Wednesday evening, October 24th, 2007, three days before Missouri's youth gun season opened, I killed a doe down behind our house with my bow. No big deal you say, and you're right, it isn't.  Except for the odd sense of guilt I felt over taking a deer so close to my son's opportunity coming up in a few days. It wasn't that I didn't need to shoot that doe, because my family eats alot of deer each year, I guess it was the weird sense that I wished it would have been him there to take her. I guess it's a dad thing. Always wanting your kid to do well. You see, my son, Colton, is only 7 yrs. old, and he has wanted to hunt for his own deer so bad I could see it in his eyes. It broke my heart. He had no idea what was before him. Everything has to go right to get a shot at a whitetail, and we all know it. I'm sick of everyone on TV making it seem like it's so easy. It takes work, and practice, and knowledge, and skill. This kid is 7 yrs. old, and has a steep wish to fill. And I would stop at nothing to see it happen. But in reality, I knew he had a great chance at seeing deer, thanks to hunting, scouting and hours of research and stand placement by my hunting friends and I on our hunting lands, up in Northern Missouri, which is where we were going for Youth season. You see, that Wednesday evening, while my son and I were bringing that doe back up to the house on the 4-wheeler, we should have been loading the truck for our departure the next day. We were leaving Thursday to go up North. We had  the usual: hunting clothes, trailer, 4-wheelers, hunting equipment, camping gear, etc. etc. yet to load. I was scheduled off of work, so the next morning, after processing the deer, Colton and I were on our way to his first deer camp.

      My brother Brad was already up at camp, and had harvested a deer with his bow that morning. He said the farmers were pulling crops out of the fields, and the deer were on the go, especially in the cut corn fields. I was especially excited to get out in the woods, because Colton may get to see some real action by the sounds of the patterns the deer were on. With a low acorn crop,and farmers harvesting means deer travel farther and more often than usual during daylight hours. 

     Colton McAnally is only 7, but he is growing up so fast. He is a real good kid, and a trooper at that. We've been working on his shooting since early Summer, and he's probably shot about 100 rounds through his deer gun. I've got a CVA muzzleloader cut down to fit him, and he's shooting one 50 grain 777 pellet with a 180 grain Hornady sabot. This makes for low recoil, and he loves shooting it. It is effective downrange out to 100 yards, dropping fast after 75 yards. Colton was accurate out to about 50 yards, and I was not going to let him take a shot any farther than that. I put fiber optic open sights on it for him and they worked out fine.

     Anyway, here he and I were, it was upon us so quick. On the drive up, as he was taking a noon siesta in the backseat of the truck, I thought about the weeks prior and the prepwork we had done for his two hunting setups. For the morning hunts, we hung a 2-man "buddy" ladder stand in the middle of a woodlot that always has does bedding in or near it. It's a little pocket of timber that is just natural as a staging area for bedding deer. For Colton's evening hunts, my brother and I brushed in a ground blind in the corner of a clover/alfalfa field. We found a scrape line and several rubs along the field edge, so about 50 yards upwind from the blind I made a mock scrape with a scent dripper over it, and I also hung a game camera to watch it. We've had some close encounters with some good bucks in this area, and even though Colton wanted to take the first deer he had a chance on, I knew if we didn't score in the morning, he'd have a good chance to see a bruiser in this field in the evening.  

