We decided to spend New Years at the camp this year so we loaded up and headed that way Wednesday night. This was to be a freezer filling trip as we haven't been in the woods since Thanksgiving. The boys and I slept in Thursday morning but got moving around 10 or so and decided to get some decoys out in a food plot since the river was creeping in on us by the hour. My wife took this shot just as I began tossing the dekes. That's our normal duck hole behind me, but you can see the green of the food plot where she is. By the time we left this morning, all of this was under water. Nothing special, just thought it was a great picture. The boys and I made our way in to the stand around 3 on Thursday afternoon and began seeing deer around 4. We were watching 4 does when this guy stepped out and began pushing them around. It didn't take much convincing from Grayson for me to give him the green light on shooting this buck. At 4:50 he gave us a good broadside shot at 100 yards and Grayson put it in the 10 ring. The buck jumped up and went down on his front end immediately, pushing his way about 30 yards before piling up. As we were packing all of our gear up, 3 big does came out and little brother wanted to shoot. I figured if we were taking one to the processor, we might as well take two. Unfortunately, little brother pulled his shot and missed. The deer he shot at bounded off and stopped just inside the woods but didn't offer another shot. Of course, once back at camp everyone, including little sister, had to get involved with the picture taking of Grayson's buck. The next morning (Friday) dawned cold and breezy. The boys enjoy duck hunting since I let them paint their faces. It's the little things, right? Not much was happening as the high water had the birds scattered. One fish eater (merganser) that buzzed the decoys was all we could muster. Should have had a couple more but that's the way it goes sometimes. We split up for the evening hunt and Grayson went with dad and I took Hayes with me. One quick caveat...when I looked back at the footage of Hayes shooting at the doe on Thursday afternoon (the one he missed) I actually saw a pile of white hair fly off the tail of a DIFFERENT deer that was standing beside it! We made a quick search of the area and found a partially blown off tail. We gave Hayes a pretty hard time about shooting the wrong deer...in the butt...the rest of the weekend. Just as I was snapping the picture of Hayes holding the tail, I got this picture from Laura of a couple of bucks that had eased out back at camp. She said we should just sit with her since deer hunting is so easy. :) We were on doe patrol again for Friday afternoon. It was a comedy of errors kind of day for Hayes and I. We literally took the safety off on 4 different does but everything from small bucks chasing them off as he was getting ready to pull the trigger, to my phone battery dying and miraculously coming back on and then falling off the shelf at the very moment he was getting ready to shoot again, (which makes an incredibly loud thud when your not expecting it and a deer is 70 yards away) to him not being able to find a doe in the middle of a wide open 1.5 acre field...you name it...it happened. We were finally able to get a shot at a big doe right at dark. He promptly missed her and she ran 50 yards and started feeding again. Talk about insult to injury. I elected not to let him shoot again as it was getting pretty late and his confidence was at 0. We heard big brother shoot right after us and it sounded like a hit. We packed up our gear and started out of the stand when he shot a second time. Turns out he missed the first shot, the deer ran in the woods and snorted three times only to return and walk towards the stand. Praise God for dumb deer. A nice 100lb doe was Grayson's reward giving him his second deer in two days. I spent all night consoling Hayes about the ups and downs of deer hunting. Replaying many of the misses I'd had in my hunting career. We went through what we thought might be the problem and I tried to build him back up. We had practiced both days with a scoped 22 and he was shooting lights out with it. I knew he could shoot but he was just way too jittery (buck fever) when it was time to shoot at a live animal. Fast forward to this morning and it was just he and I at it again. We had deer around us from daylight but never could get the shot we wanted. About 7:15, a single doe broke off from a group and fed toward us. She got to about 75 yards and Hayes got all lined up. Just as I was telling him "take" as in "take your time"...BOOM! He back flipped her right where she stood! I was so proud of the way he fought through the misses and buck fever and was able to redeem himself on the last hunt of the weekend. He was as proud of this doe as a B&C buck! A few pictures of Hayes with his doe taken one year to the day as his first deer ever. He claims January 2nd is his lucky day! 6 year olds aren't much help on loading a deer. Despite the mid 30's temperature, I was sweating and out of breath when I took this pic after bear hugging the deer and basically rolling it onto the tailgate. Hayes was all smiles and didn't even get his hands dirty. :) Once again, a wonderful weekend spent enjoying God's blessings and bounty. Got a freezer full of meat and made more memories than you can shake a stick at!
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