The festivities that went down today, will hopefully be a big part of Live2Hunt history in a few years.  Kelsy and I have been trying very hard to get her very first animal with bow and arrow.

Kelsy got her first bow from Al at APA Innovations in the beginning of April this year.  By the time bear season rolled around, Kelsy didn’t yet have the confidence in her shooting, and wanted to wait for fall deer season.

In October, after practicing all summer, she decided it was go time for big bucks with her bow!!  And I agreed, it was getting to the point where she was showing me up every time we shot the target!!

We had a particular six by five whitetail buck that was coming in to a blind quite often in daylight, so Kelsy wanted to focus on trying to get this buck with her bow.  Now this deer is a six year old, and didn’t get that old by making wrong decisions!  To be honest I was quite sceptical that this was the buck for her, being her very first adventure with a stick and string.  Kelsy’s point of view was she wouldn’t appreciate a lesser buck, and didn’t want to shoot an animal that she wouldn’t be proud of.  I respected her views and we set out for the six by five, and spot n stalk mulies whenever we got the chance!

By the beginning of November we had now spent a month hunting like starving wolves for Kelsy’s first archery buck, and the freezer was empty!  I’m not sure who was getting more stressed over the whole situation.  Every night the wind permitted, we were at that blind waiting for that big whitetail!  He never showed himself, but a lot of other awesome bucks gave us glorious opportunities!  Kelsy never once reached for her bow, she had her mind set and nothing was going to change it.  We would get Treebark pics of the chosen buck every night after dark, and a few days when the wind was wrong, he would pose for our camera an hour before sundown!  On top of our whitetail misfortunes we went spot n stalking muledeer every day the wind was wrong for her whitetail, and went hungry in that department too!!  I don’t know how many big bucks we got within range of, but it never worked out to where she could take the shot!

Our frustrations were getting unbearable!  And to make matters worse, the big whitetail buck Kelsy wanted, pulled the pin once the rut hit!  A week passed, no pics of him!  Two weeks, still nothing, Three weeks… nothing!  Even though we weren’t getting pics of him, we were sitting there waiting just incase…

On November 26th at sunset, a smoken awesome buck walked in from our left!  We had never seen this buck before, he was a wide four by four, nice browtines and had matching stickers on his G 2′s!!  I thought for sure Kelsy would reach for her bow!…  Notta!  It was dead calm, impossible for us to communicate, the buck was only fifteen yards!  He fed in front of us for maybe three minutes then went on his way, fading back into the timber to carry on with natures rut, unscathed by my hunting partner!  I would have shot this buck in a heartbeat!!!

The instant the buck was out of sight, Kelsy turned to me and asked if she could shoot him if he came back!!!….. Are you kidding me!  We just spent our 96th hour in that one blind waiting for an opportunity arise, and it came and passed!

That night I gave Kelsy the biggest pep talk of her life.  It was obvious she didn’t realize what an accomplishment it was to get ANY deer with her bow and arrow!!  Let alone a four year old 150 class buck!!  I explained to her that there was oodles of folks out there that have hunted with their bows for years and years that have never tagged out on a buck of any kind!  I tried to make her understand that shooting just a nice average buck with archery tackle is an accomplishment that she should be DARN proud of!!!  And, tagging out on just a nice buck would give her the experience she needed when the time did come for her to pull the pin on a monster.

For the last week Kels and I have been in stealth mode waiting for a nice respectable buck instead of the rare “King of the forest.”  And this afternoon a beautiful wide four by four came in, and Kelsy made a wicked heart shot at 23 yards!!!  And, she is as proud as a person could ever be of that buck!!  Kelsy Claypool is officially a bowhunter!!

The footage that we collected during Kelsy’s quest for an archery buck will be one of the most entertaining stories for the 2010 TV series!

And just for the record, that big six by five buck will be way bigger next year!  Good luck Kels!  Can I be your cameraman???