That’s what my 7-year old, Jacob, said to me as we hiked into the woods on Saturday evening to take to the bow stand. He and his older brother love hearing my hunting/fishing stories (almost as much as I love telling them). So when he was invited to join me in the bow stand for his very first time, he was excited.
We settled into our stands (I have two stands hung to the same spruce tree, so he was situated off of my left shoulder). A couple of last-minute words were whispered and we settled in for the last 2 hours of daylight. Jacob (not unlike his dear-old-dad) is a bit of a talker. He fidgetted a little. Within the first hour, he fidgetted a bit, explored the woods with my binos and asked me about a dozen times how long we had been sitting.
I expected the deer to come out of their bedding area situated to my right, and therefore focused most of my eyes/ears in that direction. With about 45 minutes of daylight remaining, I felt the all-too-familiar tapping on my left shoulder of Jacob attempting to get my attention – undoubtedly to ask me again how long we have been sitting. I turned slowly and whispered, “what?”
“There’s a deer,” he whispered as he nodded his head in it’s direction. Sure enough, there stood a 6-point buck 30 yards out. He eased his way in front of us and then proceeded to make a rub. Never in my entire life have I witnessed a buck make a rub. And here’s my boy, all of 7 years old – his first time in the stand – and he gets to experience it. And I get to experience it with him. Wow. I had no intentions of taking a small buck such as this – not this early in the season, anyway. But my excitement of the moment got the best of me and I elected to take the shot as he started walking away. At 35 yards (broadside) I stopped him with a “maaah” and let the arrow fly. He “jumped the string” and I initially thought that the arrow had sailed over his back. As he trotted away, however, I saw my fletching sticking out of him. A high hit. And not a pass-through.
We picked up a slight blood trail as darkness fell, marked it and I returned in the morning. I tracked him for hours the next day – covering several hundred yards – never finding a bed, my arrow, or the deer. Hmph. It happens. It’s happened to me before and I suspect that it will happen again. But it still is hard to accept.
In the end – Jacob does have a story to tell, even if it doesn’t have a happy ending.
