WhitetailWarrior
New Member
Awesome buck!!!! Congrats!!
S
steinbr123
Guest
Man, that is an awesome deer!!!! The front point on the right antler and the front 2 points on the left antler look like they have been sawed off????
promise land
PMA Member
Very nice!
JK
PMA Member
I want to thank my friend Jeff, he is the office right now helping me post my story.
My Five Year Old Lucky Charm,
This story starts early in the 2007 hunting season when I brought my five year old son Carter on his first turkey hunt on our farm in southern Iowa. Prior to our first hunt together, Carter learned the basics of calling turkeys with Dads box and mouth calls. Although the mouth calls did not work well, his mouth being too small, he did get a good grasp on using the box call to make basic yelps and clucks of a turkey.
As it turned out, on our first turkey hunt of the season and fifteen minutes into the morning hunt, my son Carter called in three long beards with the box call to the decoys. The rest is history as Dad was able to harvest the best of the three. We both have photos that will tell our story for a lifetime. To date, it was the shortest turkey hunt I have ever been on and my bird supported an 11 ½” beard and weighed 24 pounds. After the hunt, I wondered how lucky my son was to have watched such a great hunt. I have been hunting turkeys for years and it usually doesn’t go quite that well. That was an awesome turkey hunt, and we were home eating breakfast by 8:00 a.m.!
As spring passed and summer was ending, we knew the 2007 deer hunting season was just around the corner. My sons and I began setting up our trail cameras around the farm in mid August. We knew from the previous years trail camera photos and hunts there were a number of good bucks in the 150 inch range that would be nice to harvest. We also had some previous year sheds from some of the bucks; two we knew could be real bruisers. As early September came, we set up our stands and ground blinds and of course checked our cameras. The photos taken showed us one buck that would score in the 200 inch range as a non-typical with a basic 7x6 frame and a lot of mass. My best friends wife later called the buck Fingers when she saw the photo of the buck because of all the points. The boys and I thought the name was perfect and knew that was the big boy we wanted, Fingers!
The youth season started and my eight year old son Hunter and I went hunting twice before Hunter shot a nice doe at 100 yards with the muzzle loader on the 19th of September. It was an awesome shot and experience, but because of the wind direction, we never had the opportunity to hunt the location we wanted and where we thought Fingers was feeding. We felt we could not take the risk of hunting a wrong wind direction!
When the Iowa archery season opened, it was time for Carter to go hunting with Dad. Carter is five and was too young to hunt the youth season, so he had to wait for me to go hunting. With Dads help, Carter had practiced with the grunt call and the rattling horns a number of times prior to the seasons opening date. Carter and I could not hunt the first week in October due to a previously scheduled trip so the first day we could hunt was October 11th. When that day arrived, we were out the door in the afternoon and on our way to the farm. Being a little late, we made our way to the farm at 5:30 from our acreage and checked the wind direction the whole time with milk weed puffs. We needed a north wind to hunt Fingers which was projected that day. Unfortunately, we were getting a light easterly flow every so often. At that point, I could not decide; do we hunt the ground blind we wanted along the edge of the corn or should we hunt another location. Finally, Carter and I listened to the weather radio and decided to go for it. With the wind forecasted to be calm near dusk and a temperature of 52 degrees, we thought it was worth the risk.
When we arrived at our blind, it was half blown over due to the violent storms we had over the past few weeks, so we scramble to reset the blind. In the mean time, it was approaching 6:00 pm and we had already spooked a fawn off the field while walking in. The whole time I am thinking, the deer are going to hear us and we are going to get busted. As we settled in the blind and put our gear and video camera in position Carter said, “Dad I’m hungry”. Thank goodness for my wife Mary Lynn, she prepared a small box lunch with a P & J sandwich, an apple and some Oreo cookies. By 6:15 Carter decided he had to have the apple. Every time he bit the apple though, it made a loud crunch. The whole time I was laughing at Carter and thinking, we are not going to see a thing but we are going to have a great time!
Not long after the apple incident, we both looked out the blind window and saw a 125” 8 point ten yards north of us between us eating alfalpha. We watched him for ten minutes before he started heading to the west of our blind. Suddenly, his hair started to rise, his head went down and crash! A 135-140” ten point came out of the timber not 20 yards from us and started an all out fight. Carter and I could not believe our eyes. In 24 years of deer hunting, I have never seen an all out fight of this nature. It lasted about 30-40 seconds before the ten point buck ran off the 8 point. Carter looked at me with his big blue eyes and said, “Wow Dad that was cool”!
