First deer stories

[TMerritt2011]

My first actual deer kill was 2004 i was 12 years old and it was the weekend of michigan youth hunt. My dad and i had clear cut a 1/4 acre food plot in the woods and tilled it all up in early august. We planted clover and let it grow. A few short weeks later i was up in a pine tree wearing all my fathers hand me down camo with dsd sitting jusy a few feet to my right in a tree of his own. The first morning while walking down the trail carrying my bow by the string i dropped it directly onto a rock smashing my sight to pieces. Of course i was devistated obviously i couldnt hunt with a smashed sight. Luckily my dad had enough equipment in his shop to replace my sight and get back on target within abiut 45 minutes so we ended up getting to the tree before day break. We didnt see amy deer that day but still had another day to hunt still so we were optomistic. Sunday morning rolls around amd we are up getting dressed to head to the woods amd my dad says as we walk out of the house," dont drop your bow again i dont have any more sights sitting around" we get to the tree and settled in and just after daybreak 2 does walked right into my food plot. I was so focused on not letting those deer out of my sight that i never grabbed my bow. So now i have a deer at 13 yards and my dad is forcefully whispering to grab my bow and stand up.... finally i stand up amd grab my bow in the fastest sloppiest movement i have ever made in a treestand and step on the support cable resulting in a beautiful "twang" why this deer stood where it was and never moved i will never know but you had better believe i 10 ringed that deer. She ran 30 yards and piled up. My dad was filming this whole endevor and even did a post hunt interview with me. We still pull that tape out now and again for good laughs

 

[MFD205]

I've got a good one on my son's first deer. Two seasons ago I'd try to take him with limited success because I hate blinds and box stands. I made a make shift brush blind in a spot I always see deer. It was the Saturday of my in laws Christmas dinner. I got to Liberty around 1030. He was getting into trouble left and right when I got there. You know everyone is getting ready and there's a wild 8 yr old running around. I told him let's go sit for about an hour. So we left to go to the camp. The camp is literally 100 yards through the woods from my in laws. We get down there and I'm getting dressed. I notice he has flip flops on. It's 80° in December. Welcome to South MS. If you don't like the weather now just wait a couple hours and it'll change, unless it's summer and then it's just HOT. So, little man had to go barefoot. Anyway, we set out to this little set up that's only a ten minute walk from the camp. I set my mono pod in the ground and we get set down. 15 minutes later he shoots a 6 pt at 142 yards. We go down this logging road to trail the deer. We get down there and I can clearly see where the deer kicked off, but told him I believed he missed. He's smoking mad because he had shot a doe on the last day of youth season and we never found her because the monsoon set in. I told him to keep looking. He saw the kicked up red clay and got really excited when he found blood. I told him to get after it and that I would stay behind to help him. He follows the blood 50 yards to the deer. Barefoot, on the ground, and 142 yards is pretty cool for his first.

 

[hokiehunter373]

I believe my first deer was when I was 12. I had been hunting for a few years here and there with my dad with no luck. It was opening day of rifle season and as tradition had it we had breakfast with our group of guys before we headed out to the woods that morning. We decided we were going to split up; my dad went to his lucky stand on the inside corner of a cut corn field and I sat the same edge about 150-200 yards away. I was about 20 yards inside the wood line sitting on the ground up against this giant old oak tree on the top of a hill. The tree overlooked a bottom and I had a lot of options on anything within 75 yards. Right around first light I heard something go BOOM and saw a white belly in the field. My dad radioed that he dropped a buck and it was my turn to do the same. It was probably about an hour or so later when I saw some heads coming from his direction right along the edge of the woods straight to me. I got my 30-30 Win up so I was resting on my knees and tried to steady my breathing. Luckily the deer took their time getting to me and I was able to shake those all to familiar jitters. It was 3 baldies and many of the old timers we were hunting with had the mindset that you shoot antler only. Luckily for me, the landowner had already given me permission to shoot whatever I wanted, and I sure as heck didn't care about antler, especially knowing my dad already had one down. They had gotten to about 50 yards and as luck would have it they all turned to head further into the woods, presenting perfectly broadside shots. I steadied the cross-hairs on the biggest of the bunch and pulled the trigger. I'll never forget the blood that I instantly saw pouring out of that deer as they took off. They crossed the stream below me and when they came out of the brush on the other side only two remained. Evidently my dad never saw those deer and didn't know what in the world had happened. He probably thought I was full of crap when I told him I shot one and thought she was down but my excitement and description of the shot got him out of the tree. To this day it's probably the best blood trail I've had to follow, certainly top 3. We found the deer about 75 yards away and that's when the obsession began. A perfect heart shot for my first kill and dad and I drove home with an opening day double in the pickup.

