First Deer Stories

[ttank0789]

Killing your first deer is always a very special moment in one's hunting career and I thought it would be nice if we could share the stories of getting our first deer with each other.

I killed my first deer in December 2003 on Friday of Ohio's gun season, I was 14 and a freshman in high school.  I had taken the day of school like so many of today's youth do   We had been doing deer drives all morning and nobody had gotten anything although some of us had taken some shots (myself included). I killed my deer on the last drive before we went to lunch.  I got in a treestand in the corner of a field facing into the woods down an old dried up creek bed/deer trail. The stand is a few boards in the fork of a tree with big nails and rail road spikes for steps and it's still there and very sturdy (I bowhunted out of it one day this year). About 5 minutes before the drivers came out of the woods a doe ran right by my tree at about 15 yards. She stopped and looked at me as I was trying to shake the mitten part off of my glommett so I could get my trigger finger out and shoot.  After what seemed like an eternity it finally came off and I swung my gun up and shot. she started to take off as I brought the 12 gauge 870 up but she wasn't fast enough. She was quartering to me and the slug went in where the neck meets the body on her left side and exited through the last rib on the other side.  She was DRT!!!! There was blood and chunkies in the snow 15 feet behind her. And that's part of how I got the nickname Bloodbath   Upon gutting her out we found there to be next to no heart and the lungs were a mangled mess. I was so excited i almost fell out of the tree! I kept yelling "I got one! I got one!" She wan't a mature doe, but wasn't very small either, about 110-120 pounds.

[Land_Owner]

I was introduced to hunting later in life...at 39.  Now, 16 years after my first deer, it is as if it were just this afternoon's hunt.

I was pointed in the direction of a tree stand on some "permission granted" property.  The stand was a platform in an old oak with wooden steps leading into an unknown "solid" bottom.  Not being too savey in tree stand construction, I put my rifle on top and proceeded to climb into the stand like a fly - out and over the railing. 

As I got seated I noted an old buck slowly turning away.  It had watched this human perform The Fly approach to tree stand hunting.  It vanished before I could shoot.  Probably laughing too.

Between the wasps in that stand and the heat of the day I took naps and watched the bottomlands below.  In the afternoon a spike with its head down to the ground eating acrons walked to within 20 yards and I shot it.  Way Cool!

BTW, there was a trap door in the bottom of the stand.  I got down the way I should have gotten up.

[TribReady]

My second year hunting. I was 13 (1982).
My dad and I drove around delivering the Milwaukee Sentinel paper very early that Sunday. Still made the woods well before light.
We hunted on public land, but knew it well.  To say it was cold would be an understatement. I climbed into by homemade, wooden ladder stand and waited. Of course I got cold and needed to walk. That sort of thing was frowned upon as we usually hunted dark to dark from the one stand.
Anyway, I walked a bit and then nature called. Oh crap! Well the "green sheets" in the middle of the Sunday paper were thin and worked just fine. Now I just decided to sit on the ground behind an old, abandoned wood pile about 2 ft. tall.  Great little spot overlooking a small grassy opening bordering a swamp (at the time, it just looked like an ok spot to sit, no thought was put into it)
Anyway, about 5 minutes into the sit a small forkhorn comes strolling by. The bead sighted 870 with the cheapest slugs we could find came up and I shot. Hit him a bit back in the liver and maybe one lung. He ran a bit and stopped.  I got up, then down on one knee to shoot again as he has in some trees now. Shot again, high but spined him. He fell right there. I was estatic.  My dad heard the shots and was there fairly soon afterward. It was great for us!
The guy who was walking slowly thru swamp and came upon us and the dead deer wasn't too happy, but he did make a nice drive 

The only other part of that hunt that I remember was flinging the "boy parts" as far as I could. No use advertising a buck kill on public land     Even where we hunt now (private), I still do that little trick for old time sake 

[Mohawk]

  I guess I was 12. Hunting on a family friend's property outside Comfort, Tx. I remember we didn't see anything in the morning and everyone retired to the house for a nap. I got bored, and my dad and I took  to the stand at about 12:30pm just to kill time. There was a feeder at about 50yds. A lone doe came running across and stopped at the feeder about 1pm. Missed the first two shots broadside(I got better over the years) The third shot, and last round, she was facing directly away from me. Being a young'un, I took the the shot. The bullet entered high in the rump and exited in the middle of the back, taking out most of the center vertabrae. She went down. Gun was a Remington model 700 Classic in .30-06. I guess you always remember your first........

