Do you remember your first deer? Whether you continue to hunt deer or move on to more exotic locales and species, we always seem to remember our first buck.
Was it a grandfather, a father, or an uncle that introduced you to the woods? Maybe it was someone else, totally unrelated, who first stirred a lifelong passion for being a part of nature? Braden, my 15-year-old nephew, downed his first buck this year on Oct. 17. Neither he nor I will ever forget it.
Braden and his brother Craig, 13, work with me on my land cutting, creating, and maintaining an environment conducive to deer hunting. For several years he has been learning how to handle himself in the woods, read sign, use cover scent, check the wind, show respect, and carry himself like a hunter. It’s an important part of our family heritage!
I sent him to a stand at 3:30 that afternoon with an old Weatherby .243, with instructions to not shoot anything under a four-point. His friends tell him about the bigger rifles they supposedly shoot, and he accordingly wants a bigger caliber, but I’ve told him repeatedly that the .243 is dead-on at 100 yards. I’m teaching him the importance of the shooter behind the scope, not the weapon in his hands.
“They’re gonna start walking about five o’clock,” I told him. The deer got my memo, and a little before the top of the hour Braden spotted four does walking out. Trailing them was a rut-fueled six-pointer. Braden waited patiently for a bigger one to creep out, but after 15 minutes of holding on the first buck no other deer ventured out, so he took the shot.
As he aimed the rifle, he heard my repetitive words in his head — “Aim low, you’re gonna jerk the first time. Breathe-aim-slack-squeeze.” He pulled the trigger, and watched.
Braden said it took one step after the shot and dropped. A 50-yard shot to the base of the neck — one shot, one kill. It wasn’t the biggest, most heavily massed buck ever, but big enough for this young man, for this day! After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, he ventured down and out to the buck.
He found me at the rendezvous point and we went to haul his deer out of the woods. After it was dressed and on the hook in the cooler, and after all the congratulations from fellow hunters were roundly accepted, it was time to head home.
I turned to him in the dark of the truck and said, “Tell me the whole story.”
Braden turned and responded, “Sir?”
I had another lesson to pass on. “The best parts of the hunt is the anticipation before and the story after each hunt.”
Braden smiled and began his first full telling of the story. “Well, it was just like you said ….”
My buttons popped with pride. This is how a hunter is made!
Wayne Nanney is CFO with Sporting Classics.
We’ll Do It Tomorrow: Southern Hunting and Fishing Stories By John P. Faris, Jr.
253 pages, Hardcover, Signed by the author. 15 stories and 30 illustration
Reviewed & endorsed by Jim Casada of Sporting Classics who said, “This is relaxed literature on the outdoors in the vein of Babcock, Rutledge and Ruark in his ‘Old Man’ pieces.” Buy Now
