This has been a work in progress with taking my children to the range and letting them become more proficient at shooting. For the next couple of day’s it’s Antlerless Season and with school out I was hoping to get Casey out for a chance at a doe.
This morning Kaitlyn (9), Casey (11), and I hit the range warming up with 22s at 25 yards. After taking turns for awhile Kaitlyn was beginning to shoot erratically so she took a break while I pulled out Casey’s deer rifle, a single shot H & K 243. At 25 yards Casey was hitting well and moving to 50 yards his pattern spread out a bit but it was still within the realm of responsibly allowing him to hunt this afternoon. Back at the house we again discussed shot placement and on the Internet he practiced with an interactive shot placement game of deer at different positions. With that we headed to the woods. On the drive over we discussed a few tactics and I told him if any hogs came in we would just watch em but wait for a deer.
Practicing
We hit the stand a little late around 4:30 p.m. Not much happened until the sun set and the light was beginning to fade. Casey saw it first, a large doe about 40 yards away to the right, and she had just stopped to look in our direction. Once she started walking again and was obscured by some brush I handed Casey the rifle and reminded him to shoot just behind the shoulder and mid deer. At that point we noticed that 2 other deer were ahead of the first doe we had seen. We hadn’t seen those come in (duh!).
After finally connecting all the dots together with him finally shooting his youth deer rifle well (we had to work through a flinching problem), getting him on a stand, actually having deer close by, and fading light I didn’t want Casey to wait too long in picking out a deer. It appeared that he had picked out the largest deer but I whispered to not take that one as there were 2 others in line with it. A fourth deer to the right was standing by itself and I whispered for him to shift right and take that deer. As I watched him I thought to myself that he was pretty calm. At the shot the deer reared up and dropped. It didn’t move. The other 3 deer scrambled away 20 yards but walked back towards the fallen deer not knowing what had happened. After exchanging quiet Hi Fives and BIG GRINS the thought occurred to me to let him take another deer but I didn’t want him to think that deer hunting was this easy. Usually I’m dealing with deer that are nervous as all get out and spooky to boot. As we sat there just watching I was wondering where he hit the deer to make it drop like that.
The 3 other deer struck around for 10 minutes so I dropped my backpack to the ground hoping to lightly push them away. It was getting dark fast. They really didn’t move far off and after another 5 minutes I started climbing down.
After a few photos (on a timer) I let Casey drag his deer back to the truck. I mentioned that we should say a prayer and give thanks for the deer but Casey told me that he had already done that and that he thanked the deer for giving its life too. I was pleased to see that he had been paying attention in our other hunts when we had taken an animal. After quartering it we celebrated with our traditional root beer, toasting a very successful first deer.
You only get your first deer once!
First deer!
Dragging
Casey at 11
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
Attaboy, Casey!:smt023
Nice job! Congrats, looks like you went about it the right way. Teaching him how to shoot and to be thankful for the bounty. It looks to me like a button buck, was it? 
