The corridor:
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The field:
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By 1:30pm we are tucked in and the afternoon sit is on. After just about an hour we hear rustling behind us and within a few minutes we have 6 turkeys out in the field feeding. They were the afternoon entertainment, as it turned out. We watched them mosey around out in the field until around 4:30pm, at which point they meandered off to the edge of the woods to roost up for the night.
No more than the turkeys cleared the field then Autumn whispers "Dad! There's a deer!". I look over and sure enough, a deer is skylined in the middle of the field. I ask her if she wants to take it, she said "It has no horns" and I agreed. I reminded her that since it is youth weekend horns are not required. She immediately decided to take a shot.
We managed to get her into a shooting position and un-zip the large window of the tent so she had better view. She was on her knees to my left, I was crouched on the ground and holding the shooting stick with my left hand for her while plugging my left ear with my right hand.
I asked her if she could see the deer, she said yes and then she let drive. The .243 barked loudly and the deer jumped about 10' in the air, ran around in a circle and then stood there, broadside, staring back in our direction.
"Did I hit it?" she asked. "I don't think so", I replied, "its still standing there".
I told her to reload, which she did, then she shuffled around a bit to re-position and the .243 roared again. I looked out and could not see the deer anymore. "Where did it go?" She asked me. "I dunno, I can't see it either". I reach over and grab my binos to glass the field. I lean over to my left to look around a tree that is obstructing my view and I see the deer again. "It's still there" I said "reload!". She pulls the bolt back to cycle in a third shot and the bolt comes out of the rifle. She is kneeling there, looking at me with the rifle in her left hand the bolt in her right. Two people could not look more puzzled. I take the bolt and the rifle from her and start fumbling with it, I drop the magazine out of the rifle to clear it and It takes me what seems like forever to thumb back the bolt lock, slide the bolt into place, re-load the magazine and chamber a round for her. The gun re-assembled, loaded and on safe I hand it back to her. The deer is still standing there, staring in our direction.
I whisper to Autumn, take you time honey, make this shot count. I crouched there, waiting and watching, left ear plugged with right index finger, left eye squinted, and BOOM! The .243 delivers a third shot, this time a direct hit. The deer dropped its head down and took off running. It looked like its rear legs were pushing faster than the front legs could go and the deer disappeared out of sight. I noted where I saw it last and then turned to Autumn. "I think you got it!" I said. She high fived me and said "I know I nailed it, I saw it take the hit before it ran".
We hugged briefly and I congratulated her on the shot but I was not convinced the deer was hit hard enough to drop right away and had visions of a night time search for blood, as the clock had run up to 4:50pm by this point. She cleared the rifle and we got out of the tent, folded it up and packed our gear. I broke out two head lamps from my pack and we headed for the spot we last saw the deer.
We circled around and around where we last saw the deer looking for blood. I was trying to suppress my fears of a poor hit and tough blood trail into the night.
We walked back to the staring point and started looking in a slightly different direction when Autumn says "There it is! I got it!" We hurried over to the deer and sure enough, it was DOA. It had only gone maybe 30 yards and was facing the opposite way it was running when we saw it last.
85# button buck, some tender vittles!
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She hit it a little far back but the shot was lethal nonetheless.
She helped me gut it and when it was done I wiped the knife off in the grass, put it in the sheath and handed it to her. I congratulated her again and told her she was old enough and mature enough to harvest her second deer so she was ready for to have her own hunting knife. We hugged again and headed for home with her little button buck.
Here is Autumn, her deer and her two brothers, Carl is the older one and Cody is the younger.
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This guy is already in the freezer and we're stoked for the rifle opener this weekend!
