pics/ Can ya find em now
Not my choice for pics but its all I have gotten my nephew to email me so far. My POS camera showed up DOA.
The more i think about the whole thing the more impressed I am with my little girl. At age 10 I new my son wasn't ready and fear he thinks all that it takes to shoot a deer is a long drive to his Uncles house and a hike out to the old blind. He did hold out to the end of the second day for a buck better than last years but just could not turn down the dig doe standing broadside at just under 90yds. He watched her for a few minutes then without saying a word I saw the old thumb come up and take off the safety. 5 seconds later it was all over. I think the thought of little sister taking home meat and having her brag about getting a deer while he hadn't was a bit more than he could handle. Alix had a couple of chances. The first was a walking shot at about 55 yards but she was having trouble getting on it and the safety never came off. A little while later we saw a few does drop down into the creek bed and decided to make a sneak on em. About fifty yards from the blind was a fence row on the crest of a hill above the creek. We had cover for about half the distance and at that point I had spotted one of the deer already. It must have been a hilarious site to see this little girl belly crawling towards the fence fallowed by what must of looked like a florescent orange rhino. When we got to the fence I was relieved we had not spooked the deer and Alix now had a great rest for a shot that was longer than I was expecting her to have to make. She got the gun up and on the deer but didn't have a decent angle for a shot.
The waiting was probably a good thing as I could see she was starting to shake a bit with excitement. Watching yer little girl get buck fever for the first time even if it is over a doe is beyond awesome. Finally the first deer slipped behind a tree and headed down to cross the creek. She turned to look at me and whispered what do we do now. I smiled and pointed back down the hill at another deer. Now she was determined. She readjusted the gun on the fence and pulled down on the deer. It walked up a few yards, came broadside and dropped its head behind some brush. She said she was ready so I told her I was taking the safety off for her. I asked her if the cross hairs were in the rite spot and she says do ya mean the plus thingy. (something we had joked about at the range) I was glad to hear it because I new she was thinking clearly about what she was doing. I told her to relax and shot as soon as she was steady on exactly where she wanted to hit it. BOOM I saw the impact and new it was game over. She looked at me then looked back at the gun and I could see the excitement hit her again. She new she was supposed to do something with the gun but it just wasn't registering with her. I reached over and put the safety back on and she gave me one of those Oh yeas. She asked me If I thought she had hit it so I gave her one back. Then she says I think I might of been a little low so I asked her how low. She held up her fingers spaced apart about an inch. Then I asked her about left to right and she said without battin eye "that was good".
What now she says. Wait I say. I asked her if she could tell me where it was when she shot and she nailed the spot right down to the bush it had dropped its head behind. I then showed her the last place I had seen it and why it was important we remember it. She then asked me how long we should wait. I told her about a half hour and she looked at me like I was nuts. I explained why and that's about as long as I could wait. I fallowed her down to where it had been standing and with about 10 feet to go she yells "look blood". I thought she must have been mistaken but when I walked up to where she was crouched down it looked like someone went nuts with a can of red krylon. She tracked the blood to the creek and could see more on the other side. I threw a hat over to it and we found a place to cross and came back to it. From there it took her about 10 seconds flat to find her prize. That moment when she turned to look at me ranked rite up there with finding out my first kid was going to be a boy and that my second was going to be a girl. Weird on a clear day like that after I got a big hug I had a few drops of rain on my face. I quickly turned to look at the deer to avoid starting a storm when I noticed the shot placement and was able to turn the rain into hi fives. About this time I was starting to worry about the remorse she may have for killing such a pretty animal. She loves just about any little critters she can get her hands on and has said for years she is going to be a vet when she grows up. She wasn't impressed at all with a coyote Drake had shot last year and said she would never do it. The remorse never came and she just kept impressing me with the whole thing. I had a pair of Francis's surgical gloves with me in case this happened and when I gave em to her she asked if I was going to wear some. When I said no she asked why she had to.
I told her it was to keep her shirt clean. After some pics and about 35 picture text messages to all her friends I had her hold a leg while I started to gut . By the time I was done tying off and removing the bladder and rectum she was holding open the belly and watching every thing I was doing and asking what every thing was. We got the deer back across the creek and hung in a tree to skin it out and she was still there asking if she could help. My buddy and I had the back legs skinned out and had pulled it down to the front legs so I told him that she and I would take it from there and we did. It was then that I realized that she had shot a gun many times and seen me clean a hundred salmon but I had never put a sharp knife in her hands before. When I disconnected the head she snatched up the hide and turned it rite side out again. When the head popped out of the neck and my buddy made some comment about circumcision I held my breath and hoped I wouldn't have to explain. Thank god she just let it go.
As much as she impressed me that day it wasn't over.
Before we had even made it back to the truck via one of her picture text messages her mom happened to be at one of her friends house and had found out she had done it. While Alix had shown she was totally ready for the experience my X was not. The freak out show had begun. After an awesome day with both my kids punching their deer tags I was greeted by a screaming banshee on my cell phone telling me that things were never going to be the same again with her and her daughter and I had taken her innocent daughter away from her and I was going to pay for it. After a few more phone calls the next day on the way back to the west side of the state I had gotten no where with her. She would not listen to one word to legitimize what I had supposedly done to her daughter. I had the kids until they went to school on Monday morning and was a bit freaked out about what my daughter was going to have to go through when she got home from school that night. I talked to the x a couple of times before she went home that night and managed to take a bit of the edge off before she saw Alix. In one of those calls I was informed before we had left the banshee had told her it was wrong that she wanted to shoot a deer. We had an agreement that I wouldn't push her into it and she wouldn't push her away from it and I had lived up to it. I even tried to talk Alix into waiting another year but she insisted she wanted to do it. Then I found out when the x told Alix she shouldn't do it my little baby went off on mommy for the first time. No screaming ,no crying, no begging just flat out told her how it was going to be and that dad said if I was sure I wanted to do it I could and I am going to do it.
The x had the kids for the rest of the week and I didn't get them back until this morning. Some how that little girl had everything smoothed out for her dear old dad today and mom agreed to give the old schedule another try if I would show her the respect she deserves for all the extra stuff she thinks she is doing for the kids.
I asked Alix what she had said to her mom to calm her down and she said I just snuggled up to her a lot and told her I loved her a bunch of times.
I am going to have to watch out for my sneaky little hunter or she will have me buying her moose tags in Canada before I realize I have even been played....
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