One of the addicts, Scott, had the unthinkable happen. I’ll let Scott tell the in’s and outs of that story however I read another article about teaching our sons and realized that Scott did exactly the right thing. He turned a horrible moment into a great teaching moment while archery deer hunting. I hope I would do the same if faced with that situation.
The short story is he took his son out for his first year archery deer, they found and shot a buck late in the evening, not the best shot so they decided to go home and come back in the morning to track it. They got back up there extremely early, got on the blood trail. As they did they ran into another hunter, they told him the whole story and what they were doing, that they were back up tracking his son’s deer. The guy went with them as they tracked the deer, they found the deer hung up on a fence, too hurt to make it over. As his son prepared to shoot the deer and put it down this other hunter quickly drew back and shot it. Then he claimed the deer, stated that Utah law says the deer goes to the person that kills it not injures it.
As ridiculous as this sounds that’s what happened. A grown man stole a 13 years old’s first archery kill by quickly taking the last shot while being right there with the kid and knowing the full story, he shot it hung up on a fence. I hope that this grown man has a lot of regret, that one day he will realize how embarrassing what he did was and that every time he looks at the deer (he wants to mount it) he remembers what he did. Hopefully Scott will post the full story in more detail as at this point I’ve just heard it second hand. The point I wanted to make was about how he took this unbelievable moment and taught his son a lesson.
When I heard this I was shocked. Truly one of the most amazing stories I’ve heard of a hunter stooping so low, right down there with poachers. As you hear something so insane you think about how you would react. You can never fully guess what you would do but I know I would do anything for my kids and this would put me in a corner where I felt like I had to protect my sons’s buck, I might have called DWR, gone to fists, who knows. Scott handled this with more integrity than most would have. Yes he gave the guy some grief and was in shock but in the end he took a photo with his son and his buck and they walked away, letting this scum of a hunter have the buck. I can only imagine what was going thru his head but he taught his son a lesson, taught him to pick his battles and to be the bigger man. I was reading the following blog as I thought about this and how #11 was taught.
Dan Pearce is the author of Single Dad Laughing,?click here to check out his blog and read all of the rules for Fathers raising Sons?in his latest blog post. Here is Rule #11:
11. Teach him to choose his battles.?Make sure he knows which battles are worth fighting- like for family or his favorite baseball team. Remind him that people can be mean and nasty because of jealousy, or other personal reasons. Help him to understand when to shut his mouth and walk-away. Teach him to be the?bigger?better person.
I’m sure he had the chance to teach his son other things but Scott did what many of us wouldn’t have and was the bigger man that day, teaching his son what is more important, his son also learned about how selfish people can be and the lows they will stoop to. I hope that this hunter reads this, that he hears about it from his friend that was with him and that the story of his buck that he is having mounted gets to all of his friends and family. Most of all I hope he learns a lesson too, despite his choices I hope he realizes how low he stooped and that he would never do that again.
Family is what hunting is about to us. We love the hunt but more than that we love the time we get with our family, raising the next generation of hunters. There will be many lessons learned over the years as we introduce our son’s to hunting, I just hope that none of them are as extreme as this.