If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this picture is worth volumes! Eight-year-old Dakota Young took this fine 8-pointer last October after considerable preparation and practice with his dad, Bill. The 131 2/8-inch buck was taken on the Banks farm in Morgan County, Georgia.

It was Monday afternoon in late October last season. Expectations were high as my 8-year-old son Dakota and I sat in a tower stand overlooking an eight-acre alfalfa field.

We were hunting on the Banks farm in Morgan County, Georgia, where I serve as farm manager. Rifle season had been open for eight days, and the rut was just beginning. But things were slow on this cool afternoon. Only one young deer was feeding in the alfalfa.

But suddenly -- as is often the case in whitetail hunting -- things started happening very quickly.

A doe walked out into a small opening. Within seconds, a nice 8-pointer appeared right behind her. This was the moment Dakota had been waiting for. With one easy motion he stood up, put his cheek to his Remington 7mm-08 and squeezed the trigger. Dakota had just harvested his first buck: a beautiful 131 2/8-inch 8-pointer with 12-inch G-2s.

Sounds easy, huh? Well, the actual harvest of Dakota's first buck was fairly easy. The preparation was not!

When it comes to setting up a youth whitetail hunt, there are two ways you can go about it. You can take a youngster out in the woods and hope for the best, or you can plan the hunt so that the youngster gets the maximum enjoyment out of being in the woods.

Hoping for the best is often hit-or-miss and usually produces poor results. If youngsters get bored or disappointed, they may lose interest in deer hunting altogether.

With the right kind of planning, though, you're a lot more likely to get the results you want without any negative consequences. The kind of preparation I'm talking about can be very time-consuming, but well worth the effort in the end.

In our case, the preparation for Dakota's deer hunt had begun several years earlier. Dakota started out practicing at the range with a scoped .22 rifle. He shot that gun thousands of times, learning where to place a bullet on a deer.

I have a life-size deer mounted at home, and I placed a small target on the deer's kill zone. Over and over again, Dakota practiced aiming an unloaded rifle at that mounted deer. He also sat in a stand with me on numerous occasions and practiced aiming an unloaded rifle at live does and small bucks.

When Dakota was six, he graduated to a Model 7 Remington 7mm-08. Since he was very small, I had the barrel and stock cut down to fit him. I also put a good scope on the gun.

The first time he fired his "big" rifle was at a live doe. Prior to that time, as mentioned, he had fired his .22 rifle thousands of times. With no preconceived notions about noise or recoil, he was totally comfortable with the rifle and made a perfect shot without flinching.

I've used this method to teach other kids as well as my wife, and it has always worked extremely well.

In fact, the excitement of the moment probably prevented Dakota from even hearing the noise or feeling any recoil. That year, he killed three does with his rifle. We saw numerous bucks, but they were always moving, and he never was able to get a clear, open shot.

Next year, when he was 7 years old, Dakota killed two more does. Once again, we saw numerous bucks, but he was never able to get a standing-still shot.

My preparation for the 2006 season started out by choosing a good location for him to make the shot. We decided to hunt from a box blind overlooking an alfalfa field. We could sit together, he could use a rest, and it was a great location.

After deciding on the location, I bush-hogged a shooting lane 100 yards long close to the stand. Since the alfalfa field was 300 yards long, I didn't want him to have to make a shot much beyond roughly 100 yards.

Inside the blind, I then positioned Dakota's chair in line with the shooting lane so that he could slowly stand up and, with very little movement, prop his rifle on a 5-pound shooting bag on the ledge of the window.

In all, he would have to move the rifle only a few inches to get a clean shot. I made sure his scope was set on a reasonable power for an 80- to 120-yard shot.

I also made sure Dakota had ear protection. My plan was to sit behind him and help him insert his earplugs just before he shot. Having a rifle with the stock cut so that it fit him comfortably was a huge plus.

On the afternoon of our hunt, I was first in line at school to pick up Dakota so that we could reach the stand in plenty of time for our afternoon hunt. I knew two years of practice -- aiming at and positioning the shot on every doe and small buck we had seen over the two previous seasons -- would be a huge benefit to Dakota when the right opportunity presented itself. And it was! He made a perfect shot on his first buck at 125 yards.

By now, you may think that you don't have the time for all this preparation. But when you see the joy on a child's face after that youngster makes a good shot, that moment is priceless. And you know that all of the painstaking preparation was worthwhile, and then some!

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