 or 4 additional plum thickets also on the north slope. I could make out the doe’s outline, but could see nothing else. At 5:15, Clayton was getting a little impatient and wanted to move to a back-up deer spot we had picked out that was closer to the truck. The skies had clouded up again and I told Clayton we needed to wait another 15-30 minutes as I thought the deer may start moving a little earlier than normal. I told him we needed to keep a close eye on the doe as a gauge of when the deer would start moving. At 5:30, Clayton whispered that the doe was up again. She had moved out of the right side of the thicket. What Clayton didn’t see was the really nice buck moving out to the left side. I took one look though the binoculars and immediately knew he was a shooter. I told Calyton to look to the left side of the thicket and get his gun up, as I adjusted his shooting sticks. The buck turned in our direction, stood still and squatted to do his business. He was directly facing us in that posture for what seemed like an eternity, but I’m sure now was less than a minute. The buck never had a clue about our presence. I quietly informed Clayton what the buck was doing and told him when he was finished, he would either turn left or right, and that was his shot. Sure enough, the buck took 2-3 steps, turned to his left and stretched out broadside to nibble a leaf. Looking through my binoculars, I whispered, “take’m”. I heard the boom and saw the buck drop right in his tracks. Clayton’s shot was high and left, but entered the bucks neck and exited through the left shoulder for an instantly lethal kill.
After some whoopin’, hollerin’ and several high fives, we made our was across the draw to check out Clayton’s first buck. And what a fine specimen he is: 200+ pounds, a non-typical 7x4, 11 total points. He’s got nice width and height, and the mass that comes with a mature buck. I’m guessing he will score in the 140-160’s, but we’re talking my son’s first buck here, so my enthusiasm is no doubt biased. He’s definitely going on the wall for Clayton to someday tell the story to his children about his first successful deer hunt with their grandpa.
Thank you for providing a great hunting association where members have the opportunity to make hunting memories of a lifetime.
Gerald
Thank you Gerald, congratulations to Clayton on a fine deer hunting trip. We can only say, WOW!
Have a read of our reasonable deer hunting expectations article.
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Although Clayton was satisfied with his deer hunt, I suggested we stay through the evening to see if he could get a shot at a buck. As a side note here, and a suggestion if you are taking someone on a youth deer hunt, spend the extra $12 on a Whitetail Antlerless Only Tag so your young hunter can harvest a doe and still have a chance at a buck later on. That $12 may end up buying a once-in-lifetime deer hunting memory as it did for Clayton and me.
