[skeeter@ccia.com]

deerhuntingirl, is no such thing as just a doe..you can be just as proud as if it were a 10 pt....when you don't get excited when you take doe, it is time to give up the hunt. I have been hunting for 43 years now and the doe I took last year was just as exciting to me as the first one. I get as excited when I take my daughters out each year.

As for my first one, my dad took me to the mountains where I had been tagging along with him for years...we walked back to our favorite cat rock seat and mid day I shot my first doe. I can still see my dad following up on the trail in the snow and hear him when he found it....I can still hear him after the 6 hour drag we had too....guess maybe he didn't figure on me getting one that far back...there were shortcuts we could have taken through the swamps but we stuck to the gameland roads because other than this one day, the wardens would ride past and pick up hunter/deer for the ride out.....

My second was just as exciting because after an all day hunt with dad/ uncles, we went home without seeing a deer..( not that many back in those days)....but as a kid and living my days in the woods, I knew where they were most of the time..so dad hit the couch and I said 'I'm going to go up Reynolds road and bring one back...he said go for it...and I did...I didn't get back till well after dark and he was very suprised....

my first archery deer was a buck I had been watching for awhile every morning..I was tucked deep in dark timber at a field edge, I watched 3 doe walk past but the 4th one had it's head glued to the ground and I knew it was my buck..being an overcast day and well after light the deer were only a silhouette to me against the sunlit field...I took the one with the beagle nose...the first thing I had to do after looking for blood trail was find a place to #2 so while looking around in the brush while hidden and doing my thing, I spotted a deer laying...I didn't know if it was mine or one that just didn't know I was there...and that is how I found my first archery deer....with my pants down...lol..