animal that my young future hunter had seen up close and the doe was still alive I made sure to explain to her a swift end was the best and finished the kill off with a quick shot to the neck. I was very proud of my daughter, there were only questions asked and no hesitation when we got down to the real work. My daughter had been excited about a couple of things, one was the cleaning process. She handled it with flying colors and I now know that when science class comes along in a few years she will not have any problems when asked to dissect anything. She was instrumental in helping me clean the deer. Given the distance from the truck I decided to quarter and then debone the remainder of the animal. As we wrapped up our hill side processing she asked what she could have as a memento of this hunt. It was decided to have a European mount made of the skull for her to remember our first joint hunting adventure. To insure that she understood the effort that goes into this she was tasked with packing out the skull and I packed out the meat. It took longer to get back to the truck than I would have thought. The small truck really doesn ' t look that far away, but sure took its sweet time getting bigger. The sandwich and water were extremely welcome and the satisfaction of making it back after sharing a successfully hunt with my daughter was awesome. My only regret was that my dad had to work that day and wasn’ t with us.
I am currently in the process of getting my daughter into a hunter ' s safety class. I can only imagine
that the only time I will be more proud of her will be when she is successful in her first hunting endeavor. It was awesome to see her in that environment and be able to share it with her. If all goes well we will get to turkey hunt in the spring and the next generation of hunter will have picked up the hunting torch.
( My nine year old daughter’ s version of the hunt is below in her words.)
My first hunt with my dad! Was totally wicked! It took a while to find one, but we went to a lot of places to find a doe. I got to see a bear, buck, 5 DOES, a long river, a stream, trails, and slow elk. It was awesome and I want to do it again because it was fun. I can’ t wait to hunt myself, and with my dad. It was fun to see the does last twitching moves. I also got to see the gutting process. My dad let me have its head, so I packed it out.
Awesome hunt Chris! Way to pass it on to the next generation!
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