“Ideally ain’t always reality”

[missed mallards]

Got tired of writing reports and tried to write a little story about my daughters first hunt. It's long, I haven't reread it for errors so I'm sure there are plenty. Figured i'd be nice to change the topic for a few seconds. I'm feeling more and more like an Indian.


When you envision someone taking their child on their first hunt, many ideals may come to mind. You may envision a father/daughter climbing into a well constructed box stand overlooking a hard wood bottom. Another thought may be of a lush Greenfield, an old two man ladder stand, and grandpa’s ole lever action 30-30. As hunters, we all have a sense of how we’d like to ideally introduce our kids into the outdoors. We want to make it an event that last. Hunting is something, that we enjoy and we’d like to share our passion with our children. It’s fairly simple. It has to be an event where we can teach, learn, and most importantly have fun! It’s just sometimes; our Ideals and reality don’t coincide. Ideally, as the wind whipped from the north that evening, I would have loved to have been heading to a heated box stand. The reality, the old telephone pole was just going to have to do.

I’m still not 100% sure how the hunt came to be. I can vaguely remember my fiancé, at the time, saying something or another about “shopping”. That’s just one thing, I dislike very much. As much as I dislike it, the young lady in the family for whom I call my daughter, dislikes it even more. I’m pretty sure a plan was devised with my daughter, to somehow, someway, get out of shopping. Regardless, as the evening came to be, we found ourselves in route to a familiar place, and it wasn’t the mall. She had been on many adventures out to what my brother calls FV. She had been out there during harvest season, and for the most part, FV was just considered a ‘fun’ place. Of course when we arrived, a new set of rules applied.

Ideally, if I would have known this was to be her first hunt, I would have tried to line something up. I would have tried to find a place more suitable for a 5 year old. But, I didn’t know, nor had the time, nor had another option. I knew I had the evening free, and being FV was there, I was going to make it work. When we arrived at the turn, I took a few minutes and explained the rules. I tried my best to explain everything to her. After some odd amount of time of negotiating, we were set. Trying to negotiate what quite is with a 5 year old is quite the task. She knew that she had to be quite, walk stealthy, and listen to every word I said. I say she knew, because before leaving the truck she said “I understand”. Now, 10 yards from the truck, and having to explain the reasoning behind not taking the ranger was a whole new ballgame. You live and learn, and you get creative and call it cool exercise and telephone pole training. I’m not sure what sounded cool about walking the mile in, but she was all for it!

Now to shed light on the walk in. for ½ mile, you can do whatever you want. You can run and jump fallen tree’s, skate in the mud, skip, trot, it really doesn’t matter. Walking in, for ¾ of a mile, you have the tract of timber to your west. Your movements are covered for roughly ½ a mile of the 3/4. The last ¼ mile, the timber thins and being the deer tend to stay on the south side of the timber, the last bit has to be somewhat stealthy. The first ½ a mile went well. We slowly walked down the old turn row and would stop and ‘look’ into the woods for ‘movement’. We identified the tracks that littered the road, made notes of the squirrels, and even found a rock or two to put in our pockets. The last ¼ mile, well it was a wild ride!

Toward the end of the tract, the timber thins but the palmetto’s cover the forest floor. The goal is to simply walk to the end of the timber, hang a 90, and make it unnoticed to one of the 8 telephone poles. The palmetto’s do a great job of keeping your movement somewhat covered. The thin stand of timber allows you to move quietly but allows you to look onward into the field in the event deer are already there. I tend to get 150 yards from the 90, and glass the field. This evening was no different. I slowly eased toward my ‘lookout’, and as I raised my binoculars up, it happened. I’m in full on hunt ‘mode’. Okay, we can’t really call it anything like ‘hardcore hunting’ or anything, but I’m there, mentally. As I’m slowly peering through the glass, I hear movement behind me. It sounds like sloshing mud, a few hand claps mixed in, and the sound of two pants legs being rubbed together in a hurried fashion. Looking back, I see my little girl trying her hardest to get over the fallen log to get to me. Sadly, her pants were a little too long, and somehow she had gotten tangled in the vines. She was trying to get out of it as quietly as she could, I’ll have to give her that!

Instead of staying in ‘hunt mode’, I quickly came back to reality. With a few swift steps, I was helping her get untangle when the woods around us exploded. In mere seconds deer were bounding in every direction you could look, sadly all in the timber. With no rights to hunt the timber, we could only sit there and watch. Just as quickly as it started, it seemed to end. As we slowly began to get our feet back under us, my little girl looked up and just said “I’m sorry”. She knew the importance of the hunt, but with a quick smile, I let her know no harm had been done and we were still going to have fun! With that, we sat out in a quick pace to slip in to the telephone pole. No more did we get 5 steps to have the ‘herd’ of deer heading straight toward us!

