“I grew up in a hunting family.  While I did not marry a hunter, we have a son that loves to hunt and now we have hunting grandsons. When a mom has a son that hunts, you hunt with him. When a grandmother has grandsons that hunt, you support their deer hunting habits as well. This story however, turned out to be quite the family affair.” — Brenda Allen (Brenda originally wrote us a story about hunting with her son for our Deer Hunters’ Alamanc. This story is a follow-up 20 years in the making.)

Both of our children had purchased land in north Arkansas near the beautiful Buffalo River National Park. Our daughter and son-in-law were building an RV park on their property and my husband and I had traveled there to help them work on the property one weekend. Knowing that the 13-year-old grandson was not going to be interested in working on the property all day, he and I made a trip to the local Tractor Supply for hunting supplies. His mom gave him the debit card in case he found something he “needed.” It turns out he really needed a Wildgame Innovations Apple Crushed deer lick. We loaded up some grass seed, the deer lick, and a few other purchases and made our way back to the property. The plan was for the guys to shut down the track hoe work around 4 o’clock that afternoon so that our grandson could hunt a little bit before dark.

A little after 4 p.m. our grandson made his way down to the ground blind that he had set up with Apple Crushed deer lick in hand. I was standing in the kitchen of my camper and thinking how ridiculous it was to think that some deer would randomly walk right in the path of this ground blind after all of the heavy equipment that had been digging on the property all day and … that my grandson would actually shoot it. 

BOOOOOM!!!!

I looked out the window to I see my 13-year-old grandson running – RUNNING – with arms widespread to his father! I would give anything if I would have had the opportunity to capture that image on my camera; however, it is indelibly marked in my memory. Pure joy! A son running to his father saying he had just killed a 10-point!!

I was ready to go look for it but totally forgot this is a waiting game. We probably didn’t wait as long as we should have because the excitement of the harvest took over. Dad, Mom, Grandfather and Grandmother — we all head out to the woods to look for the deer before it got too dark.

It didn’t take us long to realize there was no blood trail. I’m no Sherlock Holmes but it makes it really hard to find a deer in the woods with no blood trail. It was dark, cold and I’m too old, so I pretty quickly gave up. Granddad also returned to the camper, but Mom and Dad continued to help their son find this deer. My husband and I could see the flicker of a flashlight every now and then. 

About the time that I figured the search party would turn in for the night, our daughter returns to the camper to tell us that SHE found the deer!! They did need our help, however, to get it out of the woods.   My husband and I suited up (again) for the cold and followed her to the deer. I haven’t mentioned this before, but we are on the side of a mountain, and of course, the deer goes to the bottom of it to expire. My son-in-law is about to have a heart attack as he is almost single-handedly trying to get the deer back up the side of this mountain with a little help from the 13-year-old. Help has arrived! We all grab a leg and “1-2-3 Heave Ho!” It was a lot of heave and not much ho. This deer was heavy and dead weight!

My husband is a recently retired bridge contractor who sees no need to do things by hand when you can have heavy equipment do it for you. He quickly realized it would be easier to run the skid steer down the side of this mountain than to carry this heavy deer up it! Now help has really arrived! And thus the title of this story being, “Deer in a Skid Steer.”

We got the deer back to the campsite in 27-degree weather. It took the Apple Crushed deer lick, his uncle’s tripod, his shot, his mother finding the deer, all five of us to bring it back to the campsite,  and then his other grandparents taking him to the Big Buck contest later that week. All in all, it scored a 138 and a lot of family memories!

*Buffalo Bend RV Park, Yellville, AR coming Spring 2026. Check Facebook for details.