A few minutes had passed and I grabbed the snort wheeze call. I felt the conditions were right and I did a snort wheeze, but nothing had happened. About ten minutes passed and Carter said, “Dad let me use the grunt call”, and I thought for a moment and said, “why not”! Carter let out a series of grunts and about 30 seconds later I looked up and the two bucks we saw fighting started coming right at us. They came in to about 10 yards and I noticed through the screen of my video camera, a third buck. As soon as he hit the first clear lane, I knew immediately it was Fingers. I said to Carter, “Look, it's Fingers”. As Carter watched through the blind window I put the video camera down and grabbed my bow. Fingers was at 35 yards looking for that grunt sound! He stepped another five yards, I drew and the rest is history. Carter and I both watched the arrow hit the buck and he went only 25 yards before stopping, looking back, shaking and dropping to the ground! I immediately grabbed the video camera and Carter I celebrated like no other, “We just shot Fingers” I said about ten times. Upon approaching the buck, Carter and I could not believe the size of his body and rack. There wasn’t any shrink from the trail camera photos. We immediately called home to talk to Mom, his brother Hunter and many family members and friends. We were so excited. I was just amazed at what Carter and I had just accomplished. I thought to myself, it just doesn’t happen like this.
Reflecting back on the hunt and 24 years of chasing whitetails, I have had many good fortunes and shot some great deer in my day. But this deer hunting experience will probably rank as my best of a lifetime. To share it with my five year old son Carter and him grunting those deer in was awesome! The odds we faced with the wind being marginal, the blind having to be rebuilt, and of course, the loud apple crunching as Carter ate it, made this hunt even more remarkable. But the deeper I think about the hunt, we knew Fingers was there, it was our first sit in the blind, the weather conditions were perfect, and of course, I had my Five-year old, lucky charm with me, Carter!
My Five Year Old Lucky Charm,
This story starts early in the 2007 hunting season when I brought my five year old son Carter on his first turkey hunt on our farm in southern Iowa. Prior to our first hunt together, Carter learned the basics of calling turkeys with Dads box and mouth calls. Although the mouth calls did not work well, his mouth being too small, he did get a good grasp on using the box call to make basic yelps and clucks of a turkey.
As it turned out, on our first turkey hunt of the season and fifteen minutes into the morning hunt, my son Carter called in three long beards with the box call to the decoys. The rest is history as Dad was able to harvest the best of the three. We both have photos that will tell our story for a lifetime. To date, it was the shortest turkey hunt I have ever been on and my bird supported an 11 ½” beard and weighed 24 pounds. After the hunt, I wondered how lucky my son was to have watched such a great hunt. I have been hunting turkeys for years and it usually doesn’t go quite that well. That was an awesome turkey hunt, and we were home eating breakfast by 8:00 a.m.!
As spring passed and summer was ending, we knew the 2007 deer hunting season was just around the corner. My sons and I began setting up our trail cameras around the farm in mid August. We knew from the previous years trail camera photos and hunts there were a number of good bucks in the 150 inch range that would be nice to harvest. We also had some previous year sheds from some of the bucks; two we knew could be real bruisers. As early September came, we set up our stands and ground blinds and of course checked our cameras. The photos taken showed us one buck that would score in the 200 inch range as a non-typical with a basic 7x6 frame and a lot of mass. My best friends wife later called the buck Fingers when she saw the photo of the buck because of all the points. The boys and I thought the name was perfect and knew that was the big boy we wanted, Fingers!
The youth season started and my eight year old son Hunter and I went hunting twice before Hunter shot a nice doe at 100 yards with the muzzle loader on the 19th of September. It was an awesome shot and experience, but because of the wind direction, we never had the opportunity to hunt the location we wanted and where we thought Fingers was feeding. We felt we could not take the risk of hunting a wrong wind direction!
