Well here’s the story.

Took both my boys hunting all weekend for the youth opener. They are 11 and 5 years old. Saturday afternoon we sat down in shooting house expecting to bust a doe. Shooting house has see it’s better days but it’s still functional. Kinda tight for three people but we made it work. The house is looking at a small greenfield and there’s a long straight road to your left and to your right so you can see a ways. After we got situated in the stand we started seeing deer immediately crossing the roads. Then we saw a nice buck feeding down the road to our left. He was probably around 300 yards but feeding his way to us. We watched him 30 minutes before he came to around 100 yards. There were doe in the greenfield and my son wasn’t studying them. He wanted the buck! He also had buck fever bad. He was shaking like a leaf. He shot at 100 yards and missed the buck. He ran into woods unharmed. Immediately after shooting my son jumps up and says he had to pee. He climbs down to the ground and goes then climbs back up. Naturally my 5 year old has to go now. I had to help him get out of his layers of clothes and he’s peeing out the back door while I’m holding his collar to keep him from falling out. I glanced out the window and amazingly the same buck was in our field at 30 yards! I’m completely unprepared. The guns not loaded the one shooting is facing the wrong way and the little boy is peeing into the wind. I had to load another round in while helping one turn around while one is asking me repeatedly and loudly if he I can help him button his pants. It was a cluster but we got the shot pulled off amazingly enough. We slip out and go to the cart and pick up the other people we had with us in camp this weekend and we head in for the tracking job. This story still isn’t over though.

We don’t find any blood or hair at the shot sight. I knew where he went in the woods at and we started in. Suddenly my buddy says bring a gun hurry. I get to him and this deer is bedded 20 yards from us. He’s just looking around and he wasn’t 40 yards from where he got shot. I put the scope on the base of his neck and shot. Deer rolls over on his side and is “dead”. We walk over with a trail of kids following us. My buddy kicks the deer and nothing happens. We’re celebrating and getting ready for pictures. My buddy grabs his horns to flip him over the deer stands up and starts shoving my buddy into us while he’s holding onto the rack. The bucks stops and we’re backpedaling. We have a stand off for about 15 seconds. Kids are amazed by what they’re seeing and sent scared running back to the cart. My buddy says shoot him again. I have no more bullets though. I’m useless standing there and this buck turns and walks away into more thick stuff. We backed out and contacted CNC. He agreed to come out this morning. After arriving we showed him where everything went down and he put his dog on the trail. In less than 15 minutes from leaving the truck he had us taking pictures with the buck. This was my first ever experience calling a tracking dog. It was very impressive to see the dog working. My kids loved it. CNC was an extremely nice and if you ever need a tracker I’d recommend him. The deer only went about 50ish yards from where we jumped it. It was a nice 8 point and my son is proud of this deer. We had a great weekend, I hope we made memories that they’ll remember forever. I’m exhausted from keeping up with them all weekend! God was good to us and kept us all safe during this and gave us a buck to boot. Sorry for the long read and thanks to everyone who reached out and offered to help. I don’t know how to post pictures but if someone wants to PM me I can text a photo.