I was in the garage thinking about how nice Darcy's buck and how great it is that his boys are out there getting involved and I think it's so cute the kids want the old man to shoot everything with 4 legs and antlers lol. So I was looking around my wall in there, and looked at the first whitetail I ever shot, and thought "well what a good thing to talk about". With the rut looming, and the feeling of getting in the bush and seeing a nice buck materializing on a cutline somewhere, well, it just floods me with good feelings. So I took a couple pics and thought I would share the story, and maybe the rest of you guys have similar stories. For me it was never about the size of the buck, although it's a decent deer, it was the experience, the lessons I learned from my own dad, and how it influenced me to become a real Alberta Sportsman.

I was staying up in Slave Lake at my dads, I was 19 at the time, and never really hunted  much. My dad was mostly absent after my parents were divorced when I was 12, but we got reconnected later on. On my 19th birthday he gave me a Winchester model 70 in 7mm rem mag, he bought the rifle in 1965 at army and navy in Edmonton. It had a Redfield FOV 2-7 scope on it, and the scope was almost as old as the gun I'm sure, but it was a solid rig. So I kind of pissed around going out hunting, mostly into WMU 350, the South Mitsue, when it was still big bush, long before the fires and hard logging. But I wasn't too gung ho, I would mostly go in the afternoons. One day the old man says "if you want to shoot a big buck you better be up early boy", but hey, I was 19, didn't give a shit, who wants to get up at 6 am. So he says "drink a couple glasses of water before bed, it will get you up early". So I did, and sure enough I was sitting on a cutline November 15th morning, -25 out, freezing my ass off, and I sat there as long as I could, then I got cold and thought "**** this" and was heading back to town. Well on my way back to town I pulled off on the Camp 8 road, some of you might know it, and I noted lot's of fresh track on a pipeline that runs parallel to the highway. So I got out and walked in, it was about 10 am. I walked about 100 yards and cut into the bush to rattle, and a doe blasts across the line and stops in front of a tree so damn close I could have smacked her on the back of the head. She looks at me and takes off, so I start blowing on my grunt call just to see what she would do. I hear snow crunching and look to my left, he's a big old bush buck with his nose scraping the snow coming across the line. Shot might have been 15 yards, through the heart, the rest is history. Hooked for life now.

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My first was a forkhorn..

For the life of me I can't remember the first white tail I killed. For the first 10 years I hunted I never took pictures of any game I killed, too bad, then I could look back and maybe remember  . I can remember my first mule buck from about 35 years ago, a small 4 x 4 buck. Never much cared about the antlers, so I either throw them away or give them to someone who wanted them, still that way today.

  My first was a doe!!!

I was brought up on the left coast and lived in BC for my first 48 years.
I never hunted with my dad but started up with a friend from work at around 20 years of age.
My first whitetail hunt was a late season bowhunt in the Christian Valley area of the Okanagan valley in 1995 and was unsuccesful but a bug got me and I went back the next year with my son.
I was shooting a old checkmate recurve and wooden arrows that I had made myself.Sitting in a treestand just off a really good trail along came this fella and I took him out with one arrow at about 28 yards.He ran about 60 yards and piled up.Had him scored out at 134 and after deductions came to 130 P&Y

   

I shot my first buck on a solo hunt on a rainy late October day shortly after my 18th B day. A little 4x3 that might of went around 80" and ended up as a lost pair of rattling antlers. I played hockey all through school on the local traveling team so I spent more time spring bear hunting with my Dad. Shot my first bear at 14.

Here's mine