Kyler's (Weird) First Hunt

I bit into a fork full of roast and chomped on something hard. What was it? A tooth? A displaced filling? I reached into my mouth and pulled it out. It was part of a bullet that broke apart when I shot the deer the previous winter. Or was it? Actually, the more I looked at it, I realized it wasn't a bullet fragment at all. It was a pellet. You know, what you load into the firing chamber of a BB gun to reckon with problem rodents or birds. 

I just chuckled as my mind finally figured it out. The deer I shot up on the mountain had probably been a prolific raider of gardens and flower beds in the valley below so a homeowner most likely fired a pellet into it as a deterrent, of sorts. Now, there it was sitting on my plate. Perhaps it was only fitting. This incident was the perfect capper to what was kind of a weird hunt, Kyler's first hunt.

My grandson Kyler was six years old when I asked his mother, Aubrey, if I could take him on a deer hunt with me. It would be an easy hunt. One that did not involve any steep slopes with grueling climbs along mountain ridges like when I chase elk. We would simply enter the forest up above our houses, slowly walk through the trees and see if we could find a doe or a buck to shoot. Kyler knew I was a hunter and had asked questions about my outings. He wanted to go.

Aubrey gave her permission so we planned our hunt. Before we ever left, we talked about gun safety, being quiet in the woods, which animals we could shoot and those we would not. I told Kyler I had a doe tag and a buck tag but either was fine since I hunt to put meat in the freezer. I also told him that I did not shoot a doe if it had a fawn with it. We talked about the importance of making a clear, ethical shot that would put the deer down as quickly as possible. I then explained how I would field dress the deer. After all, I wasn't exactly sure how he would react if/when that happened since Kyler is a big-hearted, kind kid. 

As a preface to our hunt, we needed to get Kyler an orange vest so we had a grandpa-grandson "date" a few days prior at Sportsman's Warehouse to get him outfitted. After purchasing him a nice, vibrant hunter orange fleece vest large enough to fit for several years I said "So where do you want to go to lunch? Wendy's, McDonald's, somewhere else?" "Burger King," he said. "Why Burger King, Kyler?" "Because Burger King is the king of burgers." How do you argue with such well-thought-out logic?

The morning of the hunt, it was a chilly but not too cold fall Montana morning. His mother texted me that Kyler was ready to go before I was. I picked him up in the truck and we drove a short distance to a neighbor's place backing up a nice chunk of national forest land bordered by adjacent state lands. As we walked into the forest, we noticed our hunting twosome almost immediately transitioned into a threesome as a cat followed about 10-20 feet behind us. Not sure if it was a feral cat or someone's pet but it wasn't scared of us at all. When we stopped to glass into the woods, it stopped. When we started walking, it started walking. Just weird. And what was really weird was by the time our multi-hour, four mile hunt ended, it remained close by.

Looking for game with our furry sidekick (lower left-hand side)

Not even 10 minutes into our hunt, we spotted a whitetail buck that was slowly walking away from us. Its white antlers easily stood out as it sauntered in the opposite direction. It had not seen us but it never turned in a manner to expose its vitals for a good, ethical shot. We slowly stalked it hoping for such an opportunity but then a doe with two fawns bisected its trail and headed in our direction. We did not want to spook any of the deer and ruin this opportunity so we stopped and watched. 

"Papa, we can't shoot that doe," Kyler whispered. "It has fawns with it." I smiled and nodded. 

Eventually, the doe and fawns made their way down the mountain. We resumed our quest for the buck but because of the amount of time that passed, it was long gone. We never saw it again. 

We continued to loop through the national forest section. We saw a number of other deer but no more bucks that we could tell and none of the does we saw presented any kind of decent shot. In all we saw something like 13-15 deer so that was really good. Then we crossed into nearby state land and continued our quest. Still, no good shooting opportunities. With the feline fur ball still trailing our foot steps, we eventually made our way back down into the national forestland and slowly headed toward the truck. As we did so, I saw a doe.

"Kyler, there's a doe," I whispered. "It doesn't have a fawn with it, Papa. You can shoot that one."

I placed my rifle on the shooting sticks, pulled the trigger and dropped it on the spot. We waited a few minutes and looked for any movement. After all, the last thing we wanted to do was to find out it wasn't a good shot and cause it to jump up and run off. However, as we approached it was more than evident that it died almost instantly. We both knelt down by it, placed our hands on its still warm body and I said a prayer of gratitude for the deer's life and for the meat it would provide for our families.

One interesting side note, the cat was nowhere to be found. I'm guessing the booming sound of my .30-06 sent it scurrying away. I pulled out my hunting knife and began to field dress the deer. I asked Kyler if he would hold one of the deer's rear legs to I had better access to its abdominal cavity. Kyler was not hesitant or queasy. I showed him where the bullet entered the deer and where it exited. As I removed its innards, I showed him the stomach, intestines, lungs, heart and other organs. He was intrigued and seemingly fascinated. We talked a little how a deer's internal system really isn't that different than a human's. When I finally removed the windpipe, the process was finished. We turned over the carcass for a few minutes so the blood would drain from the abdominal cavity. Then I attached a harness to its body, around my shoulders and waist, and we headed down the mountain. Oh yeah, and while our fury friend was nowhere to be found during the de-gutting process when you think it would front and center, it returned to our sides for the walk out.

When we got home, Kyler called his parents and sisters outside to share our hunting tale and show them the deer in the bed of the truck. It wasn't just a deer. It was our deer. 

I hung it in the garage, skinned it and cut the meat into dozens of vacuum-sealed packages of steaks, roasts, stew meat, jerky and ground burger. That left me with one delivery to close out this hunting experience. 

Rewind to 10 months earlier. I was attending the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas. I attended a seminar about helping to grow support for hunting. They had what they called  +One mentor challenge coins for those attendees willing to introduce someone new to hunting. I took two with Kyler in mind to receive the first.   

Back to our deer hunt tale. I loaded up a bag of meat for Kyle and walked it next door for him and his family to enjoy. I also presented him a +One coin. He proudly posed with his spoils. 

"Papa, I want to go again next year," he said. "You got it buddy!"