TriggerHappyJake
Senior Member
It was opening weekend of the 2007 gun season in Coweta County. Dad had gotten into a club just across from the power plant with 700 acres and a small cabin. I was 13 years old. Dad had been down for a few hunts during bow season but this was the first I had ever set foot on the property. We rode there in that 1996 green chevy pickup that I grew up in. It was decided that I would be better off using open sights to start off so I was given a Mossberg 500 20 gauge that belonged to my grandfather. 28 inch barrel with more dings than a car after an hour long hail storm and a few Winchester 2 3/4 slugs to make it all work. I was wearing that blaze orange young bucks outdoors Buck Masters hat that I got in the mail from sending them a letter. Dad made me wear two pairs of socks and pajama pants under my pants. Mom must have put the fear of god into him about me getting cold. I had a book report due in a few weeks in class so I brought the book to the stand to read while it was slow. It was a big game double man ladder looking out over a half acre food plot. I remember that I could see the top of the power plant smoke stack over the pine trees from the stand. It was a good little wait for a young'n like me and I flipped through the book off and on. Finally, at last light, Dad told me to look at the back edge of the plot. There peeking around a pine, stood a deer. I remember thinking that it sure was a dark colored one and dang where did he come from? Dad put a hand under the butt of the shotgun and raised it to my shoulder. That tiny little bead looked to be about a mile away as I brought it up to meet the 4-legged form. I really don't even remember pulling the trigger only that the gun went off. Like JFK he went back and to the left, kicking just once. I raised my face off the stock when dad whispered that it was a buck. I had never seen a hint of antler. After the climb and a short walk I wrapped my little fingers around a tiny, chocolate 3 point rack. We took a few photos with a throw-away camera and gutted him. It was only an hour before dad started to get the phone calls. Anyone and everyone who I had ever known that had the slightest interest in deer hunting was calling to talk to me. We hauled the buck to a cooler in Franklin where everyone guessed he weighed close to 200 lbs. I still have that spent shell but I gave the hat away a few years later to another young kid in a different deer camp. Well, thats my first deer story. Got one yourself?
