Someday isle
5 year old buck +
While not a trophy by most standards I was able to harvest our first deer on our property today. If you've seen my first couple of threads you know that we bought our own land this year. It's roughly 36 acres in Crawford county, Missouri. I took a spike buck this morning. I know if you don't pass the small ones they never get to be big ones but it was important for us to harvest a deer as validation for all the work the boys and I did this summer trying to get the place ready to hunt.
It was only our third sit and while my son Austin wasn't able to join me today I decided to make a morning hunt on my own. I was hunting a stand we call the widow maker. I explained in another post that my sons have never been outdoorsman because their lives have always been occupied by athletics. In fact Austin received his National Championship ring on Thursday. His college team won the NAIA Men's Volleyball National Championship last year. His twin brother, Collin, is a distance runner and baseball player and my step son is just basically a sports nerd. As their careers have wound down they've taken an interest in the outdoors, especially Austin. That's why I finally decided to pull the trigger on our own land. They're bright kids and good students, and way more educated than I am, but it's amazing what they don't know about so many things. The stand is called the widow maker because when we first bought the land there was a tree on this old logging road that the whole top half of the tree was broken out and hanging above the trail. I called it a widow maker and told them to stay away from it. They had never heard the term before. So this particular spot just became known as the widow maker. My brother, who is a chan saw wizard, has since made the area safe but the name has stuck.
Anyway, on with the story. On our first sit Austin saw some turkeys but we didn't see any deer and really haven't seen a whole lot of sign. We have had a few does and fawns and just recently a couple bucks on camera. On our second sit I saw a small buck at last light. I had an opportunity to draw my bow but was undecided on whether to shoot or not. The buck never came out from behind a cedar tree and offered a shot so I didn't have to make a decision. Now I haven't killed too many "nice bucks" but I've killed my fair share of deer so I'm often guilty of waiting for something bigger or more mature. After talking with the boys though we decided that since its our first year on our own place and only Austin's second year (and TJ's first) we wanted to get on the board so to speak this year. We decided that we'd take our first legitimate shot opportunity.
It was only our third sit and while my son Austin wasn't able to join me today I decided to make a morning hunt on my own. I was hunting a stand we call the widow maker. I explained in another post that my sons have never been outdoorsman because their lives have always been occupied by athletics. In fact Austin received his National Championship ring on Thursday. His college team won the NAIA Men's Volleyball National Championship last year. His twin brother, Collin, is a distance runner and baseball player and my step son is just basically a sports nerd. As their careers have wound down they've taken an interest in the outdoors, especially Austin. That's why I finally decided to pull the trigger on our own land. They're bright kids and good students, and way more educated than I am, but it's amazing what they don't know about so many things. The stand is called the widow maker because when we first bought the land there was a tree on this old logging road that the whole top half of the tree was broken out and hanging above the trail. I called it a widow maker and told them to stay away from it. They had never heard the term before. So this particular spot just became known as the widow maker. My brother, who is a chan saw wizard, has since made the area safe but the name has stuck.
Anyway, on with the story. On our first sit Austin saw some turkeys but we didn't see any deer and really haven't seen a whole lot of sign. We have had a few does and fawns and just recently a couple bucks on camera. On our second sit I saw a small buck at last light. I had an opportunity to draw my bow but was undecided on whether to shoot or not. The buck never came out from behind a cedar tree and offered a shot so I didn't have to make a decision. Now I haven't killed too many "nice bucks" but I've killed my fair share of deer so I'm often guilty of waiting for something bigger or more mature. After talking with the boys though we decided that since its our first year on our own place and only Austin's second year (and TJ's first) we wanted to get on the board so to speak this year. We decided that we'd take our first legitimate shot opportunity.
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