My youngest son Thomas, now 8 years old, lives and breathes hunting, fishing and trapping. He's in the yard almost daily with either his bow or bb gun and I spend a good bit of time with him shooting his Savage Rascal.22 I gave him for his 5th birthday. I bought him a Savage 17HMR for his 8th birthday to practice and have fun with before deer season this year. The video clip tells the story on how that was received.

https://youtu.be/C5lK7uSdY80

After 2 years of hunting out of a ground blind I decided to build him a elevated shooting house that would be semi portable to set up near the end of a CRP field between two valleys on our farm. It took a few more Sunday afternoons than anticipated but thanks to a little help from my father-in-law it was up and functional 10 days before youth season.






View from the shooting house.


Some in the state game department did a poor job of scheduling the season this year as the dates were Oct 31-Nov 1. This creates quite a dilemma for a boy of 8 who wants to hunt, but doesn't want to miss out on Halloween. Compound this with rolling back the clocks on Nov 1 and the season gets short quick. Our game plan was to be in the blind 1/2 hour before first light and hunt till 1:00 PM if necessary. Then we could get back to the house and not miss out on all the free candy. Then we would hunt Sunday afternoon if we were deerless on Saturday.
Well we got to the blind Saturday morning about an hour ahead of schedule due to youthful exuberance. He was keeping a careful watch through the rain and then spotted a shooter buck at about 9:00 AM. Thomas got his rifle up on his sticks and was struck with a case of Buck Fever. He took his shot but his shaking was not an asset to accuracy. We went and checked but no sign of a hit was found. His spirit was unbroken and we hunted the rest of the morning without seeing anything but squirrels. We headed for home and 16 lbs of candy.

We awoke Sunday to sunny skies and unseasonably warm temperatures. We got out to the farm about 1:00PM and got set up. Thomas was just slightly jacked up from Halloween candy which made him just a little squirmy inside the blind. We watched a few Barred Owls, Blue Jays and Fox Squirrels through the afternoon. Thomas has learned through past experience that patience pays. Ten minuets before the end of shooting time we both spotted a decent 9 point coming out of the woods about 100 yards out. Thomas got his little Sako Vixen 6x45 up on his sticks and flicked the safety off. I grunted at the buck and got it to stop broadside at just over 100 yards. This time the boy kept his cool and shot his buck DRT. My 6 year old daughter Meredith looked unimpressed with the rack and asked how soon we would be eating it. My nephew also connected on a buck this weekend so it was Root Beers and cheers all around on Sunday evening.





So far the 6x45 shooting 85gr Sierras has proven its self with 2 kills that were DRT and one that didn't get out of sight before dropping. If you have never considered it, you need to give it a close look.
This deer won't argue with the results. I'm building one for my self now.

Nice work young man

Very nice.

So awesome!

Sounds like some super family time. [Prep work, targeting, planning, patience in the blind, etc.]
Congrats to all involved... even Grandpa for his help!

That is awesome!!! Congratulations!!!

Great to see kids enjoying hunting and the outdoors! Well done.

when will he get to drink a real beer?

quote:

Originally posted by Goldeneye:
when will he get to drink a real beer?

When he learns not to tell mom