Some trophies have nothing to do with how a rack scores or the length of a beard or length of the tusks. Some trophies are about memories and perhaps in a way, the legacy we leave those we love.
When my daughter Heidi was 16 years old she wanted to deer hunt with me. It was a bitter cold morning, but I had been seeing deer crossing this pipeline to the North of my In-law's house. Heidi and I were up before dawn and traipsing across the knee-high remnants of the bahia grass pasture on that side of the mountain top. As the sun started peeking over the horizon we snuggled into a divot in the hillside that allowed us to watch the openings where I knew two deer trails intersected.
We saw a doe once daylight appeared and I was going to let her shoot it, but the deer made a turn and crossed way below the trails we were watching. She looked at me, her lips trembling.
She said, "Dad, I am f-f-f-freezing!"
I took her out of the shade of the mature trees and we moved back on top, easing along the fence line to a big foodplot where we often see deer. Moving to a small grove of trees in the pasture across the fence, we sat directly in the sun. She was wearing her granddad's new hunting coat and holding the Savage .243 Winchester that she shot very well.
We had not been sitting there long before a beautiful tall racked 8 point stepped out of the woods. The wind was dead and we could hear everything. As she raised her rifle the whisper of the cloth made the big buck throw his head up. Heidi stopped moving, freezing in place. The buck was spooked and looked around. I knew he was not going to be there long. I told her to bring her rifle up and shoot. As the rifle came up the coat made the noise again and the buck was gone.
Heidi's eyes were moist and I know she was disappointed. It was a nice buck and I had been hearing that coat all morning and did not think about how it would effect her trying to shoot. I had her to take it off and put on my old hunting coat. Worn and broke in, it allowed you to move as silently as a predator should. When she got the coat on, I asked her if she was willing to shoot a small buck. She said yes.
Pointing along the small creek behind us, I said, "How about that six point?"
Heidi turned and saw it. Her face lit up and she said, "Oh yeah!"
As the buck crossed the fence we waited for it move past the pond. I did not want the bullet ricochetting from the water surface. The buck angled past us, oblivious to our presence. It got in the clear and I told Heidi to shoot.
Blam!!
The buck buckled, going to his knees and then he was up and running. He ran about 50 yards and turned, laying down facing us. I knew something had hit it in the guts, probably bone fragments as she did not shoot it far enough back to gut shoot the deer.
"Shoot it again," I said and she raised the rifle.
Putting it down, she said, "Dad I can't shoot it with it looking at me!"
She handed me the rifle and I said, "Its your deer!"
She said, "Shoot it for me."
I pulled down on the deer's neck and suddenly I was shaking like a leaf. I had killed big bucks and this yearling buck had me shook up because it was my daughter's first deer. I promptly set the crosshairs at its throat and missed it slick as a whistle.
The buck jumped and ran. I handed the rifle to my daughter and she was on it, swinging the rifle and she shot it again just before it jumped the fence into the green field. Across the field it went, running and then staggering into the woods.
She said, "Did it get away?!"
I said, "No, it went down. It was hit hard."
She looked at me incredulously. "Dad, you missed!"
I said, "It happens to the best of us."
She said, "Dad, you missed!!"
"It was YOUR deer!" I said, as if that was enough of an explanation.
"I should have shot it myself," she said matter-of-fact as she slung the rifle over her shoulder and we headed for the gate. I grunted in laughter. Now I know what I would be like if I was female!!
We found the little buck easily and she helped me drag it up the hill.
My daughter Heidi with her first buck. She was 16 years old.
After we loaded it on the four wheeler I let her drive it to the house as I rode beside her. She had the biggest grin on her face I have ever seen as she showed it to her mom and grandparents.
What a memory! What a trophy!
I was there when my neice Rachel took her first deer.
My niece, Rachel Sharee was 14 years old (she is 18 now) and on an average day had that girlie-girl look that makes you think she would never be interested in hunting. However, when she goes into her "tomboy" mode, she seems to shed that look like a secret identity.
Several days into gun season she told me that she wanted me to take her hunting. Rachel had taken her gun safety course so obtaining the Oklahoma Youth license and deer tag was easy. My ranch is an Oklahoma DMAP (Deer Management Assistance Program) ranch and we always have extra antlerless tags, though this year I actually only had one left as we had decided to take a lot of does.
It had been a few months since she shot her rifle, a 357 Magnum 1894C, and we went to the old shale pit and she proved to me that she could work over soda pop cans at 50 yards with no problem. Fifty yards was our maximum range.
My bow blind is in a great spot and often offered 10 yard shots at does. I had been seeing a spike-forked horn buck that I really wanted harvested there so I told her we would try for him, but that she could kill an antler less deer and DMAP tag it if she wanted. She said she did.