 

[Newhunter1]

This is my story in the Prairie state outdoors. I posted this on Bowsite.com 16 years ago and it was picked up by PSO.

http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/hunting/article/my_very_first_deer

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here in the words of Alton bowhunter Paul Merioles is the story of his hunt for a Madison County buck.

On Oct. 15, 2003 I got my first buck with a bow ever. I first bought the Parker Hunter Mag, December 26, 2002 and instead of immediately going hunting I decided to practice all year. I didn’t go hunting during the 2002 season because I knew that I wasn’t ready. This would have been unfair to the deer if I had only wounded them because I did not know about shot placement.

So practice I did. I would practice in my back yard shooting until I was tired, I would practice off of my roof, and in my deer stand. I even got stuck in a tree practicing my climbing stand. After what seemed like an eternity the season finally arrived.

I went out Oct 1, then Oct 9, 10, 11 with no luck. Wednesday, October 15, 2003 I tried some new land that belonged to the Corps of Engineers and IDNR. I didn’t see anything Tuesday afternoon, plus I had left my release in the truck so I went out Wednesday again after work.

The Story: I got to the parking lot about 3:45. By the time I had all my hunting gear, and my climber it was 4:15. I walked into the site about 3/4 of a mile where I found an oak grove. I climbed up the tree to about 25 feet. Then I started rattling and calling both with the Primos bleat, estrus can, and the buck call. I aggressively rattled and called several times.

About 5:00 I stood up and looked around. About 50 yards away was a field that backed up toward to a levy and beyond that the Mississippi river. At the edge of the field I saw a small flicker. Looking closer I saw two deer. I had just stopped rattling and calling with the buck and doe call 5 minutes earlier. The bigger buck, a six pointer, was chasing around a smaller one—I think a yearling spike. Seeing the two deer I immediately I grabbed my bow and got ready to shoot.

These two deer were running and stopping, running and stopping. Teasing me about 50-55 yards away from my stand, and not even close to any decent shooting lanes. When I first saw the deer, my heart jumped into my throat, but luckily I was able to calm myself down.

I grunted softly to them, and then something spooked them towards me. The 6 pointer ran into a shooting lane at 40 yards and stood behind a tree. I waited until he took one step out and sighted in and as the buck left the shelter of the tree. All I had was a neck and shoulder shot. The buck was quartering away, looking at something that he didn’t like. I took the shot and blew through the deer so fast that I thought I missed.

It looked like it went right over his neck, but what I saw was the buck duck his neck after he was shot. I grabbed another arrow and heard the other buck blow. I thought for sure that my hunt was over and I lost an arrow, but as I looked I saw what appeared to be a buck spraying blood. The buck was standing with his head down towards me. It looked as though someone had turned on a red fire hydrant.

Literally handfuls of blood were pouring out. The buck did his death wobble and that was that. From the time of the shot till where he fell was less than 25 FEET. I am a rookie and have heard about unethical hunters stealing someone else’s kill, and as I was watching the buck I saw a man moving towards my buck. I made that climber slide down that tree.

I jumped out the last 6 feet and ran to where my buck was. This is where the rookie part of being a bow hunter comes in. I get to where the buck is and his head is down, I think good I can tag him and dress him, but he raises his head, but ten minutes later he expires. This is when I find out that what the deer were being spooked by was another hunter on the ground.

They saw him and didn’t know what it was, but were suspicious. So now I am about a mile from my truck in heavy timber and it’s now 6:15 pm and getting dark. The other hunter walks over to me and asks if he could help drag him out. This was really nice of him and it turns out that he is from Australia and it too was his first time hunting deer.

