Over the years, my family has had quite a few unique hunting experiences. These are our stories.
By Terry Browning
My daughter Ashley is my oldest and the first to go hunting with me, starting when she was 6. She is now 31, so this story begins 25 years ago. At the age of 6, she couldn’t hold her crossbow up to her shoulder to aim. My brother-in-law worked at a machine shop and made an aluminum bracket to mount a laser pointer on her crossbow with a momentary-on switch. Ashley would simply put the laser dot on the deer and pull the trigger, shooting off her lap without ever raising the crossbow to her shoulder.
This arrangement worked so well, that she continued to shoot this way even in later years. This 8-point was the last deer she shot with the laser pointer.
One Season, Three Pope and Young Bucks
Before the 2011/2012 season, Ashley called and said, “Dad, I would like to shoot a compound bow.” The redneck in me came out; I couldn’t get to our local archery shop, DNW Outdoors in Jonesboro, Arkansas, fast enough.
That year (2011) my son Adam, who is 4 years younger than Ashley, harvested a beautiful buck with shark-fin shaped long brow tines with his compound bow, and I knew the competition was on. Ashley felt pressured to keep up with little brother.
So I started taking Ashley to different stands every morning and afternoon for about a week until she finally nailed her first compound buck with her new Mathews Jewel.
Then the kids started pressuring me to take a buck with my old Mathews Switchback, so we would all have one the same year. I had stopped shooting the nice bucks, because every nice buck that I shot was one less for the kids. It’s just a fact that there are only so many really nice bucks to go around.
The next afternoon after Ashley shot her buck, my wife Melissa needed something from Lowes. I asked Adam to drop me off at the woods and go pick up the item for his mom. Before he made the 20-minute drive to Lowes, I shot a nice 10-point and called him to hurry back. I’d rather have luck than skill any day while hunting!
In less than 2 weeks, we all had Pope and Young whitetails, which we will probably never be able to accomplish again in one season!
A Little Background on the Browning Family
My dad told me that if you had a dozen kids they would all be different, and my two are no exception. Someone once said that Ashley likes hunting more than Adam, but the more I thought about it, I came to a different conclusion.
Hunting is almost effortless for Adam, so hunting is just less of a challenge. Adam is the consistently lucky one of us. He sits on the stand for about 30 minutes, shoots his trophy, and heads back to the truck. No problem. Adam’s theory is, why go to the woods before daylight when the same deer come by in the afternoon? Adam likes action on the stand. Bobcats, foxes and other predators had better make a wide berth around Adam’s stand because they might meet an arrow.
Ashley is a well-rounded hunter. As a young girl one Saturday morning, Ashley won a beauty contest. That afternoon she changed from her pretty dress to her camo and shot an 8-point buck, that same day! The presentation of the hunt is also important to Ashley. It is not uncommon for a selfie of Ashley on the stand to show up in a text message.
Fast Forward to Our Family Now
There are way too many other hunting stories to tell, so fast forward to 2019. Adam had gotten married, and he and his wife had a child (my grandson, Kian). Adam moved to Little Rock to take a job as a computer systems administrator. Ashley was living in Herrin, Illinois, working as a nurse anesthetist. I had all but quit deer hunting since my two favorite hunting partners were several miles away.
An Illinois Hunt and One Big Buck
I promised Ashley that I would drive to Illinois and hunt with her, when I could, if she promised to not go hunting by herself. The out-of-state buck tag for Illinois was $475, so I just purchased a doe tag for $175. Ashley and I went bow hunting on public ground in Southern Illinois several times, but neither of us shot anything. We were used to having minimal hunting pressure on private land and being able to put up permanent stands and put out corn as bait.
When the Illinois slug shotgun/muzzleloader season came around, Ashley surprised me with an Illinois buck tag for my birthday! Below is the result of my best birthday present ever: a mature Illinois whitetail buck from public hunting land, no less!
Another Buck in Arkansas
Zone 4 in northeast Arkansas has a slug shotgun/muzzleloader hunt the three days after Christmas. Christmas was on Wednesday this year, and Adam had to work Thursday and Friday. So it was just Ashley and me for those days. Adam was planning to join us on Saturday.
We had just started putting out an 18% protein feed called Sticklin Feed’s Power Pellets, manufactured in Cherry Valley, Arkansas, and it was really pulling in the big bucks! On Thursday, Ashley had a shooter stop to munch on the Power Pellets, and she took the shot with her slug shotgun. She called me and said that a couple of limbs were visibly shaking after the shot, and the big buck just hopped away with no sign of being hit. When I got there, there were two very obvious limbs that were cut in half and hanging down. She had totally missed the shot after hitting the limbs.
Ashley was very distraught that night, but I kept insisting that a gunshot doesn’t necessarily scare a deer like you would think. The shot is so loud and the sound is reflected from so many different directions in the woods, that deer have trouble telling where the shot even came from.
On Friday morning, Ashley’s spirits were somewhat lifted when she took a coyote from the same stand.
The deer didn’t move until after dark Friday afternoon, so we only had Saturday to make it happen. I advised Adam to not drive up because there was an 80% chance of rain Saturday morning and a 100% chance of rain Saturday afternoon. But Ashley wanted to hunt, even if she had to sit in the rain.
On Saturday morning, a series of brief rain showers moved through as forecasted, and we were having trouble keeping our shotguns dry while tucking the actions under our orange vests. It was unseasonably warm at 50 degrees that morning, warming to around 65 degrees in the afternoon.
At about 10:20 that morning, Ashley called and said that she had shot a nice buck. She said the buck kicked up like it had been hit, and she thought she heard it crash. She stayed on the stand until I got there, and we waited for her fiancé to get there to help us track the deer. The blood trail was obvious, and we walked right up to the buck. It is so nice to walk up to a new harvest that doesn’t have ground shrinkage!
This is Ashley’s finest whitetail buck to date, and she was overly excited. That smile makes it all worth it.
It turns out that other hunting buddies of ours had game camera pictures of Ashley’s buck in velvet.
And a game camera picture before it broke its split brow tines.
Ashley even took a picture of the buck with her cellphone before she shot it, but the camera focused on nearby limbs and made the buck appear blurry.
Deer Mounts and Memories
When I look at my mounts on the wall, I reminisce of the hunting accomplishments. But more importantly, the mounts remind me of the bond that hunting has formed within our family.
I am 60 years old now and just hope that I can prolong my health long enough to take my grandson Kian hunting!
My dad said, “Every deer that ever walked through the woods that was seen by a hunter, has a 30 minute story behind just how it took each step,” and there is a lot of truth to that.
