I woke in the morning and the first thing that popped into my mind was ‘This is going to be a great day!’ I walked up front and got some breakfast then got ready to go to the Wheelin’ Sportsman’s program we had been planning for a month. All ready, mom and I headed down the road. It was just a short drive and we were soon there.
I walked over to my dad and grandpa who were going to be hunting that afternoon. I said hey and then walked over to my cousin and talked to him. I got me a bowl of stew and went back over to my parents. We ate the delicious stew and then they called out for everybody to take a picture for the newspaper. I walked over holding my camera. Everybody told me to jump in the picture, so I walked over and kneeled by my friend Linda. The picture was great and afterward daddy handed me my camera. I walked around and took plenty of pictures. Some pictures were really good and a few funny one’s also. I had a fun time taking pictures and absolutely loved it when a flock of turkeys walked in the field. I took well over 15 pictures of them to make sure I was at least guaranteed to have one good picture. Well they all were very good! I also took pictures of 2 deer, a doe and a button buck, that were taken that morning by 2 of the hunters.
I watched the turkeys and experimented with the angles from my camera. James, the owner of the farm we were hunting, walked up and talked to me then showed me his camera. We talked technical for minutes and then Daddy told me that they (him and Grandpa) were ready to go hunting. I said ok and he asked ‘you want to be our camera woman?’ I laughed and said yea. I walked to go get the video camera and when walking back someone called my name. I turned to find one of the hunters, He told me that he had seen some of my pictures and that he was happy for me. I thanked him and we talked for awhile until dad called me to come on. I went over to the truck, wished everyone good luck and then we left. We drove about a half a mile down the road and then pulled up to a gate. Dad got out and opened the gate and when we drove thru, he closed it. We drove down the path and I was feeling really lucky! We drove to the food plot and sure enough, a big doe was 10 yards from the blind. We noticed that are friends on the gator was coming on the other side of her, over the hill. She watched and then was spooked into the woods when we were only 50 yards from her. We pulled up beside the blind and helped papa into his wheelchair.
We set up quickly in the hunting ground box blind and then waited. It was quiet and from nowhere a hunting dog howls and scared us. We listened as he was only 100 yards in the woods. Papa looked and said ‘There’s the dog.’ We looked and it was a deer, we laughed so hard we could barely breathe. He quickly got the gun up and looked through the scope and as soon as the deer was coming towards the opening, the dog ran the deer away! We waited and watched, hoping another deer would step out. We waited for a few minutes and soon was surprised by a doe. I watched as she walked out in the food plot 250 yards away. I grabbed the video camera and immediately began videotaping her.
I gathered excellent footage of her and soon 2 more deer came out. I was thrilled because I could video these deer. I looked closer with curiousity to find out that the doe had a tumor on her sternum and face. Then dad grunted on the deer call and the darkest color deer kept looking, I soon suspected that it was a buck. I watched him and found out that he too was a messed up deer. He was limping and someone had shot him in his leg. We watched as they fed across the field and up, hoping they would come our way. We were disappointed as the deer went into the trees and did not come back. Then a minute later, daddy scared me when he said a deer walked out. I looked and didn’t see anything. I looked harder and then saw him move. It was a spike, and he was only 70 yards away! We tried to get papa in position to shoot but the deer saw us and took off, leaving us only the sight of his white flagged tail waving thru the trees. Disappointed we watched hoping another would come out with only minutes to spare of light. Startled again, I realized another black ball object walking 260 yards away. I looked thru the range finder and saw 3 deer standing in the field. Daddy, desperate to get papa a deer, rolled papa down the path to try to shoot a doe. We got about 90 yards and they saw us, again we got the wave of a white tail good bye. Daddy went and got the truck and we waited on the pathway for him. He drove up in a matter of a minute and we loaded the truck and headed back to everyone else to see how they did.
When we pulled up, we were excited to hear that a guy shot a big buck. When he pulled up, all we saw was rack on the back of the gator. We all hovered over the gator to see the buck. They took pictures of the guy and his deer and then he explained a very unique thing. The buck had 3 huge gash places on his head and neck. We looked closer and noticed they were all in the shape of an oval.
Everybody was saying that it was another deer that caused the gashes. I looked closer and then mentioned to them that it could have been a bear. Everybody gasped and then someone said ‘OMG! I didn’t think about that and now that you mention it, it does look like bite marks!’ I agreed and then we examined it closer. We then confirmed (by the size of the mouth marks) that it could be a bear or a mountain lion and we were hoping that it was favoring the bear more! We all had a great time and majority of the group was successful by 2 button bucks, 4 does, and an 8 pt. buck. It was a great day, everybody had fun and can’t wait to go hunting again!
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