My 10 year old Seth started his hunting career at the age of 7 when he shot his first duck. I was planning on buying him his own rifle this year, but life happened and didn’t have the money. We headed up to my buddies farm north of Thief River Falls on Wednesday of the rifle season and were going to end the season up there. I wasn’t planning to have him hunt as he is small framed and knew my .270 would be to much. I also knew though that they had free either sex tags for 10 and 11 year olds. We hunted hard for the first couple days seeing lots of deer but not a buck I wanted to shoot. On friday morning I had an 8 pointer that was about 2 inches past the ears come out at about 70 yards and quickly had it in my scope. I was going to shoot but it didn’t have much for height and I let it walk. 
. My son was allowed to use a 6mm that belong to one of the guys we hunt with. We quickly went out and bought his tag but because it was bought during the season he had to wait the waiting period. In the mean time I filled my anterless tag. Once his license was good we sat in a stand that we had been seeing a small basket 8 that would have been a nice first deer. During his first sit we had does come out early but knew it would be close to dark if a buck was going to show. Near the end of shooting light one of the does that came out early was still in the field about 100 yards out. I got him into shooting position and man was his addrenaline going. He made what I thought was a great. The gun didn’t cycle for a second shot so I grabbed it from him quickly to reload. Doing so I lost sight of it. We got down at dark but could not find any sign of a hit. I hunted the next morning and we got down early to look for his deer. We didn’t find it so I searched a 40 acre section of crp using a grid pattern search on the 4 wheeler. Still nothing. 
I went back to the stand again to try and determine exactly where the deer was when he shot. It turns out I started my search 10 yards to the right of the deer as I found it laying right where it was when he shot. 
After some high fives, hugs and tears I will never admit to again. We sent everyone I knew a text and a pic. We drove home on sunday with two deer. He was quick to point out that his doe was a lot bigger than mine. Until next year. 
DT
I want to thank BK for helping me get the pics to load. 