We got situated in the blind around 2:30 and after 30 minutes I made the mistake of asking her about her drama class. After an hour of steady talking (who could have known), I asked her if she was going to hunt or talk. She said if I did not care, she would mostly talk. I told her it was her hunt and we could talk all she wanted.
The wind was blowing from the south around 20 miles an hour and she talked low, but she had already bundled up her shooting sticks. The rifle was between her legs and she was telling me about her last speech and the next school play she was going to be in. We discussed her parent's recent divorce and how she was trying to be more mature to help her mom. I sat there and listened to my niece growing up and I glanced down the edge of the woods and saw two deer step out of the woods. I interrupted her and pointed to the deer and she was silent for the first time in over an hour as she quickly assembled the 'V' of the shooting sticks. Both deer ran to the mineral block out from the blind and stopped about 10 yards from us. I knew one was a doe and one was a button buck, both legal to DMAP.
I was trying to glance around the brush we used to brush in the blind and was about to tell her which one to shoot when the button buck made the mistake of being the first to turn broadside and she hammered him. One shot through the shoulder with a 158 grain Jacketed SP and that young buck was on the ground dieing. Rachel leaped straight up screamed twice, "I got a deer!!" Then as the buck started kicking, "I might not have hit it right."
I laughed and said, "Hand me your rifle so I can shoot him again." We walked to the deer (the whole 10 yards) and it expired as we reached it. She was all smiles and even did some kind of dance, then knelt beside it and touched it gently and said how beautiful he was laying there. I asked if she was happy and she said, "Oh man I wanted to get a deer so bad!"
We took pictures and then we dragged it to where I could put it in the truck. She showed off her deer proudly to our family and she did not offer any complaint as we gutted it later. After I was done, she said, "Next year, I will gut it." She sounded serious too.
The thing that gets to me is in ten years she won't remember what she got for her birthday or what she got for Christmas, but she will remember when she was 14 years old, her Uncle sat in a blind with her while she talked about the things important to her world and he was there when she killed her first deer.
None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow and it is the time we spend with the ones we love doing things like this that are cherished and remembered forever.
My youngest brother was my hunting partner when I was in my early twenties. Jeff is almost 9 years younger than me and he loved being in the woods almost as much as I did.
It is hard to believe this happened 20 years ago, but I have always enjoyed taking new hunters out. My brother Jeff had never killed a deer. I had never killed a big buck, though I had shot a few younger deer. I took my first deer when I was 19 years old. She was a doe that I shot 225 yards away with my grandpa watching telling me to shoot the little one 'cause it would eat better. It was good eating and the .243 Winchester did the trick, even at that distance.
I had to wait for Jeff to play a basketball game the Friday night before season opened so we left late, getting to deer camp with my dad, uncle and cousin's husband Doug already in bed.
Jeff and I got up the next morning and walked down the mountain away from the camp. We hunted the Ouachita National Forest in Southeastern Oklahoma around Walnut Mountain, crossing Pigeon Creek as we ventured deep into the forest range to our yearly hunting area. It is very close to the Arkansas border with Mena, Arkansas being the largest nearby town from where we camped.
Neither Jeff nor I saw anything we could shoot and back in those days you had to draw a doe tag. Neither of us had one so we were buck hunting, though I was in no hurry because my friend Todd was meeting us Sunday evening and we were going to spend the rest of the week hunting at my father-in-laws' land.
No one had seen anything of significance and since my Dad and Uncle Royce were big on breakfast they came back and cooked up a humdinger. We were low on cooking fuel and Doug wanted to pick up some things in town so Jeff and I rode with him.
When we arrived at camp, Uncle Royce was dressing a really nice 7 point buck. He said the deer started moving like crazy around 2 o'clock and he killed that one around 2:30. He said Dad was sitting in his stand now. Since it was getting dark, Jeff and I drove down to pick him up.
We stood beside the pick-up talking in low whispers when the woods roared once from the sound of Dad's .30-30, the echo rumbling up and down the canyons like ocean breakers. We looked at each other and then climbed the mountain up to where Dad was sitting. He was standing over a beautiful 11 point mature buck that he had shot right between the eyes at 10 yards. He told us how a bunch of does had been eating acorns around him all evening and then this big guy came up the hill and joined the party. He said he shot him between the eyes because he had stayed behind some brush and never would turn broadside and it was almost too dark to shoot.
We helped him drag it out and field dress it. We hung the deer and walked into camp to find Doug and Uncle Royce finishing up the evening meal and getting ready to ladle it into plates. We were all eating excitedly when Jeff said if no one cared, he would like to hunt that stand in the morning. I told him two deer had already been killed out of it. He didn't care. Uncle Royce and Dad did not mind if Jeff hunted it neither.
