My very first memory related to whitetail hunting was when I was 5 years old. It wasn’t your typical first memory of seeing a whitetail hanging from a meatpole in the backyard or even getting to sit in the stand with Dad and feeling the excitement of witnessing my first deer kill. No, instead it was me standing at my mom’s leg in the living room, arms crossed, foot stomping and pouting like the baby I was because my dad decided I was too young to go with him, and instead I got to watch my older brother and sister head to the stand for their first hunt. After that we moved to the city, and the opportunity to hunt with my dad never came back around until now.
If I were to ask my parents which one of their children would grow up to be a hunter, they’d probably tell you none of us, but that’s just what I did. Albeit I was a bit of a late bloomer as I didn’t start hunting until I stumbled into the outdoors industry at age 27 as a content producer. Since then, I’ve been able to learn from some of the best whitetail hunters the world has to offer, and so naturally it wasn’t long before I found myself up in a tree, bow in hand and heart racing each time a deer popped out of the woods. In the last four years, I’ve killed two white-tailed bucks, three does, two Texas axis deer bucks and one Florida wild hog. I’ve learned to hunt based on what makes my heart race rather than trying to guess at the age or care too much for antlers. After all, I only own 3 acres of land myself and most of the season I’m out filming other hunters, so my personal days in the stand are quite limited.
As I write this it’s Oct. 1, and I’ve yet to have a chance to sit for myself, and that’s OK. Rather, this year I decided I wanted to share more of my personal hunting time with those that mean the most to me. As a matter of fact, as soon as I get back home, I’ll have two days to get prepared for my best friend to arrive from Nebraska with his 13-year-old son; it’s a chance for me to give them the father-son hunting experience that I missed out on as a kid. Luckily this year the stars aligned, and my dad and I got a chance to hunt on opening day together, and it’s a hunt I won’t soon forget.
My dad pulled up around 3:00 p.m. in my old, red Toyota Tacoma. Not having hunted in over 25 years, he didn’t have much to bring with him. I told him we’d be sitting in a blind, so he should wear black — check. We practiced with my TenPoint crossbow a week earlier at 20 and 30 yards of which he hit his mark every shot — check. Now all that was left was to gear up and head out. We got to the blind around 4:00 p.m. A little early for some of my neighbors but I like it that way. You never know what deer might be up and about a little bit earlier on any given day, and we didn’t have any specific harvesting goals anyway. My mom just told him to bring home the meat, so that was the primary objective.
Our first action occurred only 30 minutes into the sit. We were both just sitting there whispering small talk/catching up on all the things we normally don’t get a chance to talk about, and then we hear rapid stomping in the distance. Something is running, and it’s headed in our direction. The stampede-like noise got louder and closer with every second, and before we knew it, we had multiple deer fly by within inches of the blind. So close that had they been a foot to their right we would have been in a world of hurt. Turns out our neighbor was headed back to his 40 and pushed some deer our way. It was just too bad we hadn’t practiced shooting at moving targets the prior week. Joking. Either way it provided the first whitetail rush my dad had experienced in decades, and the fact that he now realized that we were in a whitetail-populated area provided the right amount of excitement to get us to our next encounter.
While we waited, I taught my dad how to place the crossbow, shooting stick and optics to make sure he was prepared at any moment to take a shot with only a few quick movements. He had played around in the early ‘80s with traditional bowhunting but had only ever harvested a whitetail with a rifle before. Archery was new to him, and rather than him teaching me how to hunt, I got to give him a refresher course of everything he already knew and give him a few things he never learned growing up. It was a bit of a reverse situation that not many people get to experience. I can’t imagine what he must think knowing that the son that never had the opportunity to hunt growing up, now hunts for a living.
We sat for another hour and a half before we saw a doe peek out of the woods to our right. She was slow to emerge into the crop field in front of us as many of the deer in my area are heavily pressured from having so many landowners in a such a small area. These deer are used to being hunted, but if the wind is right and you don’t move a muscle, they’ll give you a shot eventually. She came out at around 60 yards which technically that crossbow is more than capable of accurately shooting, but I told my dad that we shouldn’t be taking a shot any more than 30 yards as I’ve personally experienced that crossbows are not foolproof, and underestimating the reaction time of a whitetail is not something that any experienced hunter would dare do. Dad agreed and we sat and waited as she slowly inched her way toward us. Fifty-five yards, 48 yards, 45 … Dad was already propped up on his shooting stick and had her fixated in the scope. To make it a little bit easier for him I was ranging her position for him. She passed the 30-yard threshold and took a few more steps toward the blind. “27 yards,” I whispered to my dad. THWAK! Without a millisecond of hesitation, he pulled the trigger and sent a Rage Trypan right under her left scapula. Immediately I worried — I had forgotten to tell my dad that we needed to wait for a perfect broadside shot, and he had taken the shot as she was still quartering to us. She ran straight back into some of the corn stalks that were left standing from the farmer, and I thought I heard her crash, but with the angle of the shot being in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but worry. Since I was also filming the hunt — given it being my profession and all — I quickly reviewed the footage. My dad on the other hand was already asking for another arrow, and he had re-cocked the crossbow because he was confident. He had one deer down and he was ready for round two. I got him to temper his enthusiasm just enough to watch the footage back with me.
As expected, and at only 27 yards, the doe had reacted to the sound of the crossbow firing and she dipped quite a bit. That said, intentional or not, my dad’s arrow flew low enough to center punch her perfectly when combined with her dip, and to my surprise he hit her far enough forward and without too much of an angle that if you’re going to make a quartering-to shot, this was the shot you wanted to make. The arrow exited out the back maybe going as far back as the back of the lung, but I was confident now that we avoided any guts and that yes, she was likely lying no more than 50 yards from us where I seemingly heard the crash. Though my dad will brag of his shot, I’m still going to have to rack it up to 70% luck that the arrow didn’t fly over her back and 80% luck that no guts were hit. Maybe after a few more years of being back in the stand, I’ll give him a few more percentage points of credit — we’ll see.
We continued sitting until dark in case another opportunity was presented, but no other deer came within a comfortable range. We exited the blind and started following the blood. Like I thought, we made it about 50 yards through a corn row before we found her, and it was at that moment that my dad’s overconfidence turned to pure gratitude and excitement. Though he had killed deer before I couldn’t help but think that he was acting as I did just a few years prior when I harvested my first deer. It was like he was a hunter reborn through his son’s new lifestyle. He had returned to his roots of being a hunter and connecting with nature in a way that was familiar but forgotten on the surface over all the years of city life. He no longer used to be a hunter; he always was one. A hunter living in the suburbs of California for the last 25 years, a hunter lying dormant inside of a metropolitan flooring salesman who quietly yearned for the chance to feel the hide of a freshly harvested whitetail between his fingers once more. And there I was getting to experience that hunter emerge once more, and that’s something I’ll always be proud of being able to give back to my dad. The more I think of it the more I’m convinced that being a hunter isn’t always just a lifestyle choice, being a hunter is in the blood. It’s passed down from generation to generation. It was given to me by my father and I was lucky enough to give it back to him this year.
All the items that cause so much bickering within the hunting community were completely irrelevant. I posit that all it takes to appreciate the gift that is hunting is no more than harvesting a doe with Dad.
You should give it a try.
— David Gilane is executive producer of D&DH’s four TV shows and online video productions.
