chipterp
PMA Member
This year we decided to try and take my daughter Addison deer hunting for the first time. She has grown up watching and being a part of a family who is just a little obsessed with deer hunting. So there really wasn't any convincing needed when we asked her if she wanted to go this year. After reading a bunch of threads and forums on the matter I decided I was going to go with a TC impact. I liked the fact that it had adjustable spacers for the stock so it could grow with her. We practiced shooting cans in the yard this summer with a scoped .22 which she did really well with. She did have a problem being able to close her left eye, which was quickly solved with a leftover eyepatch from my 4 year olds Captain Jake birthday party. I used 50 grains of Blackhorn and a 200 grain bullet. When I sighted the gun in off the field pod I felt like it hardly kicked at all when I shot. I even held it off my shoulder an inch to make sure it wasn't going to kick too hard. I decided to not let her practice with it for fear of getting her scared of the recoil.We just kept shooting the .22. We had a great first sit overlooking our clover field out of the ground blind. The first night we had a nice shooter 8 point just about to our shooting lane at 20 yards but the doe at 18 yards had been staring and stomping at us for a few minutes already. All we needed was two more steps and she would have had an opportunity. The deer definitely need to cooperate and stand right where we need them to even get a shot off. After that the next weekend we hunted Friday night and had a bunch of deer show up along with a great looking wide deer that came from the bean field and crossed the clover plot but never gave us an opportunity before he went over the hill. Saturday night was slow and we didn't see much but my wife had a good sit and she convinced us to stay and try Sunday night again. We got all situated in the blind with our goodie bag of snacks and had another great sit with lots of deer coming in and when a smaller 8 point came out behind us we decided that she was going to take him if he gave us a shot but he never did give us that opportunity. We thought that all the deer that were going to come out that night were already there but when I looked over to our right there he was at 65 yards chowing down and looking around. We quickly got her headphones on, her eye patch down and tried to get turned a little more towards him while the does in front of us stared trying to figure out whether to snort and run. I asked if she was on him she smiled and said yes I went ahead and cocked the gun asked her again and told her to pull the trigger when she was ready. At the shot I saw the bucks back end hit the ground and then he got back up and took off. She was all smiles and asked me if I saw all the fire come out of the gun. She also said it hurt her shoulder a bit but she quickly forgot about that as we celebrated. She then proceeded to ask me if we could put it on Facebook and if we could hang it in her room. I was praying we would find that deer. We sat there a while and then went back to the cabin and told everyone what had happened. After supper we rounded up the lights to head back out and look. After a little track job we found him and the picture taking commenced. I was one happy dad I had been waiting for that night for 7 years and it was even better than I thought! 
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Congrats to all!