The next morning before daylight I put Jeff in the stand and I headed down the hill to where my dad's old stand used to be before it fell over. I found a good place and sat down, comfortable in my new heavy Winchester coat. I had been there about 30 minutes when a doe came running past me and hot behind her was a nice buck with his nose to the ground. I flipped the .243 to my shoulder and then lowered it knowing that the deer trail went straight to where Jeff was sitting.
Twenty minutes later I was cussing myself for not shooting at the buck. He had been a nice one and I should've….
The shot from Jeff's stand sounded like it was in my lap. I sat there for a full minute when he fired 4 more times, each shot sounding evenly spaced. I fired a round from my pistol as though answering him and headed up the mountain. When I got to Jeff's stand I did not see him. I walked around in front of it when I heard a faint "David" and I looked up in the tall stand. Jeff was still there.
I asked, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Dave I shot a big buck!" he said, his eyes still big.
Looking around and seeing nothing, I said, ""Where is it?"
Jeff related to me that the buck had followed the doe up in front of him and finally presented him with a good shot. Jeff being a very good shot (he really is) decided to shoot the buck through the neck. He said he missed and it ran around him in a circle before it stopped and he shot it through the neck, knocking it off its feet. The buck thrashed, then jumped and ran off. Jeff shot three more times at it, though I never heard a lull in the shooting myself.
I could not find blood so I told him he missed. In Oklahoma, under great stress, younger brothers will sometimes cuss an older brother. This was one of those times. So to mollify him I struck out in the direction he last saw the deer, making big circles looking for blood. I found a place that looked like four animals had bled out, a thick trail leading from it.
I said, "Sorry Jeff, you hammered him."
Jeff freaked about losing the deer and I told him with this blood trail he probably would not lose him. We tracked it back to the road. Looking down into the steep canyon below us as we stood in the road, we saw Dad and Uncle Royce heading out from camp to our right in the distance. The depths of the canyon seemed bottomless and the trail of blood disappeared down those depths. I told Jeff to stay up there and I would track the deer while he told them what happened. So down the canyon I went for about 300 feet. The deer had turned to the left and twice I found where it fell. I was moving slow, taking a step and looking around when in the distance I seen an ear flicker. Lifting the scope I could see the deer sitting on his haunches, looking around. I settled the crosshairs between his shoulder blades and popped him. He tumbled over and was finished kicking when I got there. Calling out, my dad and Jeff answered and I called for them to help.
The buck was 8 points in perfect symmetry and had a 14 3/4 inch inside spread. We took turns dragging it back up the hill, Jeff taking his turn every time it was his turn. He didn't shirk any duties. When we got it to the truck and put the deer on the tailgate the big grin on the 14 year old face shone brighter than the sun.
He said, "I was afraid I lost him."
Ruffling his hair, I said, "Nah, not with this much blood."
We dressed the deer and packed him in ice as we broke camp to go home. Three nice bucks all out of the same stand in less than 24 hours. Jeff has that deer mount in his room now, the best deer he has taken to date, though he has killed a few bucks here and there. He was the first teenager I took hunting with me.
My brother Jeff when he was 14 with his first buck.
Being there when people you love take their first animal is a trophy of a different sort and one that is probably more important than the trophies I have taken myself. Time on this earth is not guaranteed and that is why it is important to take your son, daughter, niece, nephew, little brother or little sister hunting with you.
One of my closest friends and hunting partners, Robert Phillips has taught his daughter Whitney to hunt and she is in the woods with him every year except when college has conflicted.
Dan Meads and his son Ben shot a great doe harvesting video available in this website in the deer hunting forum.
My best friend Todd Wogan's sons have both taken their first deer on my ranch in Oklahoma. The hunting blood runs true and it runs deep.
My Wildhoghunters.com buddy Michael Vansant hunts with his wife, which I think is one of the most awesome things in the world. She took a doe this year after letting several pass by that were smaller. She wanted to take a mature doe and she did.
Hunting with our family members is an important subject to me and I think it is something we must pass along or our sport will die. We have to teach our children that hunting is about the forest at the break of dawn, freezing to death in a duck blind before all discomfort is forgotten in the frenzied wingshooting of diving flocks of ducks, how to track a blood trail or the reasons why we let the young bucks walk to mature into older bucks before we shoot them. We must teach them the things that are important to us.
Trophies don't just gather dust on the walls of our dens or hunting cabins. They linger in our mind, fresh and vibrant to be enjoyed with laughter and smiles. Happy trophy hunting.
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