Yesterday morning I was out looking for a certain 10 pointer at daylight.He seems to live out in the open and two night ago I stalked him to within 15 yards but things went bad when he caught me drawing my bow back.My plan was to find him and try stalking him again, that changed when my phone rang.


See last year one of my nieghbor kids was having a bad time in school and at home, hes got some serious issues and may be a little bi polar.He gets in trouble quite a bit as a result and nobody seems sure what to do with him.He was having a bad time one day last fall when I was down there and I asked his parents if he could go with me on a bowhunt that night, we hunted on the ground in a foodplot and had two great bucks come in one of which I missed an easy shot on.

But the most noticable part of that hunt was the kids behavior.His parents told me he would never set still that long and my wife told me to take it easy on him.We got there early and built a little hiding spot in the corn stalks, the kid sat there and for over two hours he never moved, never talked, and paid attention to everything I said and did, asked questions, and listened to my explanations.At the end of the hunt he was a different kid, he was relaxed and amazed, couldnt wait to get home and tell his parents about how close we got and all the things we saw.I took him a few more times that year and never had a problem with him.

I had an old youth bow my son has long outgrown, I gave it to him for Christmas last year.Something changed, all the energy he put into raising hell he was suddenly putting into doing something he liked.He practiced all year, he went to work for a buddy of mine that bowhunts some of the same properties I do all summer and used his money to set himself up with hunting equipment.He studied and took the hunters safety course and passed with flying colors.While I was gone all summer from home working him and my buddy, and my oldest son all hung stands, pruned trees, and got everything ready.He saved up and bought his hunting licenses and tags and started hunting this fall.He would alternate between me and my friends stands and we pretty much let him have the one property to himself most of the year.

Happy to say that phone call yesterday was him calling me, he had made his brother get up and take him to one of our stands yesterday morning before daylight.20 minutes later he made a perfect shot on his first deer, it was a small buck, and it only had half its rack, but it was his first.He tracked it as far as he could then I helped, and when we found it 100 yrds away he made a fair effort at gutting it.When we got to town he watched me and then took over as I showed him how to skin it and bone it out, I did half and he did half.And when I left he was telling his mom how he was gonna work this year and buy some stands of his own and how he was going to my buddies that night to grind some of it into burger and how he was gonna buy some pork from the guy to add into it.He was a happy kid, far from the moody little troublemaker he was last fall when I first took him out.

So can hunting make a difference in a kids life?I would say yes, he isnt perfect, he still gets into trouble, but you will have that with kids.He went from bouncing off the walls to sitting quietly for hours on end and all the effort payed off for him.It was a good day.But right now I got a date with a buck south of town and Im running late.