My kids are too old now. To keep the tradition alive I am taking my neighbor's daughter, who I took last year to get her first deer, a doe. I promised her we would go again the next year so she could try for her first buck.

She didn't grow up hunting, and neither did her parents. I took her older brother for his first deer four years ago, and she wanted to give it a go.

There are a ton of buck bachelor groups that are all really young, anywhere from spikes to basket rack 8 points that look like they weigh 130 pounds. I just hope that's not all we see or one of them is going down. First buck is whatever makes adrenalin go, and his sacrifice makes a hunter for life, and leaves a memory that you can't buy. But that's the only exception where we don't let them grow.