My 14 year old grandson, Brandon came from Virginia Beach with his dad to hunt with us opening weekend. We sat in my 2 man stand. About an hour after sun up, we saw two bucks chasing a doe up a creek below us. I had installed a remote recorded deer call on a tree below our stand. When we saw the deer, I played two doe-in-heat bleats. The deer stopped running and began trying to locate the source of the bleats. I then played a dominate buck grunt and the deer raced up the hill towards us. I told Brandon to get ready and take both the bucks since we had plenty of tags. The lead buck was a trophy size 10 pointer and the second buck was a smaller 8 pointer. The deer ran within 20 feet of our stand and Brandon had to stand up to shoot because the gun rest was in the way. He shot at the 10 pointer and I saw it lurch sideways, but it kept running. He hit the 8 pointer and it went down immediately. We stayed in the stand approximately 30 minutes before we climbed down to look for the 10 pointer. The leaves were kicked up where the 10 pointer stumbled, but next to the spot was a 6 inch oak with bullet hole through the tree at deer shoulder height. There was no blood or hair by the tree nor could we find any after tracking him a ways. The bullet hitting the tree must have sprayed the buck with splinters and pieces of bullet causing him to stumble. We dragged the 8 pointer up to the camp with my 4 wheeler because I didn't want to gut it by the treestand. When I got my knife out, Brandon said that he wanted to gut it. He said that he wanted to learn it all. I therefore walked him through the process. His killing the 8 pointer caused me more excitement than I have experienced deer hunting in years.
Wow, had some great memories. It's cool when it becomes about kids rather about one self. good job.
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