Like many of you, I love pursuing mature whitetail bucks. I think about it 365 days a year. But sometimes this pursuit can become a grind, and while I still enjoy it, at times it’s healthy to step back, take a breath, and remember what hunting was like when we stepped into the forest many years ago with our first deer hunting license.

Because I have two teenage sons who enjoy hunting, I get to take this “step back” each fall. You see, neither of my boys is a trophy deer hunter. When we head into the forest, they want to get a deer. Any deer. Period. 

Sure, if a doe steps into a food plot and she’s with a fawn, they’ll try to harvest the doe. Likewise, if a doe stepped into a clearing with a buck, they’d aim for the buck. Neither of them has had a shot at a mature buck yet, and I’m happy about it. I’d rather they keep filling their tags with does, fawns and small-antlered bucks for several years to come. If they are anything like their dad, they’ll become fascinated with antlers — the bigger the better — and then deer hunting will be different. Not better, not worse, just different. 

I love going into the field with them knowing that any deer we see is fair game. There’s no debate about “whether it’s a shooter.” Like my dad taught me 42 years ago when I first joined him in the whitetail woods, “brown is down.”

A bit of mentoring advice: My kids take only close-range shots, even though they hunt with bolt-action rifles resting on a tripod. To date, the longest shot either of them has made on a whitetail — and they’ve killed several each — is 75 yards. Most shots have been less than 50 yards. Closer is better.

This fall, I encourage you to find time to spend in the woods with a young or beginning deer hunter, where any legal whitetail is a shooter. Yes, it’s great to tag a big buck, but true joy is seen in the eyes of a beginning hunter when he or she finds any deer at the end of a short blood trail.