Lauren Wildschuetz – Missouri

            Three years ago, the owners of a farm I had permission to hunt on, decided to sell it. Since I knew the property pretty well, I made some phone calls and my nephew and two other friends decided to purchase it with me. It turned out to be a great investment. Enclosed you will find photos of my 8 year old son, Brady, and my nephew, Nicholas, with their deer taken last fall from the farm we have now owned for 3 years in North Central Missouri.

            When we first got the farm in the spring (which is approximately 240 acres of timber and 7 to 8 acres of food plots), we prepared it by using Imperial Whitetail Clover. I was very happy with how easy the clover was to plant and take care of.

            I had always dreamed of taking my own son deer hunting, so when he was old enough I decided to start teaching him about gun safety. Last summer, I bought him a single shot, 243 New England Springfield, rifle that I had modified from the local gun smith. We started practicing as soon as it was ready and when we finally got the courage to tell my wife… (She ended up being pretty cool with it).

            By the fall, the plots were looking great. We spent some time going to the little creek bottom field that had Imperial Clover planted in it to put up a deer stand and do some clearing. We did a lot of practicing and everything went fine. We couldn’t wait until youth season!

            When opening weekend of the youth season was finally here we hit the woods nice and early in the morning. We didn’t see a thing. In the afternoon we went down to the little creek bottom stand. It wasn’t more than an hour after we got settled when a doe entered the field followed a little later by two more. After watching them for a while my son said that he saw a buck. I didn’t see it but he kept insisting that he saw one right where the two does had come out… it’s great to have young eyes! I reminded him that it would have to have at least 4 points. He said that it did for sure on the side he could see. I told him to go ahead and get his gun ready.

            Well, the buck made his way into the field and started chasing the does around, made a scrape, but still there was no shot. Then, the wind changed and was blowing right toward the deer. This made me nervous because the buck was looking straight toward us.

            I asked my son, “Do you have a shot?”

            He said, “Not yet.”

            I asked again and he said, “Yes!”

            He breathed and then squeezed just like I taught him.

            He nervously asked, “Did I hit it?”

            I couldn’t tell because the buck jumped into the timber so fast.

            We were able to follow the trail a bit but we were not able to find him. The next morning we went out looking again with very little luck. I was so nervous that we would not be able to find it. Finally, we heard my nephew yell that he had found it. What a relief those words were! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it! It was a 12 pointer grossing around 122 inches and weighing 165 pounds. What an experience! I know that all you other dads know what I am saying when I say that was a time in my life I will never forget.

            My nephew’s deer was shot the opening morning last deer season on a ridge about 100 yards from another Imperial Clover patch. We had seen some really good pictures from that area so we put a stand there the day before opening morning and told Nicholas it was all his! It didn’t take him long to see a nice deer walking down the ridge. He put his gun up, had a clear shot and fired. The deer just stood there. He fired again and the deer just stood there! He got a little nervous so he started to look through his binoculars. He was shaking too much so he put them down and raised his gun again while the deer stood in the same place! Then, the deer took two steps and Nicholas thought it was going to take off so he shot again this time at the neck (because it was the only shot he could take at the time) but the deer still just stood there. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him and was worried that he would have to reload if this continued. Then, the deer took some steps and he shot again. This time the deer stumbled and finally went down. When we walked up to it, he couldn’t believe the size of this deer! He sat down next to it and just reflected on what had just happened because he knew this may never happen again. The deer that he shot turned out to be a 17 point buck with is G2’s and G3’s going over 13” each. The gross total score was just under 175 inches.

            We also took 2 other nice deer that year and we contribute a lot of it to Whitetail Institute products. Everyone we know was asking us what we had in our food plots and we told them that it was Imperial Whitetail Clover.