The Youth Hunt couldn't get here quick enough for James, now 13 years old. A winter, spring and summer of watching whitetail hunting videos had him partially educated and fully wired. Before we knew it, the hunt was only 14 days away. During the preceding 30 days, James had reminded me regularly that we hadn't done any scouting and that we needed to find a spot before much more time passed.
We started investigating some public land in Unit 8, near our home, and found a nice area that we were told held some good deer. We decided to hunt out of our new tree stands the first morning, and we hung two stands in a sturdy pine tree overlooking a large field, with food sources nearby.
DREAMING AND HOPING
The two days leading up to the hunt proved to be long ones for James. He was more excited than I had ever seen him and I know he was daydreaming during school about taking his first whitetail buck. His confidence was high, but mine was waning. I knew we had our work cut out for us just to see a buck. The temperature had been in the middle and to high 80s during the days leading up to the hunt, and the muzzleloader season had been in full swing for nearly two weeks. I was afraid that we wouldn't even see a buck, let alone get a shot at one. I kept my head up as I attempted to temper James' enthusiasm by reminding him that "success in hunting is never guaranteed, and more often than not, you might not harvest an animal every time."
Opening day found us in our stands. It was a cool morning with a stiff wind out of the south. Although this father-and-son team was steeped in whitetail theory, we had no prior tree stand experience as we sat 20 feet above the ground. Although James took to his stand like a duck to water, I'm not ashamed to say that putting him in that top stand was frightening. The wind was whipping the branches, the tree was gently swaying and I was scared to death that the stand was going to collapse before I could secure his safety harness to that sturdy old tree.
But my fears were totally unfounded. That Ameristep stand was "rock solid," and I thanked our Heavenly Father for safely seeing us through that first morning. As a bonus, James got to see a doe and a fawn at 35 yards as they passed by our stands.
"That was so cool seeing those deer!" he later told me. "And stopping them with a loud bleat was fun, too. I was hoping that a buck would be following behind."
DOING IT THE HARD WAY
That evening we abandoned the stands to do some stalking. James thought we might have a better chance on the ground. "Dad, it worked great in Wyoming," he told me.
What could I say? It was his hunt and I wasn't crazy about climbing back up in that tree in what must have been 30 mile per hour winds. For our walk, we had located an area of thick timber that was bordered by bean fields, weed patches, overgrown thickets and grass fields. Between the bean fields were mature hedgerows that could provide cover for a stalk. This was supreme whitetail habitat that just had to hold deer.
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