I posted this on another forum but wanted to share here.
Originally posted by taylorce1:
I thought I'd do a spin off of graybird's post since he is pretty involved in this one as well.
I met this little lady when I started to date her mother in 2008 and she was five years old at the time. A little desperate for attention from a male role model so I've tried to do the best I could. I let her steal my rangefinder and tag along on her first pronghorn hunt when she was six.
Next I bought her a little pink rifle and started teaching her to shoot.
She spent quite a bit of time shooting that little pink rifle with Snellstrom's youngest son, and on her own when we could get to the range. Graybird bought her a nice hot pink soft case that she is pretty proud of as well.
When she was seven she had to miss out on our annual pronghorn hunting because of a broken leg. However when she was eight she made it and wasn't afraid to give me a hand holding the pronghorn while I did the field dressing. Shortly after that hunt she said she wanted to go hunting.
So I did what any good stepfather would do. I made a deal with her to make her earn a hunting trip. I told her if she kept her grades up and passed Hunters Ed, I'd find a hunt for her. Well she kept her end of the bargain straight A's and passed Hunters Ed on the first try. I had been talking with Graybird about somewhere I could take her to hunt, since Colorado says they have to be 12 to hunt big game. He offered up his Dad's place in OK to Snellstrom's boy and my daughter to hunt white tail.
So I spent most of the year leading up to this hunt getting my daughter to shoot a larger rifle than her little pink crickett. We had a few set backs as report, even with ear plugs inside of muffs seemed to bother her. So good ol' step dad loaded up "magic bullets" for his daughter and got her worked up to full power .223 loads for a Steven's 200 I had the stock cut down to fit her.
This past pronghorn season we didn't see any pronghorn worth shooting but since my wife and I allowed her to skip a day of school with "hunters flu", we shot some prairie dogs with Ted Thorn. She had been worried about making a poor shot on a deer and wounding one as we got closer to her hunting, shooting prairie dogs was a big confidence booster.
Anyway we got to Graybird's hunting site on Monday evening too late to hunt but she sure was excited to get her first Deer tag at "the Walmart". We would spend the next day sitting overlooking a canyon for deer in the morning, chasing squirrels mid day and sitting in a hunting blind that afternoon.
Unfortunately we never connected with a deer that first day, she never felt right about taking a shot. I told her I was proud of her for not shooting when she felt she didn't have the shot, and it was no big deal if she didn't shoot a deer at all. I had to leave her in the capable hands of Graybird to get her on deer, because I had been called to report back to work in TX on Wednesday.