Anyway it was to dark to see to field dress him so we dragged the deer out. It takes us up to an hour to drag him out, and that’s with another friends help the last 500 yards. This buck is approximately 1 1/2 years old (one of my bow hunter friends told me) as a 6 pointer, and field dressed weight at 160 lbs. Not bad for my first deer. I hit him in the jugular with a muzzy 145 grain b.h. that left a hole that I could easily have put 2-3 fingers in at the same time.

The arrow entered his neck on the left side about a 1/4 of the way down from his spine and 4 inches from his shoulder. The arrow exited 3 inches below his mouth, and upon inspection it did indeed take out his jugular. All in all—this was my first deer, my one shot first with a bow. I was using the carbon express terminator hunters, Muzzy 145 grain b.h., and the Parker Hunter Mag. I’m hooked for life.

That night my wife and I skinned the buck, and I quartered it where it sat in my fridge for the next three days to be processed. I’m doing this so that I can get the full experience of the hunt. I could not have accomplished this major event in my life had it not been for the number of people who gave me so much helpful advice—I wouldn’t have gotten my first deer without their help. Thank you.

 

[dave]

Sorry kind of long story,
I am wondering has anyone ever seen a buck who wanted to commit suicide? LOL I still remember my first deer.. It was the first time I ever hunted in the snow, (it doesn’t snow that much in Alabama and stick around for a few days that is). I truly had no idea how to hunt deer, but I figured with the snow on the ground I could maybe walk down an old roadbed and see something since they would stand out against the snow. I spooked a bunch of deer that ran into a hollow I ran and jumped up on an old tree stump and looked down into the bottom, and saw a small racked buck standing on the other side of the hollow near the bottom of the hill. Now here is one of the reasons I remember this so clearly and asked my question! I had only brought 5 shells with me, and I raised up the gun and fired, the deer didn’t move!! I worked the bolt and fired 2, 3, & 4 shots in the blink of an eye it seemed, and still no movement from the buck!!! Thank GOD I realized this next shot was my last bullet, so I took a deep breath slowly let it out lined up the sights on the buck he was still standing quartering away front me because he still hadn’t moved from the first shot till now, squeezed the trigger like I was supposed to, and the buck fell!! I started to go to him and his head was still up off the ground and it moved! Long story short I ran 300 yards to where I knew my uncle was hunting, but wasn’t in his tree, I ran back, and the bucks head was still moving, so ran 400 yds to my sister’s house called and had my dad bring me some more shells. When we went back we found out the buck was dead, but his horns had caught in a bush and was moving ever time the wind blew…. I always take extra shells now!

 

[Longbowwally]

Its been almost 40 years but I still remember it....I knew very little about deer hunting other than what I had read and one old deer hunter who shared some knowledge with me....

I had found a scrape on a very old and faint woods road that went through some hardwoods that had soybean fields on two sides of it. This was in mid October...I had set up a loc on stand about 25 or 30 yards from the scrape...Back then I used a shotgun as the landowner did not want anyone to use rifles.

I drove to the hunt on a 1965 Mustang - the only vehicle me and the wife had to drive as we did not have much money in those early days - and when I got there I had an issue with my Ithaca model 37 pump(I think that was the model) and had to go home - about a 10 minute drive - and get another gun. The only other 'deer gun' I had access to was my Dads Stevens single shot 12 gauge.

When the deer 'magically' appeared at the scrape I almost couldn't believe my eyes as I had seen very few deer before that hunt...keep in mind deer were pretty scarce back then and sightings were not that often....I put the bead on the deer as best I could and cut loose with the buckshot...He went down immediately and thrashed for a few seconds and that was it..I couldn't believe it! I had finally shot a buck! To me the 6 point was a Boone and Crockett as far as how proud I was of him....

The guy that farmed that land helped me load it into the trunk of the Mustang...lol...He said he had been combining beans in the field and saw the buck run across the field and into the woods I was hunting....Sometimes its just meant to be and I think this was one of those times...Who would have thought the buck would have run across a 400 yard bean field in broad daylight....