This would mark the 2nd time in one day that I had my ‘target buck’ within 50 yards of me. This would mark the 1st time, I stood in a manner of protector in the woods. Without making as much as a sound, my little girl stood beside me trying to get a glimpse of the racket. The only time she broke silence was when the doe broke out into the open, 5 yards in front of us. The 4 bucks chasing her, followed suit, however the big boy didn’t venture out. Instead, at 10 yards, as I was waiting on him to ‘charge’, he stopped dead in his tracks. I had never been in anything like that. We literally had 6 deer come within a few short yards of us as we stood in the ‘open’. I went from being stealthy, to yelling at the bucks as they leaped from the timberline in hopes that none would land on us. It was, crazy. It was quite the experience for, the both of us.

The hunt itself was rather boring after such an eventful walk in. We sat by the old telephone pole and made the best of the cold afternoon. We ate sunflower seeds, sipped water, and sat for nearly 2 hours. All in all, she did extremely well. She didn’t whisper too loud, she didn’t move too much, and never once complained about the mud or the cold. Granted, the old jacket I packed in, worked nicely as a blanket. The evening would allow us for some father/daughter time, and to say the smiles were a plenty would be an understatement. As the sun sat on the western horizon, and the last doe slipped back into the timberline, I had all but been ready to call it a day. Yes, we had a good 30 minutes of light left, but she had done well, and I was downright cold. I just needed a little motivation to head home when “stripes” walked out.

Now in a 3 hour hunt, we had almost been trampled by deer, gotten our boots bogged in mud, about froze to death sitting on the ground, and now a skunk. I took care of the excitement for sure that evening. The thing about strips, I really don’t know if he knows he’s a skunk. My first encounter was a late evening after work. I swung in for a quick bow hunt and dozed off. When I awoke, there he was! He wasn’t no more than 5 feet from me, laying there. When I awoke, I stretched and began to get a big gasp of air and I do believe he got all excited. I never did figure him out, but he couldn’t have weighed more than 10 pounds, and he just seemed to get excited to see ‘people’. Nonetheless, we weren’t best friends, and I was still under the impression he was baiting me up for a good spraying. With him making his evening walk toward us, I quickly grabbed my girl, our gear, and we high stepped it back to the main road.

Our mile track was all that was left for the evenings hunt. We had good light as the sun still shed a few rays, and decent walking as with every step it seemed to push a little warmth into our extremities. We made it through were we had our close encounter with the herd, made it through the slippery mess of slick mud, and had all but made it to the truck when my daughter began to tug at my vest. Without even turning around I asked her what she wanted and without missing a beat she said “Buck!” Low and behold, for the 3rd time that day the big 9 was standing there. This time, on legal grounds! Just as we rehearsed, the moment I shouldered my gun, she threw on the hearing protection. With him 200 yards out, and his attention drawn to the doe walking in front of him, I knew I had him. As I settled my crosshairs on his shoulder, and got my breathing just about right, she yelled out “DADDY, ARE YOU GOING TO SHOOT HIM?” I swear, I believe I watched that buck look at me and chuckle before he bound off.

Ideally, I would have wanted to give my daughter the best experience ever for her first hunt. I would have loved to been able to provide a heated stand, overlooking a plush Greenfield, and all that comes along with it. Never in my dreams have I ever ‘dreamed’ that I would take a kid and sit them by a telephone pole for their first hunt. Sometimes, you just have to make what you have work. I’ll be honest, in 20 years of hunting that was the most action packed evening I can recall!
And yes, I did manage to rendezvous with him a 4th and 5th time, he’s going to be good one next year!

[eSJay]

Good read as always Tom.
The last part reminds me of one of the first hunts my Dad took me on. I remember it like it was yesterday even though I was 8 or nine years old. Long story short, we were slipping through an old road in the woods and rounded a curve about the time 2 deer were trying to cross. I guess they were not sure what we were or ran just far enough back into the woods to where they thought we couldn't see them and stopped. The buck was positioned to where Dad couldn't see his head, but had a clear shot on the shoulder. I could see his head. Dad had his scope on the shoulder at about 40 yards. I asked him the same thing your daughter asked you, only I whispered "are you gonna shoot him daddy"?
He whispered back "does he have horns"?. I said "YESSIRRRRR........HE'S GOT A BUNCH OF EM". Of course the buck bolted & Dad didn't get a shot. Later that day we learned that another camp member had killed a massive 17 point. Yep that was him! I know Daddy could have beat my booty, but he actually never even got onto me. One of the reasons I remember it so well was he told the story every chance he got until the day he died.

[novacaine]

Thats a good one Tom...
Where you been?