Lets say you're out hunting with your 8 or 9 year old kid, and a bigger deer than you had ever seen walked through the woods offering your child a shot. Would you not be the happiest person in the world after your child harvested such a magnificent animal?? I dont understand how you can ask what SHOULD be their first deer, when you have no way at all of predicting exactly what kind of animal is going to walk through those woods at any given time. I started hunting when I was 9 years old, I shot the first deer that i saw, which happened to be a doe. Shot a little 7 point the next weekend. The next year, only a doe.. but the 3rd year i was hunting with my dad, and I had the opportunity to harvest a nice deer, about 140 b&c.. at 11 years old. My father was more happy for me than I was, and to this day i don't shoot deer i don'tplan to eat,and Ishoot does, andnothing but trophy bucks.If the mentor a young person has teaches them the rights and wrongs of the woods, and an ethical way of hunting it makes no difference what kind of deer they harvest.. and if they dont, then it doesnt matter either way. Maybe you should focus on the life of our heritage, and not somuch the type of deer Joe Blow's son just shot??