The buck I shot from the ground this season reminded me of a great hunt I shared with our 3 younger kids, a bit of a long read but hope you like it.

2007

After taking our two older boys bear hunting in the spring, our younger guys felt that I had been neglecting them and they were wanting sometime in the woods too, I promised them that I would try to get them out in the woods as well. It hadn’t worked out until one afternoon, November 23rd, I decided to take off a bit early, grab the 3 boys and head to my bow hunting spot. We had been having a very nice fall and that afternoon it was only slightly below zero with flurries in the forecast and a north wind which would be pretty good for the setup I had planned. To be honest I really didn’t have high hopes that something was going to happen but that wasn’t the point, the point was to get the kids out to experience a hunt. I grabbed all the gear I needed and we headed to my bow spot. When we arrived it was clear that the city had been in the area cutting down trees in the last day or two so I felt even less confident that we would see anything. I loaded up and loaded up the boys and we headed across the field to the river where I was going to place the boys in a ground blind. I had brought a blind, three chairs, some hockey magazines and a heater. The plan was to locate them on the edge of the river in the blind with strict instructions to be quite and not to stick their heads out the windows, the heater would be on full blast so they should be warm. As we approached the area I asked them to be really quite, something that obviously they were unable to do but that’s ok, as we dropped through a branch of the river that was iced up I told the kids to be careful not to slip on the ice at the bottom, of course the moment I said it, I fell. As I fell I felt something give beneath me, it was my bow, I had landed on it and now the sights had pushed back. I needed to quickly figure out how to re-sight my bow. I set up the blind, put the boys in and pondered what to do, I decided to waste an arrow shooting into a stump, wow I was a foot to the right at 20 yards. With some quick adjustment and a few more shots, I had it back on target. I moved north of the boys and sat down along the river against a tree, I was about 80 yards from their ground blind. It didn’t take long before a fork horned buck slipped over the hill and made its way towards me, passing within about 5 yards, I couldn’t tell if the boys saw it because they abided by the no faces in the window rule, good for them. Soon a doe and another small buck followed the same routine and they passed just on the other side of the tree from me, thank goodness for great camo and the right wind, I could have reached out and touched them both they were so close. They fed in the area for some time, unaware of me. I looked over towards the boys and was dismayed to see a big buck standing on the field where I normally sit in my stand, he was feeding 20 yards from that stand, talk about feeling like I was in the wrong place! I decided to try to get his attention by grunting and using my doe bleat, it worked, he lifted his head and looked in my direction. I grunted again really loud and bleated again, this was more than he could take, he came running. He crossed the creek bed and headed straight at me, now I had a problem, he was about 80 yards away and coming fast and I was completely exposed relying on my camo to do its job. I lifted the bow slowly and tried my best to draw back in one slow motion. At 40 yards or so he stopped and seemed to be looking for the buck that had interrupted his feeding, I placed the pin behind his shoulder, then released the arrow. It was like slow motion, the arrow hit perfectly and the buck wheeled around and headed back up the hill, mortally wounded. As he reached the top of the hill another big and I mean big buck jumped out of the creek and followed him, wow I hadn’t even seen the second deer, must have been too focused on the first one. I ran to the top of the hill and watched the two of them walk away, the bigger one couldn’t seem to figure out why his buddy kept slowing down and laying down, eventually only the bigger one would run off. I turned around to look at the blind, the boys were all out of the blind doing some sort of happy dance, cheering like crazy. Seems they had seen all the deer, had seen this buck before me on the other field, had watched him come to me, saw me draw back my bow, watched the arrow fly and watched it come out the other side of the deer, a once in a lifetime opportunity. The boys and I made our way to where the buck had died, an amazing blood trail lead us right to him, he was a beautiful 4 x 4, one of the better bucks I had taken with a bow. The boys were great, they helped me drag the deer and helped with gutting it, they didn’t show any signs of concern over the blood or the guts, actually they took it as a biology lesson. After a phone call to their mom and a bit of bragging to their older brothers, the boys headed home knowing that they had just had a great first hunting experience, one they wouldn’t soon forget or at least one I wouldn’t soon forget.

Awesome!! Can't wait til I can take my kids hunting!

Thats awesome and thanks for sharing, one of my goals in life is to do the same thing you just did with the kids. My father always took me bow hunting he would tie a rope to the tree attach it to a camo life jacket (couple minor adjustments) that I was wearing and I sat where his feet were. Before we got to the stand he said "when you see some deer act like a tree!!" Well when a buck or doe would come in I moved my arms up as fast as possible and acted like a tree. After I chased a few off, he said "when a deer come's in don't move!!" After that I witnessed my father shoot a nice doe.

Great story and nice buck! I took my daughter with me five years ago for the first time (she was five then). I shot a doe while we sat in the blind. She thought that was cool. I just wish we would have found the deer that night because the next morning when we did find it we realized that the bear had already found it, dragged it 100 yards and ate the hind quarters out of it.