1st Harvest stories

   Danny has been tagging along with me since long before he was able to hunt. By the time he was 6 or 7, he was already pretty darned good at being quiet in the woods, sitting still. He loves being in the outdoors, and anything to do with hunting, trapping, or fishing. He has always been a tough-minded kid, never complained about the cold or early hours. He is a GREAT hunting partner.
    He started after deer when he was 12, with his longbow. We are fortunate enough to have access to some private property near our house, so we got out often his first year. We had one tree in particular we loved to sit in. It was a large forked oak, and we had 2 treestands hung in it, so we could sit side by side. My stand was a little higher than his, so I had a great “over the shoulder view” of his hunts. One of my best memories of my son is the day he missed a doe. She came in, angling in and out of some brush, until she got broadside. The waiting was working on Danny, and I could see his right leg shaking. He drew, and missed, shooting over his back. He turned up and looked at me with the biggest smile…”Does this always happen?” he asked, pointing to his shaking leg. I knew at that moment, he “got it”.
    Last fall Danny was in a bit of a slump. He was 4 seasons into it now, and had missed a few, both with bow and gun. I wasn’t making a big deal out of it, letting him know about the countless number of deer I have missed myself. It didn’t make him feel any better. We kept shooting, and he was getting more confident in his marksmanship.

   However, one Sunday afternoon during the muzzloader season in 2006, he missed yet another slam dunk shot. He was pretty deflated, he just couldn’t understand it. When we got home, I pointed to a life sized deer silhouette hanging in his room. I asked him to show me his aiming point. When he pointed low in the chest at the heart area, a bell went off in my head. We talked about “aim small, miss small”, and the logic of putting the crosshairs dead in the middle of the chest. Because I had an idea he was shooting low from his treestand, I reasoned putting it up in the center (like a good bow shot) would give him a better margin of error. That week after school, we took a scoped .22 to an indoor range, and Danny shot about 100 rounds at a deer silhouette target. He was ready.
    The following Saturday night, we were back in the swamp. I hunted off the ground with my .54 flinter, while Danny manned a nearby treestand with an in-line muzzloader. I saw a few does trot through the general area, so I knew Danny was at least seeing deer. 30 minutes before dark, I heard his in-line “BOOM”. I immediately stood up, to see a deer tearing through the saplings near me. I swung on the deer with my huge flintlock, and “KA-BOOM” I neatly centered a birch tree. 15 yards later, I saw the deer collapse, and having seen the tree explode in front of me, new darned well it was from Danny’s bullet. We scrambled over to the deer, and sure enough, there was Danny’s neat, .45 caliber hole through the rib cage…exactly where he was aiming. I was glad now that I missed. This deer needed to be ALL his. And it was. It turned out to be a button buck, which seemed somehow appropriate for my young man’s first. We had the skull bleached and it now hangs in out trophy room, along with the feathers from his first turkey. It’s the best looking trophy on our wall, if you ask me.
    Last night Danny closed out his final “Youth Hunt”, with a perfect 1 shot kill on a fat 6 point buck. We were sitting in that same double trunk oak as his first season. But this time he was on the deer before I saw it, and needed no direction from me to take the buck. Watching him grow from a kid in awe, with a shaking leg, to a seasoned deer hunter has been one of the finest things in my life.

Roger Norris

Alex is my oldest son, and as one would probably guess, has accompanied me on hunting outings literally since he was in diapers. I've hauled him around the woods in a backpack carrier, and he's slept through many hunts in a sleeping bag in a deer blind. Like many kids, boys copy their Dad. Alex is no exception there either. As he was approaching that magical age where he could start bow hunting, I had switched from shooting a Mathews compound to shooting a longbow and recurve. Alex promptly followed suit, and soon was shooting an old Bear Kodiak Magnum quite well. A brief attempt to switch to a Darton wheeler he had ended with it getting airborne into a bean field behind the house! That experiment didn’t go so well for him, and he stuck with that Bear recurve for his first bow season. Now, that made the ol' man pretty proud of him. There aren't a lot of teens in this day and age who will start out the hard way with trad gear. I told him all along he can shoot whatever he chooses; he doesn’t have to shoot a stick just because I do. He pooh-poohed that idea right away.

Fast forward to Youth Hunt 2007. Alex hunted his first couple with his bow, and while he did have a few close encounters, venison eluded him. I have missed the last couple youth hunts, as they coincide with the same week I have been in Colorado chasing elk. Fortunately, I'm blessed with a wife that loves to hunt as much as I, and so Alex hunted again this year with his step-mom. Last year they went, and while he did get a shot with the muzzleloader, a long blood trail eventually petered out to nothing. Needless to say, Alex and Amy were crushed.

This year, they were determined to change their luck. Again, my elk hunt would have me in Colorado, but we prepared for our hunts together. We spent some more time shooting the ML, and Alex was right on the money. We got his gear together, and as I left for CO, we wished each other good luck. Amy and Alex headed for our hunting grounds right after school Friday, where they got a couple of portable blinds up, and then waited for morning in camp.

I was sleeping in Sat morning in the Colorado cabin at elk camp after spending the night helping pack a bull off the mountain (no, not mine). The phone in the cabin rang at 6 am, to which I knew right away that call could only mean one thing. I jumped out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning. On the other end of the line was a very excited young man. After 3 seasons of being patient, being frustrated, and being disappointed, this morning it all changed. Alex had put an absolutely PERFECT shot on a big fat doe with the ML. A very short blood trail later, he finally had his first deer. I could hardly contain myself, as I immediately woke everyone in the cabin with the good news. That doe meant more to me than any elk I had chased thus far. I was elated for both Amy and Alex. They set it up, hunted, and did everything themselves without having dear ol Dad to fall back on for help. Together, they did an awesome job.

I will admit though, that I also felt bad that I wasn't there to be part of it. But after 15 years of apprenticeship, I felt comfortable that he would do fine. As bow season is underway, we will continue the quest to get him a deer with his longbow. Congratulations to Alex on his first deer. You definitely made your ol man proud.

The night was September 22, 2007. I was hunting with my dad in Livingston county. It was a warm sunny afternoon . We got on stand at 5:50pm. As I attached my hunters safety system vest I was wondering if I was going to see a deer? I nocked my easton axis arrow to my parker buckshot bow and made sure my Aftershock Maniac Broadheads were ready to fly.
Out of the corner of my eye I seen movement. Iooked up to my dad and told him thre is a buck coming. So I got my bow ready as the bucked walked into range. I drew back and waited for him to present a shot. Then...I let the shot fly hitting him right behind the shoulder. The buck ran off to the north west and then we heard it crash. I was so excited I could not feel my legs. We got down and went back to the house . We called everyone in my family. Then my dad and I reviewed the video. It was a great hit and we
knew it was dead. We found the buck that night with my family around me. It went 75 yard and it was a double lung shot. This was the best day of my life"

"Shoot straight Burn a hole!"

Dakota Hunter Solomon