Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Brothers Trying to Keep Up with Sharpshooting Sisters

It seems the last couple of seasons have been times for my children to learn some things about patience and persistence in their hunting experiences. While mature does and a few spikes were hunted successfully and freezers were filled...





The mature bucks we were chasing taught us some good lessons on how smart and truly challenging the world's most wonderful, dynamic and humbling game animal (in my humble opinion and limited experience...grin) can be.

I have been encouraged at how determined and yet conservation minded my children are becoming in their approach to hunting - and how much I am seeing them enjoy lots of hunting where we never fire a shot and just have the fun of being together and watching and pursuing deer.

But every hunter needs a little success to keep sharp - and children especially thrive on the encouragement of achieving the goal, so we kept after the big boys.

After seeing their sisters kill some nice mature bucks, the boys got up a little easier, stayed at it a little longer, and had that little gleam in their eye and spring in their step that told me that they were pretty determined to try to keep pace with their older sisters. I really wanted to find a mature buck or two for them, but for a whole season we saw bucks that either needed another year or were too smart and quick for us. We did see one big 7 point and a mature short-tined 10. We decided to try to kill the 10 and give the 7 another year, so naturally, we could have killed the 7 a dozen times and never could get on the 10. The boys killed several does and enjoyed the season, but they didn't get a buck.




The following season, I told the boys that the Saturday of youth season was theirs. We did some scouting and saw both bucks. The 7 had become a nice 8, and the old 10 had declined a little into a short tined 8 (the drought didn't help!), but an early rut had both bucks chasing does and really hard to predict. So, we headed to opening day not sure what we would find.

The boys rolled out early and I had to make them wait a little while for a hint of daylight as we headed out. We had decided that my oldest son would try to get on the big 8, and that his younger brother would try for the older short tined buck. We were prepared for either buck to show, as both boys had shot their respective rifles a bunch before the season - the younger his Model 7 .223 running hand loaded 55g Hornady SP's and the older with his Model 700 243 dropped into an original Ti stock that I bought off the 'Fire a couple of years back. Both rifles sport youth length stocks, and both boys shoot them well enough that it sounds like I'm bragging if I tell folks about it...grin.

As we drove into an area where we could circle south and ease up and see a bunch of country with the wind in our face, my younger son spotted two deer in a bedding area with scattered live oaks and quite a bit of underbrush. I drove past and wouldn't have seen them, and had to back up and search with my binoculars to find a deer at all. Young eyes!

I finally saw part of a deer standing, and then found a doe lying down 25 0r 30 yards closer to us. I backed up a little more and could see more of the further deer. He was standing like a statue as bucks will, and had his head high in the limbs of a tree so that his rack was hard to see. Sure seems like bucks do this on purpose.

I could tell he had that deep body and thick neck of a pretty mature buck, but he stood staring and didn't move for what seemed like forever. He finally turned his head and looked from us to his doe, and I was pretty sure he was the bigger buck we were after. He wasn't going anywhere as long as the doe stayed put, and she was bedded and showed no signs of blowing out. We just backed out and left them to try to figure out what to do next.

It was getting lighter, but the sun still hadn't come up. We had come in from the east, and the wind was quartering across from the north where he wouldn't smell us, so we decided to wait until the sun came up behind us and see if we could ease in with it behind us. The doe he was with stood up, and as she fed away from us, we eased in with the sun behind us. It was just right. Worked like a charm, and my son drilled him through both shoulders and dropped him. His doe trotted off, but there was no sign of him getting up. We walked on in and the buck was still paddling a little, so the boy got a rest on a tree and sent another round low behind his shoulder, and that was it.

The sun was barely up on opening day, and my son had his first mature buck...

My younger boy spotted the deer, his big brother did the shooting - if it wasn't for a little input on the strategy to get in on him - I don't think they would have needed me at all...grin.

No ground shrink - 5.5 years old, and a really nice Texas Hill Country 8...




Hope y'all enjoy the story and photos!

DJ