My Daughter Filmed The Kill

Ok, so kids these days are all about the tech stuff, and I'll be the first to admit that my daughter will start looking for my IPhone after about an hour in the stand. When she does get it out she'll play a few games and then put it down; maybe 10 or 15 minutes of use and then she's bored with that too. I have noticed after a couple hunts that there are videos on my phone of various things of little consequence other than she is just playing with the phone. Today that all changed. The child filmed the kill!.... Let me backtrack for a moment and say that we hunted Thanksgiving morning. We saw three does and one was obviously larger than the others. It was a very nice hunt and we saw lots of birds and squirrels, but these deer when they did show up came in very fast. I was stuck sitting down in a two man stand that didn't afford the space to draw. It turned out nicely though in that the deer came in and fed right under us for about 15 minutes and were clueless to our presence. My daughter was thrilled with this. When I first started taking her hunting this season we saw a lot of deer and she was hooked, but for the last number of hunts we have seen nothing. Even for a person who loves hunting, seeing nothing get old after hours in the stand. Anyway knowing the area and how the deer are moving, I knew there was a good chance that these deer would be back the next morning. So what follows is the typical Thanksgiving day with too much food and too much wine. 10:00 pm that night and I'm thinking, ok, I'll set the alarm and if I get up, I get up. Now one thing about the morning of Thanksgiving was that we got up on time and were in the stand an hour before sunrise. The deer showed up an 1.5 hours after sunrise. When the alarm went off Friday morning, I laid there and rationalized that if the deer didn't show up till 8:45 yesterday, well, they won't be there at least until then today. I hit the snooze. Friday morning we walked in at sunrise, 7:15. Late by most hunting standards. This morning was also cold . Things had changed in the last 24 hours and this morning it was 35 degrees when we got in the stand. I didn't care about the deer at this point and I was glad that the sun was coming up, and I hadn't sat in the dark for an hour in the cold. Also, we both had worn our cold gear this morning and we were comfy. I was pretty confident that we would see those same deer again. That was the case. This time though they came into the opening from a different direction and were moving very cautiously with the smaller does well behind the larger doe. The day before they all came in together, and I couldn't have moved if I wanted too with so many eyes on us. Anyway, I've made it very clear to my daughter that if deer come in, I will stand up if possible to shoot and she needs to sit very still and play statue. Do not move child! About 9:30 I spot the deer, and they are coming in from a completely different direction. This time I am very happy to see the big doe moving fast while the other two are lingering in the woods. My daughter is to my left and the deer are coming in slightly to the right and in front. When I get up, she stays put just like I had asked her to. Interestingly, as the big doe moves in and comes from behind the big oak, I notice she seems a bit skittish  As she moves forward this remains the case, and as she reaches a white oak she stops and suddenly turns. I know the wind is in our face and she can't smell us, but she knows something is wrong. As she turns I draw. Everything happened very fast, and fortunately after she turned she stopped and stood there. How long she would have stayed didn't matter. As soon as I drew, she was in my sight. I knew the distance, went straight to the pin and released. It was a perfect shot, and I double lunged her. When I sat down my daughter was very excited and was telling me she got it all on film! What? You got it on film? The child had taken my IPhone and turned on the video recorder and filmed me shooting the deer. Suddenly the deer's behavior started to make sense and I realized what was going on. The whole time I'm standing doing the hunting thing, my daughter is sitting there with a phone doing the technology thing. She recorded the kill. I have never done this in all my years of hunting. I've made crazy shots with a bow and with a rifle and pistol, but I've never had them on film. Suddenly, without my realizing it my daughter had used her understanding of technology and given me a taste of my own hunt. I have watched that 59 seconds of video probably 50 times and I wouldn't have had it without my daughters initiative. Now we do have to have a discussion about how to act and move when deer are around. There is a learning curve with filming just as thee is with hunting and shooting and she needs to learn it, but she is begging to do it so it's allgood. Now she wants a video camera for Christmas. In the end it was a wonderful hunt. We fist bumped and she skipped and jumped and for the rest of the day had a big smile on her face. I'm pretty sure if someone had filmed me for the rest of the day, they would have seen a big smile on my face as well. Black Friday 2012 meant a great deal to my family. It didn't include great deals while shopping in town, but it included circumstances that created memories my daughter and I will remember for the rest of our lives. It was a wonderful hunt and a wonderful day. She was so happy and proud of herself for getting the kill on film, and I was very happy to put it all together for the first time with my daughter hunting with me. Also, I was crazy proud of her for trying something and being successful at it, even if it did almost scare off the deer. That deer may have busted us, but when it counted we bust her. Hunting and the outdoors were the medium for this experience and I couldn't imagine anything better..