[Graybeard]

Buncha young whippersnappers. 

Here is mine copied and pasted from the GBO Campfire Tales Section on the GBO Home Page. http://www.graybeardoutdoors.com/campfiretales/campfire.php

I still remember my first white tail deer kill-but then I guess we all do don't we? The year was 1976 and the place was the Choccolocco Wildlife Management Area (CWMA). I had been hunting deer but not very seriously for several years prior to taking my first. We usually only went 3 or 4 times a year and spent the rest of our hunting time chasing squirrels and doves mostly with an occasional hunt for quail and rabbit tossed in for variety. The we consists of Lewis McCary my distant cousin and Dennis Doss. The three of us hunted together regularly in those days.
On this particular fall day the three of us were in Dennis' old white ford van and we parked as far back as we could drive it on a side road without a number or name off of Rd. 500. We each had our favorite areas that we went to from this jumping off point. I was using my brand new Baker climbing stand for the first time in the woods. For those who aren't old enough or for some other reason aren't familiar with the Baker it was an abomination. It consisted of a sheet of plywood about 18" wide by maybe 30" long with a aluminum "V" bar at the back to hopefully grab and hold the tree. It didn't do that real well except on soft barked trees such as pines. There was no top to it-just the bottom. To climb you wrapped your arms around the tree and pulled the stand up with your legs which required you to spread them wide enough to get them around the tree. Not an easy task for a short leg rascal such as myself.

I went down into the hollow I had scouted and picked me out a hardwood (read slick barked) tree to climb as there were no pines available. I started my ascent-several times actually as I kept slipping back down. I finally made it up to about 10'-12' by some miracle and put my full weight on the stand to set it into place of the tree. Me and the stand dropped at least 3' before I could stop the descent. I hugged the tree with all my strength and got it stopped and locked into position but I had lost a lot of side from my chest in the process. Fun City!

So I sit and wait for a buck-does not legal-to come along. Numerous does and fawns make there way by me but I wait for a buck. The cold morning turns into a nice warm mid-day and still I wait. About noon time I hear a deer coming down the ridge from my right front-closer and closer it comes with me thinking it is just another doe. But wait-I see the sun glare off of something on its head! Yes it is a buck only a small spike but still a buck-my first BUCK? It comes closer and closer until it stops about 10 yards away and to my right still. Why did I let it get so close? Who knows-buck fever will do until a better excuse comes along. I am now in a predicament. It is standing to my right and I am right handed and still haven't brought the gun to my shoulder. It suddenly sees me and runs straight in front of my stand no more than 10 yards away. I raise my shotgun-the same Remington 1100 skeet gun I had used to shoot my first 100 straight earlier that same year. I fire as it is straight in front of my stand and it runs on without showing any sign of being hit. I fire again as it runs away at a distance of maybe 30 yards and yet again as it is about 75 yards away and running straight away from me. At the third shot the buck crumples and lands with his head facing back toward me.

My first deer-a buck-is on the ground only 75 yards away. Am I excited? Well I almost stepped off that platform onto the ground in my excitement but caught myself just in time. I climbed down as fast as I could and rushed to claim my prize. Another hunter had heard the shot and walked up while I was getting ready to field dress it. He said he heard the shot and thought it might be his hunting buddy. He congratulated me and went back to hunting. I finished the field dressing chores and dragged the buck back to the van to await the return of Lewis and Dennis. I hid the deer so they couldn't see it when they walked up. I asked them where were their deer and they said they hadn't seen any. They then asked where MINE was. So  I showed it to them. You can bet I was one proud hunter that day and it is still just as clear to me today as if it was only yesterday.

GB 

[TribReady]

it is still just as clear to me today as if it was only yesterday.

GB 

That's the great part about all these stories. I couldn't recount my deer season 3 years ago, but that first deer kill is right there in the memory banks 

[ttank0789]

I second that motion. Nothing can replace the memory of the first one!

[Mohawk]

Good point, fellas. After that it was just instinct and you harvested your deer. But that first one, and it only happens once, we had to decide if what we were doing was what we are, and what we're about. Almost to the point, that when you squeezed the trigger on the first deer, you made the decision on who you became. A deer hunter.....