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1-3-2014
Missouri's second youth season finally
arrived. I invited Pete, Scott, and Logan up to my buddy’s farm in NW Missouri
for the weekend. This was my oldest daughter MaKenna’s first deer hunt as
a shooter and Logan was on a doe mission. Kenna, Pete, and I arrived at the
farm around 1:30pm and hurried up to get our gear unloaded. Pete needed to find
a spot and get up set up for the evening hunt and Kenna and I were going to do
some scouting for the next day’s hunt. Pete and I found a great spot with tons
of fresh tracks in a bean field. Well the afternoon came and went with lots of
sightings but no shots. Scott and Logan arrived around 6:30pm and we made a plan for Saturday morning. 
After waking up and getting our gear sorted out for the morning's hunt, we were all off to the shooting houses. Kenna and I wen into the center blind overlooking a food plot and Scott, Pete, and Logan headed to the far east shooting house overlooking a huge crp field with cut corn about 1/2 mi.e south of them. The Eisentrager boys morning starting out with good deer movement. Shortly before 8:00am Kenna and I heard a shot from the direction of their blind and followed shortly thereafter with a text saying that Logan just shot a doe! Kenna was happy for Logan however her face showed her disappointment because we hadn’t seen any deer yet. Not long after I looked up and saw eleven does pop out into the food plot. Unfortunately they caught our movement and Kenna couldn’t get on them before they bugged out. About 30 minutes later I look over to the ridge and see thirteen more does and one small buck moving across the ridge. We went into scramble mode and got Kenna all set up. I knew it was a long shot but I gave Kenna the green light to let one rip. Unfortunately she missed, but she was so excited that she got to see deer and take a shot. At that point Kenna was ready to see Logan’s deer, so we packed up and headed that way. After a bit of a hectic track job Logan had his doe and we celebration started. We even got Kenna in a picture with Logan....a boy!
With the temps dropping and snow on the way Kenna, Scott, and I headed to a field of standing beans that was covered in deer tracks. We knew with the weather changing that the deer were going to move and after seeing a bunch of deer on the drive over and while walking in, we were all excited and ready for the evening to unfold. Shortly after getting set up Kenna decided it was nap time. As I was sitting there enjoying the time I looked up and noticed a doe pop out followed by three more. It was scramble mode again waking little miss sunshine up and getting her on the gun. The does went straight to filling their bellies and never even looked our direction, so we got Kenna settled and on the shooting sticks. Kenna was just getting ready to pull the trigger when I spotted another deer coming into the field. It was a nice 1.5year old buck and I told Kenna to get on him. The buck read the script perfectly and walked into the field and turned broadside. Kenna settled the cross hairs and the let the .243 bark! The buck dropped immediately but got back up and took off heading for cover. Scott and I both knew it was a good hit and it took everything I had to hold back the tears of excitement I had. Since we had to give the buck time to die we loaded another round in the TC just in case a doe showed herself and Kenna could try to double up. Another doe did come out, but it spotted us and took off before Kenna could get a shot.
1-5-2014
MaKenna deciding the snow and 3 degree weather was just too rough
to hunt in Sunday morning, so we called it a weekend and headed back home after a pancake breakfast. We had one heck of
a youth weekend and I can’t wait for next year. We've already got plans to make this and annual trip. 
