Initiation

[WylieKy]

I early fall of 1992, I shot a Whitetail doe from a treestand with a Bear compound bow.  It was a perfect 18 yard broadside shot and the doe ran less than 40 yards. I was 14 bright-eyed years old and it was my first kill of a large game animal.  I ran to the house and got my grandfater who was holdin' court. (A complicated process involving retired Ford workers discussing how easy current Ford workers have it.)

Grandpa and two buddies took the hike to help watch me drag and clean the doe (the buddies offered much helpful advise, such as "I sure wouldn't do it like that." and "watch out for that bush" and "I think that's the liver, no no the lungs.")  The first thing grandpa did was stick 3 fingers into the wound and mark me from my forehead to the chin with 3 parallel blood trails. 

As grandpa was walking me though the gut cut (I had helped my whole life, but the rule in my family is that if you kill it you clean it, so this was my 1st time doing the cuttin myself), I discovered to my horror that the doe was still lactating.  For some reason that botherd me more than the blood and guts.  Grandpa, being a compasionate and sensitive individual, as most retired autoworkers are, reached down, grabbed a teat, and squirted it.  The 1st shot hit me in my leg, and in response my mouth  dropped to make a surprised noise.  This was exactly what the ol.....um...my esteemed and respected grandfather was waiting for and he squirted me in my mouth.  I responded by instantly throwing up, but not IN the deer.

That was MY initiation.  What was yours?

[Graybeard]

My first as with most all since there was no one but me around and no one had taught me a single thing about how to do it correctly. I just did the same thing more or less to that deer I had done to many squirrels prior to it. I also had no help getting it back to the vehicle either and darn few times since have I had help in that regard.

[GRIMJIM]

My first as with most all since there was no one but me around and no one had taught me a single thing about how to do it correctly. I just did the same thing more or less to that deer I had done to many squirrels prior to it. I also had no help getting it back to the vehicle either and darn few times since have I had help in that regard.

Same here. By the time I became interested in hunting I had no one around to show me. I figured it out as I went along.

WylieKY, That is a very funny and touching story about your grandpa.

[Redtail1949]

my first deer was a small whitetail spike buck. My uncle had taken me as he had many times before this time he handed me his 30-30 and told me to find a stand and be back before dark to where he turned me loose.

man I thought i was daniel boone heart thumping just thinking about a monster buck stepping out. Well we that little spike did come out from behind a stack of downed timber i started shaking and dam near forgot to cock the rifle.

Baammm.. down he went broke down in the hindquarters, hit in the spine way back, then up on his front legs dragging himself along took three more rounds before i connected in the chest and down he went for good.

I made a pretty messy cut and sloppy gutting of that buck but i knew my uncle would have nothing less than me doing it. I had blood guts from head to toe took me over and hour.

I noticed the sun was just about down and i had little time to find my uncle i jumped up and really was kinda lost..call it excitement or whatever man i was looking around trying to make sure i went the right direction.

Just about that time my uncle broke out laughing and hawing at me. He had followed me into the woods and settled down behind me about twenty yards and had watched it all unfold.

He had a very long winded tale of that hunt greatly exagerated he told at every camp we attended after that. He said the boy had entrails over his shoulder blood in his hair and was just about to cry and on and on and on...

Of course everyone whooped and hollered and bent over double every time he told it..once he said i must have reloaded that dam 30-30 3 times before i hit that poor buck and killed him..even that it died of fright having been shot at so many times.

I made myself a promise that i would practice and kill cleanly and i would never be embarrassed about my shooting again. Well I still have made bad shots but on the whole I am a hell of a good shot today.

I have done my sons the same way as well as my grandsons....i hope they have the same great memories and laughs that i have of the time their dad /grandpa made fun of them at every deer camp for a couple of years.

I was just shy of my 11th birthday then.

[squirrellluck]

No offense guys but that is very sad to me. Makes me realize how lucky I am.My first deer and many hunting exieriances since have been shared with my father and brother, mother, sisters, grandparents etc. We are a large southern family with a long tradition of hunting and fishing. I hunt alot alone but there is always kin around when I pull in to clean my kills. We all pitch in to clean whatever anyone brings in. My first though my uncle stuffed me into the chest cavity or as much as would fit. Bloody from head to toe.

[williamlayton]

The only thing i can remember about the first time, that is worth reporting, is that I suddenly remembered that I had "no clue" about this process.
It was butcher job and everthing i had been told did not work out as planned.
Took much longer to do it wrong than it would have to do it right.
I punchtered ever part I should not have and paid dearly for that.
It is an art that deserves to be learned at the hands of the skilled, not self taught from memory of what has been told.
YUCK--I can still smell it.
Then again it was a good teacher.
Blessings

[oldandslow]

I too learned the hard way, by myself. It probably took me at least twice a long as an experienced hand, maybe longer. I managed not to puncture anything and never did on subsequent cleaning chores. If I still hunted I would probably be just as slow making sure I didn't poke a hole in the wrong thing.

I was with a brother-in-law once and watched him clean a deer. He was fast. Grab a gut and pull until it seperated, grab another and keep pulling. Boy, was I glad he didn't ask me to eat any of that deer.

[rex6666]

I grew up on the farm and always cleaned rabbits and fish. Never thought
about a deer being any different. We killed usually 2 calves a year and hung
them in the barn until they cooled out then cut each steak with a "hand
operated meat saw" deer i just grind it all in sasauge, lots less work.

[WylieKy]

About 3 weeks after my "initiation" one of the guys that was with us gave me a call.  Told me that he shot a deer and asked if I wanted to help. I told him sure, and met him at the woods.  Jeff was a semi-neighbor, probably lived about a mile away on the other side of the fields and woods from my grandpartnts.  We all hunted the same plot of land, but each scouted and put up our own stands. We walked in and I discovered that he shot the deer from MY stand.  I started getting a little irritated (had he asked I would have been more than happy to let him.)  
We got to the deer and it was a spike buck.  He shot it quartering toward him with a 3' mag 12g 1 1/4 oz slug... The deer probably weighed less than 50 lbs. He asked me if I wanted to gut it and I said sure.  I started gutting and realized that it had been liquified inside and thought crap...this is going to suck.  I felt stuck because I had already told him that I would do it (at that point in my life I had probably seen 30-40 dead deer and not 1 had been gut shot) but didn't know what I was getting into.  It was at that point that he said he wasn't going to tag it because it would count as his buck for the season and he wasn't going to waste the tag on it.  I looked up at him and said "Then gut and drag it your DAMN self." and walked off.  It's probably the only time I said anything like that to an elder as a child, and we never did mesh after that.  I got home and told my grandpa what happend.  He said I was right for not doing it, then whipped my a$$ for smarting off at the mouth.  

I caught Jeff in my standes several times over the rest of the season.  We talked to the owner and he was not invited back the next year.  He started poaching and we called the warden several times but he never got caught.