     Once we arrived in camp, Colton took off down the field on his 4-wheeler back and forth for a good while. It was nice to see him smile and stretch a little. The rest of the evening we spent doing camp chores, and sitting around the campfire. Friday morning I hunted for a little while in a woodlot behind camp and took another doe. Colton was excited, and so was I, because I'm trying to fill our freezers back home, and this doe will help the cause. But again, I wished it would have been Colton's deer. I just felt like if he didn't have any luck, he would feel like it was his fault. He'd seen me take two deer in three days, and he hadn't got to go huntin' yet. I could tell and feel he wanted his own deer. But his chance would come. Friday afternoon, he took a couple practice shots with his gun, and after cleaning it, I put it up. He seemed ready, and being a kid just enjoying life, he wasn't nervous. He seemed just happy to be with the guys. There were five of us in camp, including his grandpa, which made him happy. Friday night we all went to bed early, and the next morning we were up and moving early. It was on of my greatest moments as a dad, from helping get him dressed, to parking the truck in the field, and sitting there in the predawn darkness talking about what we were getting ready to do, just talking and teaching him little things about deer and how to hunt them. On the walk into the stand, we had deer snort at us, and being dark still, I couldn't tell what they were. Bumping deer in this pocket of timber isn't uncommon, but it doesn't seem to affect the deer sightings either.

     After getting up in the stand, we just sat there taking it all in. Daylight was on us quickly though, and it was about a 1/2 hour before the the action heated up. A doe got downwind of our stand and apparently winded us, snorting and moving the opposite direction. It was in some brush across a fencerow, and never really presented a shot. Then Colton noticed something on his side of the stand. He whispered, "Dad, is that a deer or a log." I looked over his shoulder and sure enough, bedded in some thick brush not 30 yards from our stand, was a doe. She was facing the wind, and quartering to us. But her head was behind a huge oak tree, so I don't know if she came in there before light and bedded, or just sat there thinking she was undetected when we got into stand. Nevertheless, here was a deer unaware of us at 30 yards. I told Colton to slowly stand up, and he turned and rested his gun on the shooter's rail of the stand. I asked him if he was on the deer, and he said yes. I told him to shoot when he was ready, and he fired while I was still whispering. The deer rolled over on impact and dropped right in the bed. No track job on this doe baby! I hugged Colton and he just stared at the deer. Then he fist-pumped his arm and said, " Dad, I just got my first deer!" I was in awe. After coming back to Earth, I reloaded his muzzleloader again, but didn't cap it. He was nervous about her running off, but that deer wasn't going anywhere. We stayed up in the stand about 15 more minutes, and saw a couple more does traveling through right after the shot. After getting down, snapping some photos, and just enjoying the moment, I field dressed the deer. He didn't want any part of that! He said it stinks. He's right.  After taking care of that, we started the short drag, bumping another doe in the process.

     The rest of the weekend was spent showing off and playing around camp, going out and glassing deer. He got to ride his 4-wheeler all around and seemed to have fun in everything he did. I think he would have had as good a time without harvesting the deer as with it. Maybe. But who knows, he'll have plenty of chances in his lifetime to get "skunked" by deer, but not this time!

     He did teach me something this weekend; There IS more to hunting than just the kill. My little buddy is now becoming a man and a friend. Yeah, I teared up a few times during all this, but no, he didn't see me.

GOOD JOB LIL' BUDDY,

LOVE DAD

     The total Missouri deer harvest has been reported at 302,688 deer taken.

Here are some final harvest numbers for the 2007 Firearms Deer Season in Missouri. The total number of deer killed during the Regular season (Nov. 10-20) is 214,494. Texas County led the way with 4043 deer taken. Last year in 2006, the harvest was 235,054. So just like opening weekend's numbers, the remainder of the season ended up being lower as well. This means there were 20,560 less deer taken this year.

     This year's Youth did a little better than last year though, harvesting 12,373 deer this Fall compared to 11,918 last Fall. The two day hunt (Oct. 27-28) proved to be a good one for the youngsters. Osage County led the state with 303 deer taken by Youth hunters.

     The Urban Season 2007 (Oct. 6-9) yielded some small numbers this year. Hunters took 554 deer, compared to a whopping 1349 deer last year in 2006. Those are big numbers. Either there were less hunters participating, or the deer in some urban areas are now under control. I'll have to look into this more.

     Hunters took 13,372 deer during the Muzzleloader portion (Nov. 23- Dec. 2), and believe it or not, Jefferson County came in third in total harvest for that season with 292 deer taken.

     Antlerless season produced 19,472 deer killed, and ran from December 9 to December 17th this year.