When the Iowa archery season opened, it was time for Carter to go hunting with Dad. Carter is five and was too young to hunt the youth season, so he had to wait for me to go hunting. With Dads help, Carter had practiced with the grunt call and the rattling horns a number of times prior to the seasons opening date. Carter and I could not hunt the first week in October due to a previously scheduled trip so the first day we could hunt was October 11th. When that day arrived, we were out the door in the afternoon and on our way to the farm. Being a little late, we made our way to the farm at 5:30 from our acreage and checked the wind direction the whole time with milk weed puffs. We needed a north wind to hunt Fingers which was projected that day. Unfortunately, we were getting a light easterly flow every so often. At that point, I could not decide; do we hunt the ground blind we wanted along the edge of the corn or should we hunt another location. Finally, Carter and I listened to the weather radio and decided to go for it. With the wind forecasted to be calm near dusk and a temperature of 52 degrees, we thought it was worth the risk.
When we arrived at our blind, it was half blown over due to the violent storms we had over the past few weeks, so we scramble to reset the blind. In the mean time, it was approaching 6:00 pm and we had already spooked a fawn off the field while walking in. The whole time I am thinking, the deer are going to hear us and we are going to get busted. As we settled in the blind and put our gear and video camera in position Carter said, “Dad I’m hungry”. Thank goodness for my wife Mary Lynn, she prepared a small box lunch with a P & J sandwich, an apple and some Oreo cookies. By 6:15 Carter decided he had to have the apple. Every time he bit the apple though, it made a loud crunch. The whole time I was laughing at Carter and thinking, we are not going to see a thing but we are going to have a great time!
Not long after the apple incident, we both looked out the blind window and saw a 125” 8 point ten yards north of us between us eating alfalpha. We watched him for ten minutes before he started heading to the west of our blind. Suddenly, his hair started to rise, his head went down and crash! A 135-140” ten point came out of the timber not 20 yards from us and started an all out fight. Carter and I could not believe our eyes. In 24 years of deer hunting, I have never seen an all out fight of this nature. It lasted about 30-40 seconds before the ten point buck ran off the 8 point. Carter looked at me with his big blue eyes and said, “Wow Dad that was cool”!
A few minutes had passed and I grabbed the snort wheeze call. I felt the conditions were right and I did a snort wheeze, but nothing had happened. About ten minutes passed and Carter said, “Dad let me use the grunt call”, and I thought for a moment and said, “why not”! Carter let out a series of grunts and about 30 seconds later I looked up and the two bucks we saw fighting started coming right at us. They came in to about 10 yards and I noticed through the screen of my video camera, a third buck. As soon as he hit the first clear lane, I knew immediately it was Fingers. I said to Carter, “Look, it's Fingers”. As Carter watched through the blind window I put the video camera down and grabbed my bow. Fingers was at 35 yards looking for that grunt sound! He stepped another five yards, I drew and the rest is history. Carter and I both watched the arrow hit the buck and he went only 25 yards before stopping, looking back, shaking and dropping to the ground! I immediately grabbed the video camera and Carter I celebrated like no other, “We just shot Fingers” I said about ten times. Upon approaching the buck, Carter and I could not believe the size of his body and rack. There wasn’t any shrink from the trail camera photos. We immediately called home to talk to Mom, his brother Hunter and many family members and friends. We were so excited. I was just amazed at what Carter and I had just accomplished. I thought to myself, it just doesn’t happen like this.
Reflecting back on the hunt and 24 years of chasing whitetails, I have had many good fortunes and shot some great deer in my day. But this deer hunting experience will probably rank as my best of a lifetime. To share it with my five year old son Carter and him grunting those deer in was awesome! The odds we faced with the wind being marginal, the blind having to be rebuilt, and of course, the loud apple crunching as Carter ate it, made this hunt even more remarkable. But the deeper I think about the hunt, we knew Fingers was there, it was our first sit in the blind, the weather conditions were perfect, and of course, I had my Five-year old, lucky charm with me, Carter!
Limb Chicken
Active Member
Great story Brad and I would hold on to that little guy... /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
grandslam02
PMA Member
Man what a story ! Great to hear all the pieces fell into place for you and your son. Congratulations
Hoyt-R-Nothin
New Member
Great buck, can't imagine the feeling of havin your boy right next to you
timekiller
No, you can't pet him.
How would Carter like to come doing some calling for me. I have plenty of apples and my wife makes a mean PB&J sandwich. /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
Oh yeah, GREAT BUCK!
Oh yeah, GREAT BUCK!
turtlshell
PMA Member
What a story... You're right, that's one for the memory book... the hunt of a lifetime. You and Carter will never forget the hunt for Fingers.