Who's doing the muzzy season?

[jerkin'm]

Made it out for the final weekend with my son in tow. He has hunted with me for four years now without me pulling the trigger. I promised him I would take the first mature doe we saw so he was super excited. We made it to the stand about 3:00 on Friday the 13th.

I had him climb into the stand first and he saw deer immediately trying to get into the field while I was still on the ground. His frantic pointing and borderline shouting "deer!" had them fleeing quickly. It was about -15 with the windchill when we got settled in. It wasn't long and the first deer tried to make their way into the corn. I had to explain several times how a muzzleloader with open sites was not able to take deer ethically over 100 yards. My comfort zone is more like 50 I explained. The wind was swirling and not ideal for this stand but it was our best option. All the deer that came out in the first hour were either too far, running into the field, behind branches, or some other Issue. I explained over and over that we don't shoot through bushes or trees at deer. We had seen several sets of does with fawns and one group of seven. None of them presented a good shot. Between the cold and me not shooting, it was nearing the end of our sit one way or another. I explained over and over about the ethics of a good shot and not rushing it. All he knew is he wanted me to shoot.....NOW!! I had told him we were going to wait until 5:00 to head back to the house. About 4:45 with my son now shivering pretty good he spots a group headed to the field from the perfect direction. The first three are into the field before I can get my binocs on them but they are a set of does and fawns. I explained that the one hanging back and hesitating was probably a buck. Got the binocs on it and it looked like a nice fat doe. I told my son this was the one. He started fidgeting and craning to see better while the deer cautiously made it out to the field edge. I pulled up and in a cloud of smoke and fresh powder smell the deer dropped In its tracks. My son screamed " You Got Her!!" and flew down the ladder. I got to,the ground about the same time he got to the deer. "Dad she's huge!" I was excited too as for some reason I have never been able to drop the hammer on a doe. Just always felt uneasy and kind of a wuss about it. I thought I finally had the monkey off my back and had taken a nice doe......The next words out of my sons mouth changed that however ...."And she's got tiny antlers!!" On no, that wasn't the plan.....I usually end up eating my buck tag waiting for Mr. Big so the tag wasn't a problem. We have been trying to only shoot mature bucks though and this deer wasn't a wall hanger. My son was so excited that I soon realized I had been forcing my standards on him while we hunted in the past few years. This deer made me see its not all about big antlers when you are teaching the youngsters about deer hunting. He wanted to gut it back at the house so his siblings could see the deer whole and how big he was. We drug him most of them 200 yards back to the truck fully intact. I soon realized there was zero chance of us getting him in my truck in this condition so I convinced my son we needed to gut him. He had lots of questions while we gutted him by the light of our headlamps. It went really quickly and we struggled and wrestled the buck into my truck. He couldn't have been happier while grabbing his brother and sister to show them the deer. High fives were shared and his deer season was over for another year.

[Mr Special]

Congrats on a very successful huntesp with the recent weather conditions

that smile says it all. u got a real trooper there. heck i wussed out because of the weather lol

Kudos again and im he'll remember that forever

[Wanderer]

Yeah! Good for you two!

[paceman]

Very nice story and pictures jerkin'm! Congrats!

[mwal]

Great Story you both will share forever. Look at that smile and tell me that is not a trophy animal. I bet he is already itching to get a smoke pole of his own. Thank You for taking the time to introduce him to the great sport of hunting and the great outdoors. Hopefully one less kid glued to the old x-box.

[maros91]

Good story and solid deer!!